Frederica River and Cumberland Island National Seashore

We spent a beautiful and peaceful night at Frederica River, on which there is a fort built to defend this area against the Spanish and French and English. Once this part of the country became part of the USA it was no longer needed and is now a park.

The next day we made our way to Cumberland Island National Seashore, a lovely and large island once owned by the Greene family (a notable general fight in the revolutionary war under Washington) then the Carnegie family and finally the USA.

This island has beaches, swamp, the ruins of the Greene/Carnegie mansion, wild horses, armadillos, wild hogs, turkeys, deer. We got to the northern end of the island and anchored in Brickhill River at the Plum Orchard mansion around 1. We went ashore to go to the beach around 2:30. Not having a map we allowed our instincts to lead the way. We walked on the dirt roads, over Bones bridge (we named it this because of the deer and fish bones in the mud next to the bridge), on a little path through the woods (here we saw an armadillo and felt so thankful for the sighting.....until we saw maybe 20 more!), on an even smaller path through the swamp, and yet a smaller one, involving bushwhacking, through more forest! After 1 1/2 hours of walking and no more beach than the sound of it in the distance we were forced to turn back. All in all we think we walked close to 6 miles and never found the beach!! We all said at dinner that night that it was okay because the walk was so fun and so beautiful and so interesting in itself!

The kids found lots of cool stuff, skulls and dragonflies!

The wild horses are not afraid of you but can get nasty if you get too close.

We've seen so many sunsets and sunrises this trip each one amazes us with its beauty.

The River at Bones Bridge.

Charles' starfish

The next day we moved to the other end of the island closer to the ruins and the beach. We spent the whole day exploring the beaches, walking amongst the dunes (on designated paths), we saw the ruins and learned a lot about the island in a little museum. We also found some weird stuff on the beach and brought it back to the ranger station and we all determined that it might be ambergris ( a substance that is produced by sperm whales they think to protect the stomach from squid beaks and was once a coveted material for cosmetics), the kids completed their ranger books and got sworn in as junior rangers and we left without any shark teeth but with lots of great memories!