I visited Jekyll Island, Georgia this past February and found it to be a mysterious and inspiring place along the Golden Isles of the Georgia barrier islands.  It has quite the history and an incredible Driftwood Beach which should be on everyone’s bucket list.  I was on my maiden voyage with my RV, Abeona, and we were on our way home from Florida. We camped for a week at the campground on the northern end of the island. 

I didn’t have a tow vehicle or a bike with me on the trip, so being within walking distance of the beach was a high priority (I didn’t want to pack up everything to go see the sunrise). The Jekyll Island Campground is the only campground on the island and I had no idea that it was just a mile from Driftwood Beach when I booked the campsite.  Imagine my surprise when I found that the beach was an easy walk each morning to photograph the sunrise. Serendipity. 

After arriving at my campsite, I decided to venture out to the beach during the daylight so that there wouldn’t be any surprises when I walked to the beach in the morning for sunrise. Arriving at around 4 PM on a Saturday afternoon after the mile walk to Driftwood Beach, I was astonished by how many cars were there and therefore, people on the beach.  This is not an umbrella and beach towel type of beach.  This is a photographer’s (re Instagram) Mecca. It also happened to be high tide. 

Driftwood Beach is a maritime forest that has been slowly overtaken by the sea.  There are hundreds of trees standing, fallen, eroded and sometime petrified, covered in barnacles on the beach. They are all driftwood, just most are full size trees as driftwood. Some stand as sentinels at attention with no branches, others are on their sides with their root structure solidified in an intricate web. Some look like they are trees on stilts with roots that grew long and straight in order to stay above the salt water.  It is mesmerizing to walk along the several hundred yards of what looks like a waste land of gray figures strewn haphazardly along the beach. 

The trees of Driftwood Beach stay on the beach because it’s very shallow for hundreds of yards off shore.  The waves are never high enough to pull them out.  In fact, when I first arrived, I thought I was in a bay because the water was so tranquil. Due to the shallowness, the trees over the last century have stayed where they have fallen. 

Jekyll island is a state owned and maintained island.  This means there aren’t any big resorts or towers along the beach. There were plenty of photographers each sunrise.  This was quite the contrast from when I recently stayed at a North Carolina barrier island of Ocracoke, where I was the sole person on the beach at sunrise.  Each morning at Driftwood Beach there was a minimum of twenty photographers each time I went out. Most with chairs and tripods, patiently waiting for that perfect shot as the sun slipped above the horizon. 

The real key to sunrise on Driftwood Beach is to know where the tide is and whether or not there will be clouds.  Some clouds are magical; when it’s fogged in, not so much.  If the water was high enough there were pools around some of the fallen trees making for a terrific reflection or you could capture the sun “caught” amongst the branches of the trees.  I had a ton of fun wandering up and down the beach looking for the magical combination of sun, tree, waves and cloud.  

It all seems so mysterious.  Like you are walking amongst fallen statues after some catastrophe. Like some civilization left these corpses behind.  The shape, the beauty and the serendipity of light, water and wood was amazing.