Travel (And Birthday) Adventures // Cumberland Island Natl. Seashore

When I was much younger I would spend most of every summer on a tiny island off the coast of Georgia with a variety of cousins, aunts and uncles from my paternal family.  I would chase armadillos (sorry about that my little ones!), hike for hours, take cold rainwater showers, watch wild horses roam, avoid jellyfish stings, get sunburned and bug bit, eat my weight in butter cookies and fried Spam sandwiches, look for sharks teeth, climb oak trees 20x my age and watch sea turtles hatch from their sandy nests.  As you can imagine, Cumberland Island became almost something mythos in my adult life and I always remembered it with a sense of awe.  Fast forward 20+ years and I finally found myself back on the tiny old ferry, The Cumberland Queen, chugging along to that island once again.  All for my birthday...wheeeee!

Before we dive into pictures let me give you some quick facts about the island.  It's over 36000 acres, has a varied and wild history, is home to a number of native species as well as a few invasive, has ruins and important sites/sights, is unlike anywhere else I've ever been and is currently being threatened with some (what I think is sneaky and underhanded) developments.  Go here to read more about the island.  If you are interested about how you can help keep millionaires from destroying the ecosystems then I'll share that at the very end...

Here's to waking up and finding out that the 70 degree weather you'd arrived to the night before had changed to a 40 degree cloudy morning with wind gusts of 25mph.  I was prepared because I always overpack.  Brady was not.  We were both tired thanks in part to the music the saloon played til late in the night.  Yes, we stayed in a hotel that had a saloon that was full of doggies and drunk folk.  That was a first.  But neither one us got seasick so that's a plus!

This picture has been hanging in that spot for over 30 years.  It was there when I first came to the island at the age of 8!

These trees.  These treeees!  I truly miss seeing Spanish Moss.

There are lots of wild horses on Cumberland Island...and lots of horse poop.

The only other person who braved the weather with us was a 72 year old woman named Ruth.  She's on an epic solo road trip adventure that will eventually take her back to Asheville where she'll then move into a retirement home.  As she put it 'I'm ready to simplify and not have to worry about snowshoeing down the mountain anymore.'  Fair enough.  I had the pleasure of spending most of the day with her and listening to her speak of some amazing times.

We saw more wild turkeys that I've ever seen in my life.  I stopped counting after the fifth flock (or rafter, which is what some folks prefer to call a group of these fine feathered friends) of them ran across our path.  These two were fearless and I think I could've reached out and touched them but, of course, I didn't.  Sadly, we didn't see the wild horses til we were on the ferry out.  When I was a kid we would see them regularly and one year they stampeded and trampled our tents into the ground.  That was a day to remember!  Maybe next trip we'll see horses and turkeys together.  *mind blown*

A good many of the structures are slowly going back into the ground.  Salt air, hurricanes and the fact that these building were abandoned for decades (or burned, as in the case of Dungeness in the background) have really taken a toll on them.

After 8 years of exploring the US, eastern Canada, parts of Europe and a smidgen of Iceland, this guy and I know what to expect from each other on trips.  And yet this time Brady really surprised me with how long he kept a cheery attitude in the wind and cold and isolated surroundings.  I don't want to sound like a jerk here but I tend to stay focused and enjoy the outdoors much longer than he does.  Usually by hour 4 he's more than ready to throw in the towel and go read the news with his slippers on and some kitties sitting on his lap while I'm all over in some trees taking notes and photos of random things and not wanting the day to end.  We're different but that's fine and we make it work more often than not.  This trip was around 8 hours from start to finish and since you walk everywhere on the island (there are a few cars for park service employees) and have to pack in water, food, etc, by the time the ferry comes back to pick you up you'll find that you're exhausted but fulfilled.  Brady lasted about 7 1/2 hours which is a new record for him!  He's pictured here at around hour 5 and still had a cute smile going on.

These ruins are what remain of the mansion of Dungeness and it hasn't changed one bit in my absence.  Revolutionary War Hero General Nathanael Greene purchased land on Cumberland Island in 1783. Following his death, his widow Catherine Greene, constructed a four-story tabby home that she named Dungeness. Thomas Carnegie and his wife Lucy began building another Dungeness on the original foundation in 1884. The Carnegie's Dungeness burned in 1959 and today only the ruins remain on the site.

My photo from our visit in January 2017...

Almost the same spot in the early 1900's...

Sea Camp is the tiny campground on the island equipped with rainwater showers, flush toilets and not much else except privacy, beauty and big trees.  I vividly remember climbing around on this one quite often.

The sun came out on our return beach walk but it didn't illuminate any sharks teeth for me.  Dang it!

I was so sad to see my day trip end although Brady was ready to get our airbnb in Brunswick and warm up with a hot shower and an even hotter hot toddy.  Birthday trip = perfect time!

What a country chooses to save is what a country chooses to say about itself.

Mollie Beattie

Director, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Pretty amazing place, right?  How unfortunate that individuals, some of the few who chose not to pass the land over to the park even though everyone expected them to do so eventually, have chosen to try to start development on the island.  As of now they've been granted the first steps of a variance that should NOT have been allowed but there's hope that this will all be shut down.  To develop that area of the island is to mar its natural beauty and begin a slippery slope of allowing land development to slowly destroy the very thing that makes Cumberland Island special.

How can you help?  First, read more about this and form your own opinion.  Hopefully you'll agree with my choice of challenging this situation.  If you do agree that the beginnings of individual development should NOT be permitted then please sign this petition in an effort to help keep Cumberland Island the pristine and wild seashore/island that it is.  You can also email the County Clerk at kberry@co.camden.ga.us these talking points:

• Congress established the Cumberland Island National Seashore, which encompasses the entire island, to preserve this iconic place in its primitive undeveloped state. 
• Consistent with the authorizing legislation, Camden County zoned the inholdings on the island as Conservation/Preservation to ensure that these areas were protected from any development that would destroy their natural and historic character. 
• Tourism is the primary economic engine for St. Marys and other parts of Camden County ($90,320,000 in 2015), and Cumberland Island is at the center of our tourism efforts considering that 60,000 people visit the island each year. 
• The hundreds of commenters, thousands of petition signers, and numerous newspaper articles reveal that people visit and return to Cumberland Island because of its historic and ecological character. 
• The Lumar tract is located in the heart of Cumberland Island immediately adjacent to the Sea Camp campground--the most-visited area of the island; development of the tract could dramatically impact visitors’ Cumberland Island experience. 
• Lumar has not, and cannot, demonstrate that it meets the five criteria required for a hardship variance; in granting the variance, the Planning Commission improperly departed from County zoning requirements that have been in place for years. 
• If the Board of Commissioners upholds this decision, it will fly in the face of the work done to market Camden County as progressive, environmentally aware, and financially strong.
• All of this information and more can be found over at www.instagram.com/coastal.south/

If you made it all the way to the end of this post then thank you.  For being a reader and for caring.  :)