Cumberland Island National Seashore

First, sorry for the lack of a creative title today.

We spent all day at Cumberland Island National Seashore today, so this won't be too long of a blog.  We took the 9:00 ferry from St. Mary's over to Dungeness on Cumberland Island.  Dungeness is actually the ruins of a Carnegie mansion that burned down in 1959.  The mansion had been vacant for a few years before that though.  Based on the ruins, the 40-room mansion looked like it was beautiful back in the day.  It doesn't hurt that it's near the water with a lot of trees covered in Spanish moss too. For some reason, that look is so pretty to me!  While we were at the ruins, we saw several wild horses too.

We weren't able to get off the island until the 2:45 ferry so we ended up with a lot of time to kill after exploring the ruins.  We thought ahead and wore our bathing suits so we could spend time at the beach before catching the ferry.  I am so glad we did this, because it is extremely hot and humid down south!  We had about a mile long hike to get from Dungeness to the beach and it took us forever to finish that hike because of the heat.  Before going to the beach, we went to the nearby ranger station to eat lunch and we were joined by a young cardinal on our picnic table who was very interested in our lunch.  This bird was so close to us and would not leave us alone, so it made me think it was used to getting fed.  It was cute at first until its dad deposited a little something on Steve's head from the tree above us, so we moved to the porch of the ranger station where both birds followed us and landed on our chairs to beg for food.  It was cute at first, but then got really annoying after they followed us.  Seriously people, don't feed the wildlife, no matter how cute they are!

After lunch, we headed to the beach where we got in the water to cool off, only the water was about 84 degrees.  So while it was easy to get into the water, it was only refreshing when a breeze came through.  We stayed at the beach about an hour and then headed to the campground showers to change.  While I was changing, I noticed a tiny frog in the corner of the shower stall.  I did notice when I got in the shower stall that it didn't appear buggy like most campground showers...now I know why!  ;-) On our way back to the ferry dock, we also ran into an armadillo, which we were very excited to see!

We ended the evening with dinner and beer in small glasses at Engine 15 Brewing in Jacksonville Beach.  Very good food and beers - the Belgian Golden was so yummy!