Day 303, Monday April 21st Cumberland island tour

Day 303, Monday April 21^st

Fashion statement socks with sandals (still cool out)

Today we wake up to a cloudless morning finally.  It has been a week of rain and dreary and wind, then no wind.  No happy medium on the wind.  Either too much or none!  We have decided to take the ferry over to Cumberland island national park since we have not been successful in exploring this National Park except for a brief stop when we had anchored there in some high winds.

House hunting???

We pack a picnic lunch as we are going to join in on a tour which drives us up to the north end of the park and lasts all day.  The ferry departs at 9, getting to the island at 9:45 and the tour is off by 10:00,   (seems weird to take the ferry when we live on a boat but oh well).  We pile into the van for the tour.  We end up at the back of the 15 passenger van, luckily there are only 11 of us as otherwise it would have been very crowded.  Dawson’s choice would be to hike around the south part of the island, but Julie wants to do the north as we had explored some of the south already.  Also with the weather having been so bad, being in a vehicle sounded like a good idea.

Moss hanging from "live oaks" as they call them

We get a first hand tour of the history of the island and get to see a few of the mansions built in days gone by.  We get an inside tour of one of the mansions which is pretty cool.  We also go to an African settlement church which John F. Kennedy Jr. got married in to avoid the paparazzi.  There is a history of different country ownership and slavery on the island.  Currently it is 90% owned by the park.  There are wild horses and we also see an armadillo, but no alligators are sighted.  The forests are cool with lots of hanging moss and ferns growing on the live oaks as they call them.  These oaks are wider than they are tall and not at all like our Canadian oak trees.

Church JFK jr. got married at (African settlement church)

Julie on Atlantic side of  Cumberland Island

The tour ends at 3:30 so we have time to hike over to the Atlantic beach.  We walk on a boardwalk through the dunes to a hardpacked beach that would be good for driving on.  There are lots of unique shells and sea creatures.  Particularly there are lots of horseshoe crab shells on the beach.  Dawson picks one up and it is still alive so we place it back in the water, but we don’t think it is very healthy.  We have just 1 hour to hike and explore and then catch the ferry back to St. Mary’s where our boat is. 

We are only back about 15 minutes and decide to join the guys for dinner, so are off to a restaurant for dinner.  We have food that should be eaten, but the social aspect of dinner is too much to resist.  After dinner, we have a game of King’s cribbage as usual and then are off to bed.

Cheers

Julie and Dawson

Dawson putting a live horsehoe crab into ocean