Wild, Wild Horses and Goodbye Jekyll

Yesterday we drove 45 minutes South to St. Mary's to catch the ferry to Cumberland Island. It is the largest of the barrier Islands and is mainly uninhabited except by 11 residents, wild horses, feral pigs (huh?), birds and other native critters. You can actually see Cumberland from the most southern point of Jekyll. The ferry takes about 45 minutes and then you can spend a day or an afternoon or if you are brave you could stay over and be a "primitive" camper. We stayed for the afternoon, had a picnic lunch, took a tour of the ruins and walked the beach.

You don't have to be a history lover to enjoy Cumberland but it helps. You can look it up. But first I have to talk about the pigs. I thought maybe they would be wild boars but they call them feral pigs and are not native to the Island. We were told they start reproducing at age 4 months, and have 12 piglets each time. Do the math! They eat anything and everything and finally the conservationsists etc. said it was okay to thin them out. They hired a hunter who had free pig shoots for 3 years. He killed tons but they are still a problem. I was amazed by all of this but John told me to give my head a shake. "They are just like farm pigs". Now I understand how he could buy his first car at age 16. So I was on pig alert but saw none!

But the wild horses! They did not disappoint. It was a cold and blustery day (it's all relative) and the horses were hanging out by the ruins of the mansion (later). We saw a stallion with 3 mares and a colt. Apparently he had gained this harem 2 weeks earlier in a wild fight with another stallion. The horses are totally wild, like deer. They are not interfered with in any way but left on their own and they roam wild. They don't get fed, no vets, nothing. They look a bit scraggy but give you goose bumps. There are 150 to 200 on the Island. They go to the beach, eat out of the marsh, whatever they want. You can get quite close to them but shouldn't try to touch them. Incredible.

Dungeness is the name of the huge mansion ruin that we saw. It has a long history. It was a mere 28, 000 sq. feet by the time Lucy Carnegie finished with it and even in ruins is spectacular. She went on to build mansions for her 9 children on the Island. I won't go on but it must have been a popular thing for millionaires to occupy Islands. Jekyll has a similar history. Now 90% of Cumberland is wilderness. A small portion is private. In 1996 John F. Kennedy Jr. married Caroline Bisset there at the "First African Church". Also, the tour guide referred to the private area as Rockerfeller Compound so you can only speculate from there. What drama!

Tomorrow we leave Jekyll and I am kind of sad. We will be back next year. We are going to Richard B. Russell State Park in Northern GA for 5 days. No wi-fi there so you won't have to worry about reading long blogs. From there we will slowly work our way home and I am getting excited about that. I can't imagine having that much space! I can't figure out how to move the pics around in here so bear with me.