It’s Friday morning around 10 am and there are more gnats than people buzzing around St. Mary’s Howard Gilman Memorial Waterfront Park.
The weather can’t make up its mind to be hot or chilly and the sun is equally fickle, popping in and out of the cotton batting blanket of gray and white clouds.
People wandering into St. Mary’s Visitor Center are asking, “When is Oprah coming?”
“Oprah is coming?” we ask.
How did we not know about this?
St. Mary’s Georgia is only about a 2 ½ hour drive from Savannah, about 114 miles to the south on I-95 and not far from the border of Georgia and Florida. Just as you cross over the river from Savannah to South Carolina, you can cross over the St. Mary’s River into Florida. That strange U shaped loop at the bottom of Georgia, which helps us so easily identify it on a national map is actually formed by the St. Mary’s River, but back to Oprah, right?
We are told that on Sunday night, Oprah and her TV station, OWN, will be filming at the park in the B-2 Stealth Bomber shaped amphitheater at the far end of the park.
Crews are dragging out scaffolding , lights and cameras, and are talking with a group of Navy men while a city worker replaces the old worn gray brown pine bark with new fresh red brown bark. The fountain has been scrubbed clean and hoses line the sidewalks that are gleaming white in the sun.
Oprah knows how to command an audience and St. Mary’s and Kingsland will certainly benefit from all the attention.
Lovetown USA is a reality TV show, which producers define as a “social experiment” and “documentary”. It will follow eight single men and women over 30 days as they search for their one true love in the community of Camden County.
A team of two matchmakers, Kailen Rosenberg and Paul Carrick Brunson, will help the singles find love. The eight hour series of episodes is scheduled to appear on OWN TV sometimes this summer.
The event begins Sunday night, Feburary 12th at the Howard Gilman Memorial Waterfront Park in St. Mary's off Highway 40 East.
"A community choir from Kingsland will perform," said tourism director Tonya Rosado. One of its selections will be an original song written by a Camden County resident about Lovetown. The event is scheduled to be a pep rally for the community to get them excited about the event, as if they needed to be enticed to be excited!
Locals are encouraged to come out on Sunday as the film crew will be filming, but if you hope to get interviewed for the show, don’t wear brand name clothing. Apparently the crew will only talk to those is non-branded clothing.
Participants for the event need to be at the park by 12:30 p.m. The event is scheduled to go on through 5 pm. For more information visit: visitkingsland.com/lovetown .
There is no guarantee you will be filmed and if you are, you may have to sign a waiver allowing them to use the video clip. You are encouraged to bring homemade signs, especially having to do with Love, but be tasteful about it!
The show will focus on random acts of kindness and the goo that comes from helping each other. Crews plan to film at St. Mary’s Mardi Gras Festival on Saturday, Feb. 18, and at Starry Nights on Thursday, Feb. 23.
Film crews were out Friday, February 10, in Veteran’s Memorial Park in Kingsland interviewing people by the rail road tracks.
If Oprah and match making are not your style, check out the many historic homes in the area, belly up to the bar with local sailors from the submarine base, catch a ferry to Cumberland Island to hike the beaches for a day, watch feral horses at play, dine at some really good seafood restaurants or camp along the Crooked River and hike the nature trails at the State Park. It’s a fun day trip and places you just miles from Georgia and Florida beaches, Jacksonville Zoo, Amelia Island and Okeefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, also known as the alligator swamp, where you can walk on gravel sidewalks with live untamed gators less than 20 feet away and take a boat tour and get out and walk on water, or rather on peat that has built up a platform on the water, stable enough to walk on, but thin enough to allow you to feel the water shifting under you feet, with alligators waiting in case you fall in! Forget Oprah, that’s my kind of adventure!!!
For those who like to shop, there are a few unique shops around St. Mary’s as well as a consignment shop, Goodwill and Salvation Army stores, though not much else. St. Mary’s is devoid of Walmart and the closest retail chain is the Big K (Kmart) in Kingsland.
Whether you go to see Oprah and possibly make it on film, or to watch the wildlife or hang out on the wild side at the bars at night talking to sailors, it’s a nice little trip to get out of town and see something different.
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