- 42 miles
- 4 hours 28 minites
- 9.4 mph average speed
- 5-8 mph winds
Blue Spring State Park is home to hundreds of manatee in the winter months, typically from mid-November until mid-March, who are escaping the cold waters and enjoying the 73-degree spring. We had hoped to make it to the beautiful clear waters of the spring to see the manatee but learned we had missed the last of them by a week or so and the manatee count was “0” the day we visited the spring. According to the park, a record 729 manatees were counted this year! We did spot several manatee heading south as we were making our way north to the St. Johns River but it would have been fun to see the mass numbers in the spring. Even though there were no manatee when we visited, the park was still breathtakingly beautiful!
Ravine Gardens State Park, in Palatka, FL, has two ravines up to 120 feet deep with steep banks at 45-degree angles. We just missed the peak azalea season but we chose to hike the Azalea Trail which winds through the ravine system of the park and experience more of the natural beauty of the gardens. It was challenging at times but very much worth the effort!
Cumberland Island National Seashore is the largest and southernmost barrier island off the coast of Georgia and is only accessible by boat or small plane. While we could have anchored nearby and taken our dingy to the island, we decided to take the ferry from St. Mary’s since we still had a rental car. We spent two days on Cumberland Island. The first day, we took a 5 hour guided Land & Legacy Tour which was fantastic and we went back the next day to explore more of the island on our own and visit the beach. We especially enjoyed walking through the maritime forest. During the tour, we had a picnic lunch on the grounds of the beautiful Plum Orchard Mansion. There are about 150 feral horses roaming about the island.
The Settlement is the name of the northern end of the island that was settled by former slaves in the early 1890’s. Primus Mitchell was born into slavery on the island and he and his wife lived on Robert Stafford’s plantation, the largest plantation on the island prior to the Civil War, until they were freed by Union forces in 1862. The First African Baptist Church was established by Primus Mitchell in 1893 and was originally housed in a log cabin and also used as a courthouse and a school. Mitchell’s granddaughter, Beulah Alberty, built a new church in 1937 which is the church where John F. Kennedy and Carolyn Bessette married in 1996. Beulah was the last resident of the Settlement and came to be known as the Settlement Mayor.
Plum Orchard is one of four mansions on the island built for the children of Thomas and Lucy Carnegie. Construction of the Plum Orchard mansion began in 1898 as a wedding gift for George Lauder Carnegie and Margaret Thaw. Several additions were made over the next twenty years when the home totaled 22,000 square feet. The mansion was the couple’s winter home until 1921 when George Carnegie passed away. Many of the home’s original furnishings were eventually auctioned off and most of what remains in the house is from Dungeness prior to the fire that destroyed it in 1959.
The Tabby House is the oldest standing structure on the island and dates back to around 1800. The house was built by Nathaniel Greene’s widow and her second husband, Phones Miller, possibly as temporary housing while the first Dungeness mansion was being built.
The second Dungeness mansion was built in the mid-1880’s by Thomas and Lucy Carnegie. It stood on the same location as the previous Dungeness mansion which burned in 1866. The Carnegie mansion had 37,000 square feet and was estimated to have cost $200,000 to build. After being abandoned in 1924, it burned in 1959.
