Island Adventures

I’ve been visiting Cumberland Island for the last few years in October (1, 2, 3, 4). However, with the government shutdown I had to delay it. December was definitely different from October. It was colder (and I wasn’t quite prepared for early morning temperatures) but also much less crowded (which I liked). The campgrounds were maybe one-third full with fewer day trip people. Matter of fact, the ferry doesn’t run two days a week so us campers pretty much had the island to itself.

Perhaps it was because there were so few people, but everyone seemed so friendly. We exchanged stories of animal sightings and “secret” places to visit. I learned where to find fossil shark’s teeth though I found more fossil bones than teeth. I even borrowed someone’s phone to text John since their AT&T had service while my Verizon had nothing. A couple campers told me about the orange and grapefruit trees that had ripe fruit in one of the campgrounds. They say they grew from seeds that campers spit out. Online, it seems it might be seeds spread by birds from citrus trees grown as a cash crop. Who knows?

As far as animals, I saw 3 dolphins on the ferry ride.

When you hear a noise in the trees on Cumberland Island, it can be an armadillo, deer, raccoon, squirrel, wild pig, or a wild horse. I saw all of these this week. (They say there are bobcats on the island but I haven’t spoke to anyone who saw one.) I only saw a few deer. Most ran before I could get a good picture.

Armadillos were everywhere. Technically, this is a nine-banded armadillo. See the tail.

In previous visits, I only saw a few wild pigs. On just one hike in the North section of the island, I saw 13 different pigs. All stared at me for awhile then ran away.

The horses may be the most dangerous animals on the island. You are supposed to stay a school bus length from them though they sometimes walk up closer than that. They tell a story about a lady getting too close trying to get a selfie. The horse kicked her and she had to be life-flighted off the island. Then her insurance wouldn’t pay for the helicopter so she had to pay the $20,000 for the helicopter herself. Scary story, but I can’t find that it really happened by googling it, so who knows.

I’ve wanted to see the North section in previous visits but was either unprepared for the hike or the area was closed due to hurricane damage. I finally got there! There is a wonderful campground 10.5 miles north of the ferry landing. The campground is big enough and full of trees so that I didn’t even realize there were people at three other campsites until I wandered along the trail. At any time, horses may wander through the campground.

The sunsets every night was absolutely gorgeous. The pictures can’t convey the colors.

Of course, I had to do some general hiking. Overall, I hiked more than 40 miles over the 5 days. But much of my hiking was in the North section where the trails aren’t very clear. There are no blazes. The poorly marked human trail and the easy to see horse paths cross so I wandered off the official path several times. On one trail I ended up fighting my way through saw palmettos that scratched me. Turns out that a guy I talked to on the ferry back got lost on a trail and was scratched up by saw palmettos too. BTW, this picture was another trail with saw palmettos just on the side.

But I finally got to the church that’s 15 miles from the dock. It was a church, school, and meeting place for the black population that lived here through the 1900’s. It was also the location of the 1996 wedding of John F. Kennedy, Jr. I finally did it!