Cumberland Island

At the most south-eastern tip of Georgia is a small city. St. Mary’s is a lovely place. Its downtown has wide boulevards, waterfront parks, and slow traffic. In fact, traffic is almost non-existent downtown, except for twice a day. Rush hour in this lazy southern town is not when people go to and from work, but when people are going to and coming from Cumberland Island.

When we made our plans to go north, heading home, we planned to do it very, very slowly. So the first stop after leaving Florida just had to be immediately across the border in southern Georgia.

There is a nice state park there, Crooked River State Park, where we reserved a spot. We chose it for its paddling river as well as its southern location.

St. Mary’s was a bonus. We walked the town, griped about the fact that all the stores and most of the restaurants were closed on Mondays – every Monday, such as small towns do – and sauntered through the old cemetery from Civil War days.

We even paid the outrageous sum of $4 each to get a personal tour of an antebellum house.

But the best part was learning about Cumberland Island.

Downtown on the waterfront is a National Park Service building. It has information and maps and camping permits if you want to camp at the wilderness sites on the island. You could take your own boat over if you had one, but most people pay to take the ferry that’s right outside the Parks building. It goes to the island twice a day, and the most popular thing to do is catch the early 9am trip and come back on the last boat at 4:30pm.

What’s on Cumberland Island, you ask? Amazing fine sand beaches, mansion ruins, and wild horses. The island is 15 miles long and not very wide. There's one road that runs the length of the island, but it is not paved. Very few vehicles drive along this road, mostly just one tour van each day and the odd National Park Service truck. Bicycles can be rented at the island dock, but we brought our own.

Starting at the southern end, we went around the ruins of a Carnegie mansion that burned in the early 1900’s. What’s left of the house is still impressive.















A wide sloping lawn lies between the house and the waterfront, with a fountain and statuary.

That’s where we saw the horses first. Some were grazing in the marshes along the water, and one was enjoying that lush lawn grass.

We had two potential destinations from there. There is an intact mansion about 8 miles north of the ruins, and they do tours every hour. If we didn’t feel we could reach the house in time for a tour, the alternate stop was a closer beachside picnic. The deadline was to be back in time for the last ferry. They don’t wait for tardy visitors, and a missed boat means an unplanned overnight stay with no shelter or food.

But surely an 8 mile bicycle ride wouldn’t take that long, since we did have a road to follow. A nicely packed sand road... as long as you stay in the ruts and away from the deep sand in the middle and along the edges.

Which is harder than you think.

Needless to say, we ended up choosing the beach picnic. It did involve pushing our bikes over some sand dunes, but once we got there, the beach was gorgeous!

After our lunch, we decided to try cycling down the hard packed beach sand. It was amazingly easy, and for 3 miles we had the beach entirely to ourselves!

Or, almost to ourselves.

We almost missed seeing this horse nibbling at the sea grasses on the dunes as we biked by.

I swear this guy was wearing camouflage.

Finding it easier than riding on the road, we continued down the beach until we got back to the ferry crossing and caught the boat back to the mainland and the lovely city of St. Mary’s.

We love exploring hidden corners.

W