Biking St. Simons Part 1: Day 6

The Maritime Museum on St. Simons Island

My RIDE!!!!

Biking St. Simons Part 1

Description: On first, full day on St. Simons Island in Georgia, our professor, Dr. Claire Deal, took the group on a biking tour of the south end of the island. We saw the St. Simons Lighthouse and Museum, the Maritime Museum (which I will explain later in greater detail), and Epworth By The Sea which is a Methodist Conference Center started by John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. My favorite site was definitely the Maritime Museum at East Beach. The Maritime Museum was originally a U.S. Coast Guard station when the water was literally ten feet from the door step. However, the beach slowly began to stretch out further and further and the U.S. Coast Guard Station was moved to Brunswick, GA. The Maritime Museum is now a museum, obviously, but the museum not only displays facts and tools used by the U.S. Coast Guard when it was stationed there, it also tells visitors about St. Simons Island’s ecology and archeology discoveries as well.

Reflection: While on this 8 to 10 mile bike ride around the south end of St. Simons Island, I learned that I need to bike more often. First, biking is a great source of exercise for the muscles in your legs. Second, biking is a great opportunity to get some fresh air and have fun at the same time. Third, when biking, which is a lot faster than being on foot, you can go and see site seeing where everyone can go and to places only people on foot or bike can go to. Having a bike while on St. Simons allows me to travel to any of the sites I saw on the bike tour if I want to. I can research and explore those sites more if I choose and having the ability to continue researching or exploring a site after having been there the first time can totally change your entire perspective.

Analysis: The Maritime Museum is important to St. Simons Island because during the station operation days, this station was not only a line of defense for the island, but also the search and rescue team’s home. The search and rescue team is pretty self-explanatory but what they do is they go out to sea and look for lost sailors and boats. The Maritime Museum is also important to the island because it preserves the history of the Coast Guard on St. Simons Island as well as inform tourist and maybe even locals about the ecology of the island. The building that holds the museum is an artifact all its own. If the walls in the Maritime Museum could talk, oh what stories they could tell. Overall, the Maritime Museum is a great tool to display the history of the U.S. Coast Guard on St. Simons Island as well as the ecology that the island displays.