- Joined
- Apr 17, 2007
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- 1,607
Here are some stories and some pictures for you guys. Hopefully you old geezers can live vicariously through us young uns actions (I'm kidding, please don't hunt me down and gut me with your knife collections).
A couple of weekends ago, I took my girl and a couple of friends to Cumberland Island on the coast of GA for a weekend camping trip. The island is part of the National Park System, so it is kept in pretty good shape, and has some relatively nice facilities. Without getting too much into the history, it was mostly owned by the Carnegies in the past, so there are some neat historical buildings scattered around the island.
It was the beginning of July and next to the ocean, so it was obnoxiously hot and humid. At night, I would sleep absolutely still on top of my sleeping bag in just my boxers, and still have sweat pouring down my face. The two days we were there, it was in the upper 90s in both temperature and humidity. The site we were at had bathrooms and cold showers, so a quick shower helped to cool us down for at least 2 minutes.
Bugs are crazy on the island. I have been all over North America, and never seen such a potent mixture of insects. Mosquitoes are, of course, swarming everwhere. Gnats follow your every move. No see ums come out at dusk. Spiders are everwhere, blocking all of the paths to the point where we would carry sticks for the sole purpose of removing webs from the paths. All of that I can deal with though. The bad guys were the ticks that you could literally see sitting on the sides of the paths, waiting to jump on you. I flicked off countless of the buggers, and pulled several out of me. I probably grossed out more than a few fellow campers by doing constant crotch tick checks. Keep in mind that I started out by coating myself with lemon eucalyptus oil (crap), then when that didn't work, 99.8% DEET (crap), and then something with Picaridin the next day (worked pretty well). My clothes were also soaked in Permethrin, which seemed to help a little. I can't imagine what they would have been like with no repellants.
Sounds like a grand place, right? Swarming insects, obnoxious heat and humidity, etc.? Actually, it is amazing. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. I would stick to a day trip during the summer though, and save the camping for the other seasons. I like my sweat to actually be productive, but I have been in GA for so long that I forget what that is like.
So, here are the pics and the trip:
It is an island, so you either have to take a private boat or a ferry to get there. Since I am poor from buying too many knives and flashlights, we took the ferry. It takes about 45 minutes each way. Here is a view on the way over:
We got to the island and made the 1/2 mile or so walk to the campsites. We stayed at the managed campsites instead of doing backcountry, since my friends are camping newbies and you can't have fires in the backcountry (super lame). We set up camp and wandered down to the beach, on the Atlantic side. For those of you used to CA or Gulf of Mexico baby and frat boy littered beach, feast your eyes on this:
That is not Photoshopped or anything. That is around 1 PM on a Saturday, in the summer, with beautiful weather, as you can see. We started whining when it was "crowded" with 20 people within 300 yards of us. We spent a few hours on the beach, playing in the water and enjoying the relative lack of bugs.
The island is covered in live oak trees, which are easily some of my favorite trees. They look like they are gnarled from centuries of wind and ocean abuse, but that is how they grow. Very cool looking:
I had some trouble getting a good spider picture, since I am not a big fan of spiders and did not want to get close. Like I said above, these guys are EVERYWHERE. You can stand in the dense forest, and still look in one direction and see 20 of their giant webs scattered around. They build their webs amazingly fast. We would have to clear the webs from the path into our site everytime we went in or out.
I know I should be smacked for this, but I don't have any blade pics.
I used an Ontario Kukri, Ontario Rat 3, and Spyderco Calypso Jr. (crazy sharp) on the trip. The logs for the fire were cut up with a pocket chainsaw, and the smaller stuff was cut with the kukri. Rat 3 and Calypso did the general camp chores. I highly recommend taking a pocket chainsaw, especially if you are with a group. Why, you ask? My girlfriend thought it looked like fun, and proceeded to saw a couple of 10' long, 6" wide logs into 18" pieces with no prompt from me. Less work for me = bonus.
I tried using my firesteel to get the fire in the firepit going, but I was pretty lazy about collecting or making good kindling, so that was mostly unsuccessful. I ended up using a Bic on a piece of fatwood I had brought. I was going to make shavings and use the firesteel on those, but the women were clamoring for roasted marshmallows, so I gave in and used a lighter. I know, I am weak.
After a nice sweaty sleep, we got up, broke camp, and took our packs down to the dock. They have bike rentals there, so we rented some fixed gear clunkers to ride around the island while waiting for the 4:45 ferry. Like I said, the island was owned by the Carnegies, so they had some opulent dwellings there. Here are the ruins of Dungeness, which was the main house on the island that burned down a while back:
Wild horses roam the island. I think Carnegie left it in her will that they were to be untouched, so they receive no vet treatment and are not managed. They are obviously not a native species, so they wreak havoc on a lot of the sand dune habitats and other parts. There is always a public outcry when the NPS wants to do something about them, so they just roam around, being diseased and tick ridden. I think horses are beautiful and majestic animals, but it makes no sense to leave them on the island. Anyway, here are some of them on the Dungeness grounds:
We walked across the dunes to get back to the beach from Dungeness. White sand in the summer is not optimal for keeping your body's core temperature down, in case you were wondering. It is about a 20 minute walk across the dunes to get to the beach. I need to remember never to take a camping trip to the desert.
