Cumberland Island...a day of nature

July 7
We spent today on Cumberland Island which is Georgia's largest and southernmost barrier island. Pristine maritime forests, undeveloped beaches and wide marshes whisper the stories of both man and nature. Cumberland Island is also home to over 9,800 acres of National Park designated Wilderness.In the 1880s  Thomas Carnegie, brother of Andrew Carnegie and his wife Lucy bought land on Cumberland for a winter retreat. In 1884, they began building a mansion on the site of Dungeness, though Carnegie never lived to see its completion. Lucy and their nine children continued to live on the island, naming their mansion Dungeness after that of Greene. Dungeness was designed as a 59-room Scottish castle. They also built pools, a golf course, and 40 smaller buildings to house the 200 servants who worked at the mansion. The last time Dungeness was used was for the 1929 wedding of a Carnegie daughter.the family left the island and kept the mansion vacant. It burned in a 1959 fire. . Today, the ruins of the mansion remain on the southern end of the island. The Carnegie family owned 90% of the island.Lucy Carnegie had additional estates built on the island for her children. In the 1890s, The First African Baptist Church, established in The Settlement in 1893, was rebuilt in the 1930s. It is one of the few remaining structures of this community.
We spent an enjoyable day on Cumberland Island, we ferried over which gave Ryan a full day of "Pisserdom" as it was hot, humid and sandy, and the Captain of the ferry did not drive to the Game Warden's standards.

Upon our return from the nature we headed to enjoy our first night of the bar scene in St. Mary's, this evening's bartender, Ann and her husband are building an 80ft sailboat and had actually spent the last few months on the Charleston Harbour so we had much to chat about. Locals at the bar were complaining about building regulations but relieved that "none of those modular built homes, like are allowed on the South Carolina Coast were allowed here".
I did find a wonderful  bumper sticker that  would be a good addition to Verti....
"Making love to a younger man is great though it may be fatal, if he dies, he dies". We are heading out first thing in the morning to St. Augustine for a Historical Walking Tour and so that Ryan will have an opportunity for more "Pisserdom", something he revels in.