A National Treasure

We spent 2 nites anchored off of Cumberland Island, Georgia...we could not get enough of its natural beauty...it did not hurt that the weather was spectacular. We motored our dinghy about 5 miles to the North portion of the island, so we could get a tour of Plum Orchard. Plum Orchard is a mansion that Lucy Carnegie built for  her daughter, Margaret. It is well preserved and was a private home until 1972 when it was sold to the Park as a national treasure. It has 11 bathroom, 11 bedrooms, an indoor pool, indoor squash court.....The year it was built was 1918. A volunteer park ranger, living at the home gave us a wonderful tour of the interior. The house still has 3 gorgeous Tiffany hanging lamps worth about $50,000 each...plus a few original furnishing...There had ref rigeration and coal heat that was delievered thru pipes underneath the floor boards which was very new at the time.  I included a few pics  of the wonderful wild ponies that live throughout the island and also of the amazing live oak trees with the spanish moss hanging heavy on their branches.One curious point that was made to us was that the servants were definitely to be seen not heard...their living area was on a separate part of the house that was painted yellow...to be sure that if any visitors did any kind of "sleepwalking" they would know that they had traveled into the servants quarters....not to be confused with any other part of the mansion...the servants were from Ireland and Sweden...I wondered if that stopped any confusion?

Finding Warm Weather

We finally left Beaufort,Sc with our cruiser friend David on his boat Cloud Messenger, after 3 very patient weeks of waiitng for a good weather window to cruise South in the Atlantic to Cumberland, Island...on the Georgia/Florida border. The night was gorgeous to start with..15 knots of wind from the North, a Harvest moon that lit up the sky like a spotlight on our boat....then the cold started, it dropped to 37 degrees..a frost advisory on the NOAA website. The coldest nite for a very long time...Needless to say we had multi layers of clothing on...I had 7 layers...it makes it quite a challenge when you need to use the restroom.....getting bored is never an option, that's for sure. We made it into Cumberland at 7 in the morning...we took a nap immediately after a very cold sleepless nite. I sat in the 70 degree sun to warm and and the day got better and better. Cumberland Island is a national Park...you can only see the island by ferry or by private boat. It has been inhabited for thousands of years but from 1881 on it was develped by the Carnegies as a summer getaway...at one point they built homes for each of their children....their home "Dungeness" was burned to the ground in 1918..the ruins still remain today..see pic, the island has wild horses, wild turkeys, a gorgeous windswept beach that stretches for miles, acres of oak trees heavily laden with spanish moss..beautiful dunes, a private inn that you stay in called The Greyfield Inn...only $395-595 per nite(ferry included)...The island is about 18 miles long...too long to hike but we have to say it is quite a memorable place...Not a bad place to spend your summers....