Page 43 - Travel Leisure - USA (February 2020)

from saw palmettos, and attuned my ear to the One evening, just before sunset, we drove to It’s a croquet kind
scrabbling shout of an angry kingfisher. Eléonore Driftwood Beach, where bleached skeletons of of day on the lawn
of the Jekyll Island
and I borrowed bikes and pedaled on some of enormous oak trees litter the shore. A group of kids
Club Resort.
the 20 miles of trails laid over the former carriage chased one another, leaping over fallen trunks, and
paths. Riding in silence past dunes and marshes, my a young Mennonite couple walked at the water’s
senses felt heightened. When we were still, I heard edge, his pants rolled up, the hem of her long skirt
the tide receding over the mudflats, fizzing like Pop ringed with saltwater. I thought of the steel barons
Rocks. Life was everywhere: rabbits on the grass, and railroad tycoons who once made this their
bald eagles overhead, alligators floating listlessly in playground. Perhaps, between the formal balls and
Horton Pond. In the forest, we rounded a bend and political machinations, they, too, made time to
found a pair of white-tailed deer blocking our path, walk along the sand under an orange-painted sky,
so close I could see the wet sheen of their noses. hearing only laughter and the sea.

T+L A-LIST INTEL
“Loh Ba Kao Bay, on Thailand’s Phi Phi Island, is far from the bustle of Phuket. Tall green palm trees front the
beautiful cove, while the dramatic hillsides make you feel like you’re in paradise.”
— HONEYMOON SPECIALIST JIM AUGERINOS (JIM@PERFECTHONEYMOONS.COM)

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