Cumberland Island is an island in northeast Georgia that is mostly national park and has a small percentage owned by the descendants of the Carnegies and a few Rockefellers. It is also famous as the place where John Kennedy, Jr. got married secretly. If you remember, he told his guests to meet him somewhere and then spirited them away to a secret location to avoid the press, and it mostly worked.
Anyway, this time of year, there are only two ferries per day that go to the island, and I did not want to spend the entire day there waiting for the return ferry, so I decided to take the 1.5 hour boat tour from Fernandina Beach. This is leaving the town with one of the two paper plants in distance.
This is one of the cruise ships from American Cruises that goes up and down the Florida inland passage in Florida.
This is the second paper plant, but this one is north of the town and makes mostly cardboard boxes.
And one of the few remaining shrimp boats.
This is the national park ferry dock. The ferry takes only passengers, not vehicles of any sort, and certainly not motorhomes!
This is the passage into Cumberland Sound. Florida is to the south and Georgia to the north.
One of the wild horses on the island.
And a flock of white pelicans. These birds are much larger than the native brown pelicans and spend part of the year elsewhere, migrating down for the winter.
We were lucky to be taking our tour during low tide and got to see a couple of families of dolphins hunting fish in groups and chasing them to very shallow water where they could not escape easily, making the fish an easy meal. Check out this video -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMunISHMHGg&feature=youtu.be
North and west of Cumberland Island, on the mainland of Georgia, is Kings Island Submarine Base. You can occasionally see Naval resupply ships coming in and out of Cumberland Sound past the campground where I was staying. The boat captain told us that when the submarines themselves come in or out, they cannot submerge, so they are accompanied by a lot of military helicopters and security vessels for protection.
Returning to the town of Fernandina Beach.
A couple of brown pelicans waiting for a handout of fish.
I treated myself to lunch at the restaurant shown here, and then headed back to my motorhome which was parked in the marina parking lot.
I have been here before and some of these photos are probably repeats, but it is a lovely place to spend a few days in Florida. Some people consider it too cold here, but compared to anything north, it is wonderful. And the best part is that it is a lot less crowded than most other parts of Florida.
The small mostly Victorian town on the island is Fernandina Beach. There are the usual touristy places, but lots of very nice shops and excellent restaurants of all sorts. It is the kind of place I might like to live in. I really should have taken more photos because there are some buildings in town with some lovely Victorian architecture.
This is the old train station, now the visitor's center, with a bronze of the man who built the first railroad that went east from the Atlantic Ocean west to the Gulf in Florida.
Road builders wisely built around this ancient live oak, and luckily, I had a rental car, not my motorhome, or it would have been very difficult to navigate down this street!
I spent a couple of hours in the town museum. It used to be a jail, hence this room.
Had a very nice lunch at a harbor-side restaurant. I don't eat out very often, so this was a treat.
The area has a very large deep harbor and container ships come in to pick up paper from the two mills in town.
For a lot of reasons, this is one of my favorite state parks in Florida. First, it has only a few RV sites. Second, it is on the ocean and has almost a mile of private beach. It also has a bath house with a washer and dryer, which I have already put to use running three loads of clothing though it.
But mostly, this state park has a gorgeous live oak canopy drive. Live oaks got their name because they keep their leaves all year, and so look "live" in the winter when other trees look dead. They also are huge trees with branches that spread out much farther than the trees are tall. Plus, they can live hundreds of years. Here is the entrance to Fort Clinch State Park.
I was going to follow this taller motorhome, but ended up going slower so I could take photos. And I figured he was getting through easily anyway.
Love the Spanish moss hanging from the trees! Really makes you realize you are in the true south.
The RV sites are in the dune area very close to the beach. If the dunes had not grown over the past three years since I was last here, I would be able to head in and see the Cumberland Sound and Georgia on the other side. Dunes are higher than before, unfortunately, so I backed in so I could watch other campers.
Down past the fence, next to the beige motorhome, is the entrance to the beach.
They provide a boardwalk to the beach so you do not walk on the dunes and destroy the vegetation that holds the dunes in place. Dunes protect the coast from hurricanes, so they are prized.
This is a prickly pear cactus with fruit.
And some federally protected sea oats. Big fine for picking sea oats!
And the Atlantic Ocean!
The ripples on the beach indicate that there has been some strong winds.
And hardly anyone walking on the beach!
A big jelly. Not sure what kind this one is, but it was about 6" in diameter. (Just looked it up. It is a cannonball or cabbagehead jelly.
This is a commercial shrimping boat with the nets being pulled up. Check out the birds that are hanging around for scraps.
The boat was heeled over as it turned and pulled its nets up before heading for port.
The boat looks a lot smaller without its big nets out.
