A family spring break trip to St. Simons Island
It was 35 degrees when we pulled out of our driveway in North Carolina around 9am. By the time we pulled into our rental’s driveway in St. Simons Island around 5pm, it was 70. That’s how we like to start our spring break trips!!
For this year’s warm weather spring break pursuit, our family roadtripped to St. Simons Island, one of Georgia’s barrier islands and part of the Golden Isles. It’s adjacent to past destination Jekyll Island and similar in feel to last year’s pick Hilton Head, but it had a charm all of its own. I’d love to tell you about it and share a few photos, if you’d like to see!
How we chose St. Simons, in short:
1) John is committed to a warm weather spring break trip.
2) We generally try not to fly all five of us unless it’s necessary because of the expense.
3) Over the years, we’ve found that lower Georgia is a reasonable road trip that reliably delivers warm, beachy weather.
After casting about for something new, we landed on St. Simons!
Sunday was our day of departure, and mostly spent en route. We listened to The Mona Lisa Vanishes audiobook for free through Libby and the big kids and grown-ups all enjoyed it. (I suspect Annie liked it a little less than last year’s pick, The Wild Robot.) We also stopped for lunch at old favorite Lowcountry Produce, and I only mention it because I had one of the best salads of my life at their table: chopped romaine, lemon dijon vinaigrette, warm red potatoes, bacon, goat cheese, tomatoes…! Must recreate.
Upon arrival in Georgia, we unloaded the car, toured the house, did a little unpacking, then drove over to Ember for our first dinner. Though in a strip mall, it’s a low-lit, fancier vibe inside. We split several wood-fired pizzas, which were very thin-crusted but yummy.
Monday morning dawned beautifully sunny (a theme, as you will soon see!). We slept in and let the kids watch part of 101 Dalmatians on the TV in their bunk room after they woke up — the height of luxury. Lest you think I’m completely anti-screen, they did this every morning, and it was a highlight of the trip :)
Our big adventure of the day was biking to the eleven public “Tree Spirits” around the island. Carved into live oak trees by a father-son duo, these fanciful pirates, mermaids, and faces were fun to spot as we criss-crossed the island on our bikes.
Our route was a 12-mile round trip (!), though we stopped along the way to watch small planes land and take off on the airstrip, to tour the St. Simons Island lighthouse, and to eat lunch at Porch, a chicken emporium.
Porch got two thumbs up from the whole family; my spicy fried chicken sandwich with pimento cheese, pickles, and coleslaw was especially delicious. (It might have been my favorite meal of the whole trip.) We also lingered to play a few rounds of corn hole and giant connect-four on the lawn before hopping back on our bikes.
As for our other midday stop, the lighthouse was beautiful and the visitors center looked brand new. A fun feature of this lighthouse as compared to others we’ve visited: we got to tour the keeper’s house, which was outfitted with period furnishings. There was also a 10-minute movie playing on a loop with the history of the lighthouse and keepers that we watched before we climbed to the top.
The whole adventure was enjoyable, but I will admit it was not the most relaxing for me. This was Annie’s first vacation riding her own bike versus riding in the trailer or a bike seat, and while she is an excellent bike rider (especially for a four year old!), she is nowhere near as reliable as the big kids: she’s more likely to get distracted, to stop short, to zig and zag when she shouldn’t, or get rattled by a pot hole. Plus, she takes up about one-quarter the visual space of John, so I felt the need to be right on her at all times to make sure that cars could see us both. Needless to say, I was on high alert the entire time.
That being said, the route was essentially completely flat, which made us feel we could bike for miles – and we did! There are multi-use paths throughout the whole island (which was the only way this worked), but just as a heads up I felt that they were a little closer to the roads, or the roads were a little busier, than in either HHI or Jekyll Island.
After finding all 11 Spirits (and playing some hoops on the basketball court in the park near the last one), we triumphantly rode back home. We swam in the backyard pool for about an hour before quick showers and changing for dinner.
Even in our fancier clothes we ended up biking to dinner (one of my favorite parts of vacation!), which was just up the road at the Georgia Sea Grill. This was definitely a fancier restaurant, with some older gentlemen in jackets. (I love a clientele that’s not afraid to dress up!) Service was leisurely and our kids were ready to go by the time the check came, but the food was delicious and they did a great job keeping a lid on things. Once home, the kids quickly got into pajamas and I read a few chapters of our current readaloud before lights out, though Annie fell asleep a few paragraphs into the first chapter :) It was a big day for little four-year-old legs!
On Tuesday we followed a blueprint that we perfected last year in Hilton Head: beach, pool, cookout at home. We began the SSI version by biking to town for breakfast at Palmer’s Village Cafe, which was delicious but had a very long wait. (We browsed in the nearby library to kill some of it.)
