By SHERRI SMITH BROWN

Georgia > Coastal Georgia > Glynn County > Brunswick

Sailing through Sidney Lanier’s “Marshes of Glynn” is just one of the recreational experiences you can have on a family vacation to Brunswick and the Golden Isles. 

Any time of year is a good time to visit the coastal town of Brunswick and the four Georgia barrier islands that are known as the Golden Isles – St. Simons Island, Little St. Simons Island, Sea Island and Jekyll Island.

Take a Georgia family vacation to Brunswick and the Golden Isles for beaches, kayaking, horseback riding, hiking, biking, deep sea fishing, dolphin cruises, historical tours, golf, camping, dining, shopping, museums, galleries and much, much more.

Below are some of the places you can visit on a trip to Brunswick and the Golden Isles.

• Brunswick’s Old Town Historic District
• Georgia Sea Turtle Center
• Jekyll Island Club Hotel
• King and Prince Resort
• Lodge on Little St. Simons Island
• The Cloister at Sea Island

Links:

• Read more about Brunswick and the Golden Isles.
• Read more about all of Georgia’s major barrier islands.
• See an interactive maps showing the Golden Island and all of Georgia’s major barrier islands.

By SHERRI SMITH BROWN

Mingling with the Royal Court, plus jousting, feasting, and shopping, are all part of the fun at the annual Georgia Renaissance Festival. 

I really enjoy the Georgia Renaissance Festival. In fact, the only bad thing about taking six-year-old Brianna is that I have to do what she wants to do, rather than all the things I want to do!

Once you enter the Festival grounds in Fairburn, you are immediately in a world where it’s natural to address others as “my Lord and my lady” or join in a Maypole dance with the forest fairies. You are part of a 16th-century European country faire where costumed visitors blend right in with the cast of nearly 1,000 costumed revelers and shop owners.

What can you do? Watch acrobats, swashbuckling sword fights, a children’s knighting ceremony, the Nickel Shakespeare Girls, or the Lipizzan Stallions perform dressage. There’s jousting, gypsy storytelling, birds of prey show, and plenty of Renaissance music and revelry. There is something constantly happening on the village greens and on each of the 10 stages scattered throughout the fairgrounds. (more…)

 By SHERRI SMITH BROWN

Lucille Miller shows Brianna a berry scented bath fizzie that dissolves instantly in the bathtub. Lucille makes the fizzies, or bombs, with oils and natural materials. Fizzies come in two different sizes in a number of scents, including peppermint, lime, rose, berry, and lemonade, which was very popular on this particular day. You can email Lucille about her homemade products at lvus@aol.com.

Most every time I visit my son in California, we head to the Hollywood or Studio City Sunday farmer’s markets, but I had never made it just 20 minutes down the road to the City of Newnan’s Market Day on the Square until this past weekend. The first Saturday of every month, this market features handmade, homemade and homegrown items from vendors all over the state, but many are local. Brianna and I took an initial turn around the town square, checking everything out first. Once we decided where we were going to spend our money, we went around again. This was the first market day of the season and a little early for produce from local farmers, but we found a lot of local area vendors selling their homemade products. (more…)

By SHERRI SMITH BROWN

Adopted in 1985 at Babyland General Hospital, Cabbage Patch Kid Nell Nessie resides in Brianna’s playroom, waiting for another brother or sister to join her.

I admit that I’m one of those parents who traveled all the way to the North Georgia mountain town of Cleveland in the mid-1980s and stood in line to adopt a Cabbage Patch Kid for my daughter, Ashley.

Back then, artist Xavier Roberts had been making and adopting his handmade soft sculpture Little People Originals® for about a decade from Babyland General Hospital, a turn-of-the-century medical facility in Cleveland that Roberts had renovated and opened to the public. In 1982, he had decided to license his dolls with a major toy manufacturer to produce toy replicas, changing their name to Cabbage Patch Kids®—a name that would identify the toy dolls as well as the handmade originals.

This is where the trouble began for moms and dads across the country. The “Kids” were so popular that supply simply could not keep up with demand. The Kids flew off toy store shelves. In fact, CPK went on record as the most successful new doll introduction in the history of the toy industry and were featured on the cover of Newsweek in December 1983. It was extremely difficult to even find one—unless you made the trek to Babyland General Hospital. Thank goodness, we at least lived in the state of Georgia. It was just a two-hour drive! (more…)

By SHERRI SMITH BROWN

Exploring rows and rows of produce and other food products at the Dekalb Farmer’s Market can be a fun time for kids. It’s a colorful and busy place with an ethnicity that is interesting and exciting for everyone.

I think the best way for children to learn where their food comes from is a trip to the farm—but if you want to visit a fun and colorful place in the Atlanta area where they can see mounds of fruits and vegetables from all over the world and gaze at every type of fish and seafood imaginable, try the Dekalb Farmer’s Market.

It’s hectic with stockers maneuvering tall rolling shelves filled with produce to load rows and rows of bins with exotic and ethnic fruit and vegetables: eggplant, garlic, beans, peas, mushrooms, tomatoes, plantains, 25lb. bags of carrots, melons, mangoes, blueberries, oranges from Chili and Australia—all brought in several times a week direct from producers.

Kids might not be so interested in the imported cheeses, spices, nuts, sauces, the more than 30 varieties of coffee beans, the olive oils, vinegars, beers and wines—but the octopus and the squid tentacles, tubes and rings will definitely catch their eye. They can also check out fresh conch, crawfish, sardines, smelt, oysters, muscles, shark and marlin, as well as whole red snapper, bass grouper and catfish. There are tanks of live tilapia, Maine lobster and blue crab. Brianna was particularly curious to watch shoppers lift the live crab from the water with prongs. (more…)