We drove into the town of St. Marys (sic -- I don't know why there's no apostrophe) this morning and took a 45-minute ferry ride to Cumberland Island, Georgia's largest and southernmost barrier island, which is undeveloped and protected by the National Park Service. There are a few primitive campgrounds on the island, and my original plan involved loading up backpacks with our gear and hiking in for a night or two. But I read accounts written by by campers complaining of heat and swarms of mosquitoes, so I let that idea kind of wither. Anyway, it's a good thing, I guess, since we are now gearless.
By all accounts, though, Cumberland Island is a must-see for birders and hikers and generally outdoorsy people. The 20-mile-long island includes vast untouched stretches of sandy beach, saltwater marshes teeming with wildlife, dense maritime forest, scrubby sand dunes, and miles and miles of trails.
In the 1800s, most of the island was owned by members of the Carnegie family, who built at least eight lavish mansions up and down the island. Today, one of those mansions, called Greyfield, remains as a private inn. The rest are in ruins. The Carnegies donated land to the National Park Foundation in the 1970s.
In the 1890s, a village known as The Settlement was established on the north end of the island for African American workers. The First African Baptist Church, built in 1893, still stands there, though I have no idea how someone would make the trip up there to visit it. On a bicycle, perhaps.
The ferry deposited us at the southern end of the island, and that's where we stayed. We hiked about two miles through a thick jungle of Live Oaks and Saw Palmettos until we came upon the vine-draped ruins of Dungeness mansion, one of the Carnegie homes, looming over the landscape like something out of a surreal painting. From there, we cut across the dunes to the beach, where we picnicked, played in the surf and kept an eye out for local wildlife. Then we walked north along the beach and cut back through the woods to the pier where we boarded the boat for the mainland.
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| UNO on the ferry, of course. |
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| Local wildlife -- a live horseshoe crab. |
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| More local wildlife -- members of the wild herd that populates the island. |
This evening, Keith stayed back with Charlie and Clare and watched the last game of the NBA finals while I took Natalie into town to see "The Fault in our Stars," a movie that she's been asking to see since it was released a couple of weeks ago. She has already read and re-read and re-re-read the book, a real tearjerker about two teenagers who are battling cancer. This may be a little off the travel theme of our blog, but I will say that Natalie, in her awkward teenagery way, asked me to sit two rows away from her, so that she could cry in private. Sigh.
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