The Lodge at Little St. Simons Island, Georgia All-Inclusive | Reviewed in 2025

What to Do

The Lodge at Little St. Simons Island is among Georgia’s highest-priority coastal conservation areas. To maintain the Island’s natural habitats and populations of rare and threatened wildlife, the owners of Little St. Simons Island donated a conservation easement in 2015 to The Nature Conservancy. This easement ensures that preservation efforts protecting the Island’s natural beauty and ecological integrity will be permanent.

Every day the list of activities can change as they are subject to the tides, wind, temperature, season, and what the wildlife is doing. During breakfast and lunch each day, a naturalist will come into the dining room and talk about the activities for the day. Guided excursions are offered twice daily. You can choose what you want to do based on your interests. Typical naturalist-led activities include hiking, birding, seine netting, beachcombing, and open-air truck excursions. But there are occasions where the excursions are as unique as the guests visiting, like jam-making, making fish-print t-shirts, oyster roasting, fly fishing, and even learning about turtle conservation and sharks.

Being on an island, you can expect to have numerous water activities, like kayaking, fishing, surf fishing, seine fishing, swimming in the ocean, and plenty of opportunities for beachcombing. A saltwater junior Olympic swimming pool is available for those who don’t want to go into the ocean. The pool is heated by the sun, so be prepared for the temperature of the water to fluctuate.

There are 26 miles of hiking trails on the island where you can encounter all sorts of wildlife, from Snowy Egrets, Storks, Spoonbills, and Herons, to alligators, lizards, frogs, armadillos, snakes, and many other smaller reptiles. If you want to ride the trails, the lodge also offers bicycles. They provide bug spray and sunscreen for the excursions, but if you plan to explore the island, you should bring a long sleeve shirt, long pants, and closed-toed shoes.

Located on the Atlantic Migratory Flyway, Little St. Simons Island is a prized paradise for avid and casual bird watchers, where you can spot more than 250 species. Grab your binoculars and head out with a map of the bird-spotting hotspots like Norm’s Pond and the beach, which isn’t crowded with people; instead, it’s filled with gulls, pelicans, Wilson’s Plovers, and little crabs. Or join a naturalist-led birding excursion to the freshwater ponds, remote marshes, old-growth forests, expansive mudflats, or undeveloped beaches in search of one-of-a-kind birding experiences.

What to Eat & Drink

Most meals, breakfast, lunch, hors d’oeuvres, dinner, and assorted snacks are served in the lodge. Meals are casual and family-style, and they work hard to accommodate dietary preferences.

In nice weather, they occasionally serve a picnic lunch outside. You can expect a varied menu from local farmers, fresh seafood from local fishermen, and citrus and herbs that grow in their island garden and orchard. Between Island excursions and delightful meals, you can stroll through the Island’s gardens, join a garden tour, help harvest, and even immerse yourself in agricultural history.

Room Guide

The Lodge at St. Simons Island can only house 32 overnight guests. The accommodations range from individual lodge rooms to six historic cottages.

Hunting Lodge: The hunting lodge has two individual rooms adjacent to the Island Museum. The lodge rooms have warm wood furnishings, comfortable amenities, and private bathrooms. For those staying in the lodge, you can enjoy the living room area, which is open to all guests, and it might feel like you have the lodge to yourself in the late evening.

Cottages: Each of the six historic cottages feature amenities to make you feel at home in the wild landscapes on the island, especially surrounded by live oak trees. You can enjoy views of the marshes or gardens and epic sunsets from screened-in porches. The cottages have one-, two-, three-, and four-bedroom options, a living room with a fireplace, modern-day amenities, and plenty of space for your family to enjoy. It will feel like stepping back in time when families used to sit out on their porches after dinner to discuss what they did that day.

Entire Island: The third option is to rent the entire island, which you can do for family reunions, non-traditional weddings, and corporate retreats. This is the ultimate way to experience Little St. Simons Island while reconnecting with friends, family, and colleagues. With the Full Island Rental, you can use all 16 guest rooms for up to 32 guests.

Special Experiences

On Little St. Simons Island, they practice catch-and-release fishing. However, if you want to keep any of your catches, you may keep one fish (within legal size limits) per person daily. And you can have it prepared by the kitchen staff for your evening dinner. For those looking for a bigger fishing excursion than standing on the bank of a tidal creek or the beach, you can schedule a guided, boat-based fishing trip with a local guide for an additional fee.

Bird watchers can visit all year long for special birding experiences. Visit in the winter to see the Bald Eagles Nesting. During the Spring migration, the songbirds, Northern Parulas, and Yellow-throated Warblers sing around the lodge. In the summer, the must-see event is the grouping of baby herons and egrets at Norm’s Pond. During October, butterflies, like the Gulf Fritillaries, Long-tailed Skippers, and Monarchs, can be seen in the maritime meadows.

You will be amazed at the number of birds you will see at this bird sanctuary island throughout the year, making the Lodge at Little St. Simons Island the perfect island getaway.

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