Then we packed up our beach cart (our rental house had come with a rental credit, which we used for the cart, two adult bikes, and a skimboard) and walked to the beach, which Shep calculated at 149 steps from our rental’s front door. We played for a few hours, building sand castles, throwing the frisbee, trying the skimboard, and wading out to a sandbar.
Once back at the house, we hopped in the pool and enjoyed some poolside snacks we’d picked up at the Winn-Dixie earlier that week: Croc Bites cheese, crackers, salami, grapes, and baby carrots. Later, John fired up the grill and we ate hot dogs and chips poolside. We ended the evening with a short bike ride to Moo Cow for ice cream cones, then it was showers and a Tuesday-edition family movie night viewing of Zootopia 2, which we all enjoyed. We have very few photos from this day, which we’ll take as a sign of a good time!
Wednesday morning started early. We ate breakfast at home, then drove an hour south to St. Mary’s, the port town for Cumberland Island National Seashore.
Longtime readers might remember that Cumberland holds a special place in our hearts: John and I first visited this barrier island the spring break of our senior year in college. We returned many years later with June and Shep, in 2021, but since Annie had never visited, we decided to tack it onto this trip, too. It’s something of a liminal space for us, shifting effortlessly between past and present.
All rocking our M22 gear! We can’t wait to go back this summer!!
We took the 9:30am ferry over. It was another beautiful day, which made the 45-minute ride through the marshes a delight. Our four hours on the island were spent walking along the beach (we found three sand dollars and a giant blue whelk!), eating our packed picnic lunch beside the Dungeness ruins, and exploring the live oak forest luxuriously draped in Spanish moss. And all along the way, we saw wild horses — more than 20, including some babies.
Though they tell you to stay at least 50 feet away, the horses aren’t shy about coming quite close to visitors, as you can see below :)
We also got to see a sea turtle rescue in progress! This gal was being carted off the island after being found with too many barnacles on her shell. They were taking her to the Georgia Sea Turtle Center, which we’d visited!
Several kids napped on the hourlong drive back to St. Simons, charging us up for a quick bike over to Southern Soul BBQ for dinner.
We were really looking forward to it, as we had biked by the day before and it had smelled so good, but… we were disappointed. However, I think we’re liable for some of the blame — as good North Carolinians, we ordered pulled pork with vinegar sauce, and it was pretty flavorless. Maybe we should have ordered the brisket, or their signature sweet sauce? However, the coleslaw and potato salad were also pretty flavorless, so I don’t think the blame rests solely with us.
We biked home, stopping by St. Simons Sweets for ice cream cones before an evening dip in the pool and showers before turning on Survivor.
As our last full day, we had kept Thursday’s itinerary purposefully open so that we could revisit favorites from earlier in the week if we wanted. We started with breakfast at Palm Coast, which ended up being everyone’s favorite breakfast spot. (We were seated right away, which probably helped!) Then we biked our way over to the World War II Home Front Museum.
Housed in the original Coast Guard station for St. Simons Island, it’s operated by the same group as the lighthouse museum, the Coastal Georgia Historical Society. Both of these museums were beautiful, impressive, and really well done — they must have some generous benefactors!
The kids truly enjoyed the Home Front Museum. You know how sometimes you go to a museum and the technology is pretty cruddy? This was not that. Everything was custom, responsive, clever, and so well done. We completed radar training, navigated airships, learned to tie knots, built Liberty ships, sent code, and more. We spent about two hours at the museum before biking over to lunch at Fiddler’s, which won top marks from all of us for vibes. Our food was great, too!
And then we were off for a final beach visit. It started out great: Annie and I sculpted a mermaid in the sand, June and Shep worked on a sand barrier at the shoreline, and John perfected his skim boarding technique. Inspired by his progress, I gave it a few more goes… only to crumple to the sand in pain on my third try. To make a long story short, the pain worsened throughout the afternoon and evening (including through dinner at Coastal Kitchen, which was otherwise very nice) – I even made John carry me out to the car because I didn’t feel I could walk on it. After ice, elevation, pain meds, and a night of sleep, I was feeling much better in the morning. We still went straight to the urgent care orthopedic clinic once back in Raleigh, where they confirmed I had a midfoot sprain (but thankfully no fracture!).
A week later, I am out of my boot, mostly pain-free, and almost walking normally. I trust the happy memories from our trip will far outlast the hiccup at the end :)
One more tiny detail to share! Throughout the week we worked on a Magic Puzzle, and it was the perfect interstitial activity. We did one for the first time last spring break after borrowing it from my sister and liked it so much we decided to buy a different one and bring it along. They’re really well done, complete with intricate illustrations, novelty-shape pieces, and a shape-shifting surprise at the end. Highly recommend!
As always, thank you for letting me share! I’m happy to answer any questions you might have about St. Simons in the comments!
