Wild horses!

5 Nov 09--We took the ferry to the Cumberland Island National Seashore today, a 17 mile long island about 45 minutes off the coast of Georgia.

This is a couple Cathy befriended on the ferry who were originally from New York, but transplantedto MyrtleBeach, South Carolina. They were pretty cool.



This island was fought over by the Spanish, French and Brits, but ultimately came to be 90% owned by Thomas and Lucy Carnegie (Thomas was the younger brother and partner of steel-magnate Andrew Carnegie.) The ice house is now a small museum.

The Carnegies had 9 children, and as they got older the parents built homes for them on the island. They ultimately had over 40 buildings and a staff of up to 300 to run the place.

They even had an indoor, heated swimming pool....this was in 1900 when most people didn't even have toilets!

The main house was built in 1885, and Thomas died in 1886, leaving Lucy to run the show. She died in 1916, and the main house went up in flames in 1959...they think the house was intentionally set on fire by someone who had issues with a caretaker of the property. There are some decendants of the Carnegies and others who still have property on the island, but 90% now is owned by the American taxpaper.

All that is left of the 40 room mansion are these ruins.

We were a little disappointed with this outing. The ferry ride was nice, and the ruins were OK, but we really only got to see about a 5 mile stretch of this island...we didn't get to the part where the slaves lived, where the African Americans, post-civil war, established their church, or where JFK Jr got married. What we got to see was a rectangular stretch that sort of went 2 miles along the bay, about 3/4 mile inland to the other side where the beach is, another 2 mile stretch along the beach, and then back thru the woods to the bay. We were thru walking (yes, we walked all that) before we even knew that the Rockefellers actually own property somewhere on this island.

The best part of the day was seeing the wild horses and walking along the ocean side of the island's beach. The horses are decendants of the horses Lucy Carnegie set free in her will. Every year they count the horses in March, and this year there were 134. There were some wild turkeys there too...I don't know how they got there.

There were also some sand dunes. Those are horse tracks in the sand. And some really cool trees in the forested area...look how these branches curl every which way.

And I always love a good sunset!