Cumberland Island, More to See

 Cumberland Island, a place much enjoyed in 2013, invited us to return to see what else was there. Our first day, we spent walking through the beautiful forest of maritime oaks, seeing again the lovely mansion ruins of decadence in a time long past. Herds of horses and wild turkeys continue to make the grounds picturesque. This time we found a fawn hiding beneath a picnic table while the mother fed on grasses that have grown within the mansion walls. Later, we walked the endless dirt road back to the sea camp and dinghy dock.

On the second day, we biked the same road, the only road,  6 miles north, viewing cemeteries, miles of empty beaches, wild pigs, turkeys, more herds of horses,  the ghosts of a golf course, cotton fields now become meadows, and more luscious maritime forests.

 Our final day, we had booked a Lands and Legacies tour, which turned out to be excellent. Mike, the tour guide was a born story teller, who, if he stretched the facts to fit the story, instead gave us a feel for the times and people who lived on the island. We felt we knew the young golf pro, who came with so much hope and died in a horse riding accident within the year. We knew powerful, dictatorial Lucy Carnegie, whose demands for excellence in her workers, if not in her children, shaped the island today. We could see Miss Margaret, the petulant, spoiled wife of Lucy's youngest son George, who lived for a while in Plum Orchard. We attended the wedding of John Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette in the tiny African American chapel, and we were wary of the wild woman botanist, who lives next door to the chapel and who killed a man and hates the tourism on the island.We extensively toured Plum Orchard, the Carnegie mansion built for the youngest Carnegie son, and the saw beautiful vistas at the north end of the island, much farther from the dinghy dock than our bike ride over sand roads in 95 degree heat had allowed us to visit.