Driftwood Beach/Jekyll Island

Georgia
Not far from the new-hotel construction zone in the middle of Jekyll Island, this secret shore on the northern tip offers solitude and haunting beauty. Ghostly tree-skeletons rise from the sand, overlooking the St. Simons lighthouse across the St. Simons Sound. These trees died from erosion that has taken place over the last hundred to two hundred years.

You can ride horses on this beach―Three Oaks Carriage Company, run out of the historic Jekyll Island Club Hotel, leads treks across Driftwood Beach. Vanderbilts and Rockefellers once summered at the club and on these beaches, taking pleasure in the same thing that draws visitors today―a peace interrupted only by terns skittering along the water’s edge or an occasional ship humming in and out of port. jekyllisland.com