American Cruise Lines - Day 13 - Brunswick, GA (Part 1)

We continue our port stops in Georgia by visiting Brunswick, GA. This may also be listed on the itinerary as St. Simons Island and/or Jekyll Island. Ever feel like you've been in three places at once? Today there were four excursion options with one of them offering a morning and an afternoon session. This was also one of the first ports that I saw them offer a paid option just for transportation to town, in this case to St. Simons Island.

Option #1 - 8:30AM - St. Simons Island Exploration - $45 per person. Wheelchair accessible, 1 1/2 hours long (after a 30 minute ride to the Visitor's Center and another 30 minutes back to the ship), activity level 1, cameras permitted, and restrooms available. Enjoy this tour as your spirited guide tells the tales of the island's history. Pass by Fort Frederica, Bloody Marsh, Retreat Plantation, and the beautiful Christ Church. After the tour, there will be 30 minutes to shop and explore on your own.

Option #2 - 8:30AM - St. Simons Island Transportation Only - $15 per person. Basically you ride the bus into town for 30 minutes with the folks on the full tour and then explore on your own. Though the tour information says you can spend 4-8 hours in town, if you want to take the tour bus back, you must return to the Visitor's Center by 11:30AM. There is a notation that most shops in town open at 10AM.

Option #3 - 8:30AM - Sea Turtle Center & Jekyll Island Tram - $50 per person. Wheelchair accessible, scooter accessible, 2 1/2 hours in length, activity level 1, cameras permitted, and restrooms available. The Georgia Sea Turtle Center is a marine turtle rehabilitation, research, and education facility dedicated to providing emergency care to sick and injured sea turtles. Through a docent led program and self-guided exploration, learn about these wonderful creatures, their conservation, rehabilitation, as well as their amazing journey from egg to adulthood. Your excursion continues with a tram tour of the Jekyll Island Historic District. Travel through Millionaire's Village, spanning over 240 acres of extravagant homes and cottages that housed some of the world's wealthiest people. This tour was also held again at 1:30PM.

Option #4 - 2PM - Lady Jane Shrimp Boat - $50 per person. 2 hour tour, activity level 1, cameras permitted, and restrooms available. After a 30 minute bus ride to the Lady Jane Shrimp Boat, you will travel through the scenic Marshes of Glynn where you may see dolphins, seagulls, and pelicans. Help sort shrimp, blue crab, puffer fish, horseshoe crab, skate, amberjack and others while the captain shares stories about a fisherman's experiences on the water.

Bet you can guess which tour I decided was a must do! If you said the Sea Turtle Center, you have been paying attention and thank you for that. What's surprising though is that Dad even suggested we both also sign up for the Lady Jane Shrimp Boat tour - this from the man who acts like any seafood coming into contact with his body is a sin. In order to do both, we selected the 8:30AM Sea Turtle tour.

We woke up to an overcast chilly morning and headed down to breakfast.

To be quick, I went with the routine fried eggs and sausage:

Dad asked our waitress about getting a bagel and lox as they had stopped putting it out on the buffet table. She went back into the kitchen and had the chef prepare a plate of fresh lox for Dad to use. Add a little pile of sliced onions and capers and it's almost like Princess' suite breakfast presentation.

After grabbing our coats and cameras, we headed off the ship to the two waiting buses parked nearby.

We checked in with Ali and boarded the bus in the right of this picture as she directed. Several other cruisers were right behind us doing the same and then splitting off to whichever bus fit their tour choice. Within a few minutes of sitting on the bus waiting for it to fill up, Ali came onboard to announce that we'd all have to switch buses as it was the other bus heading to the Sea Turtle Center. The consensus everyone gathered was that they determined there were more people going on the city tour and needed the slightly bigger bus. They even swapped bus drivers so the two drivers had to take the time to change settings and teach each other about their buses. To make this switch, each bus' occupants filed out and stood in lines next to each other waiting for each bus to finish emptying. As we stood there shivering, someone came up with the hilarious reference to our situation being like two sports teams passing each other in a walk across the field at the end of the game. Once we could start filing onto the proper buses, we all kept the analogy going giving the other line high fives and wishing them "good game" and "good tour." 

The path into the museum/gift shop was lined with personalized memorial bricks:

Once we arrived at the Georgia Sea Turtle Center, we were split into two groups. One group stayed in the museum area while the other went in to the rehabilitation center. When you as a visitor walk into the rehabilitation center, you walk in on a platform lined with benches. From the raised platform, you can see the large tanks dedicated to the turtles currently being cared for and witness the staff doing their work as your guide stands below you by the tanks using a microphone to be heard. This is as far as they let visitors go hence the need to split up our group and take turns being inside. Our guide introduced us to each turtle by explaining what happened to them, how they were named, and what treatments they were receiving. 

The turtle pictured above was given the name Quasimoto because of getting something stuck on his back that caused a hump on his shell. The person who donated to the center got the honor of naming the latest turtle.

This turtle in the next tank over not only was injured by a boat propeller but also had some issues with anxiety and light changes so they had a tarp draped over his tank.

At the far end of the platform, there were two tanks holding baby turtles. They were being housed in tanks with warming lights just like a human baby's incubator in the hospital. These tanks had signs letting you know to inquire in the gift shop on how to adopt a baby turtle. 

The random gems you find when browsing the multitude of pictures from today. "Mom! He's biting me!" My favorite is the look on the turtle in the bottom left corner:

You could also read more information about their current patients on signs along the platform:

I liked how they also had scrapbooks you could browse to see all the past success stories of turtles they'd been able to help and return to the wild:

In between the center and the museum, there was an open pond and a gated enclosure. The open pond held healthy adult turtles and the enclosure had baby turtles. Our guide said no one ever believes them when they say there really are baby turtles inside.

Can you find the adult turtles in the pond?

With our tour of the rehabilitation center over, we were given these strips of paper to take into the museum. We were to follow the life cycle of a turtle by going to each station dedicated to a fact about the turtle and choose from 3-4 machines that stamped an imprint onto your paper. It was by chance whether your visit to this station earned a good or bad outcome and was like a fun scavenger hunt.

My first station visit revealed that my turtle's nest was underneath an artificial light so my poor guy wasn't off to the greatest start in life:

My second station visit revealed that I was a female turtle:

My third station visit revealed that I migrated to the Sargasso Sea so it looks like I'm moving up in life:

What lived on my shell is what I learned at station four:

And lastly, I learned my final result of having lived to be a sub-adult sea turtle:

I'm pretty sure a lot of people would describe me as sub-adult:

There was other informative displays featuring hands on activities within the museum:

One of the coolest parts of the tour was a large window where you could view the center's medical team doing real procedures on the turtles:

We were a little rushed for time by the time I moved on to check out the gift shop which of course was filled with every kind of themed sea creature product from shirts to mugs to jewelry. I picked up another wooden magnet for $7.44 with tax.