I had a neat picture of some dead trees in the sand dunes, but forgot to resize it. Maybe I'll get motivated and do that when I get home tonight.
Here is my girl f'ing with the seagulls:
It started thundering when we got back into the forest, so we headed back to the dock. There was a nice and nasty thunderstorm for the rest of the day, including the drive back to Atlanta, so that was about it for the trip. Again, I highly recommend the island, but go camping in a season other than the summer, unless you really enjoy being drenched with sweat. Also, bring a water filter. They have potable water, but I would avoid drinking it unfiltered unless you really like the taste of sulfur.
A couple of weekends ago, I took my girl and a couple of friends to Cumberland Island on the coast of GA for a weekend camping trip. The island is part of the National Park System, so it is kept in pretty good shape, and has some relatively nice facilities. Without getting too much into the history, it was mostly owned by the Carnegies in the past, so there are some neat historical buildings scattered around the island.
It was the beginning of July and next to the ocean, so it was obnoxiously hot and humid. At night, I would sleep absolutely still on top of my sleeping bag in just my boxers, and still have sweat pouring down my face. The two days we were there, it was in the upper 90s in both temperature and humidity. The site we were at had bathrooms and cold showers, so a quick shower helped to cool us down for at least 2 minutes.
Bugs are crazy on the island. I have been all over North America, and never seen such a potent mixture of insects. Mosquitoes are, of course, swarming everwhere. Gnats follow your every move. No see ums come out at dusk. Spiders are everwhere, blocking all of the paths to the point where we would carry sticks for the sole purpose of removing webs from the paths. All of that I can deal with though. The bad guys were the ticks that you could literally see sitting on the sides of the paths, waiting to jump on you. I flicked off countless of the buggers, and pulled several out of me. I probably grossed out more than a few fellow campers by doing constant crotch tick checks. Keep in mind that I started out by coating myself with lemon eucalyptus oil (crap), then when that didn't work, 99.8% DEET (crap), and then something with Picaridin the next day (worked pretty well). My clothes were also soaked in Permethrin, which seemed to help a little. I can't imagine what they would have been like with no repellants.
Sounds like a grand place, right? Swarming insects, obnoxious heat and humidity, etc.? Actually, it is amazing. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. I would stick to a day trip during the summer though, and save the camping for the other seasons. I like my sweat to actually be productive, but I have been in GA for so long that I forget what that is like.
So, here are the pics and the trip:
It is an island, so you either have to take a private boat or a ferry to get there. Since I am poor from buying too many knives and flashlights, we took the ferry. It takes about 45 minutes each way. Here is a view on the way over:
We got to the island and made the 1/2 mile or so walk to the campsites. We stayed at the managed campsites instead of doing backcountry, since my friends are camping newbies and you can't have fires in the backcountry (super lame). We set up camp and wandered down to the beach, on the Atlantic side. For those of you used to CA or Gulf of Mexico baby and frat boy littered beach, feast your eyes on this:
That is not Photoshopped or anything. That is around 1 PM on a Saturday, in the summer, with beautiful weather, as you can see. We started whining when it was "crowded" with 20 people within 300 yards of us. We spent a few hours on the beach, playing in the water and enjoying the relative lack of bugs.
The island is covered in live oak trees, which are easily some of my favorite trees. They look like they are gnarled from centuries of wind and ocean abuse, but that is how they grow. Very cool looking:
I had some trouble getting a good spider picture, since I am not a big fan of spiders and did not want to get close. Like I said above, these guys are EVERYWHERE. You can stand in the dense forest, and still look in one direction and see 20 of their giant webs scattered around. They build their webs amazingly fast. We would have to clear the webs from the path into our site everytime we went in or out.
I know I should be smacked for this, but I don't have any blade pics.
I used an Ontario Kukri, Ontario Rat 3, and Spyderco Calypso Jr. (crazy sharp) on the trip. The logs for the fire were cut up with a pocket chainsaw, and the smaller stuff was cut with the kukri. Rat 3 and Calypso did the general camp chores. I highly recommend taking a pocket chainsaw, especially if you are with a group. Why, you ask? My girlfriend thought it looked like fun, and proceeded to saw a couple of 10' long, 6" wide logs into 18" pieces with no prompt from me. Less work for me = bonus.
I tried using my firesteel to get the fire in the firepit going, but I was pretty lazy about collecting or making good kindling, so that was mostly unsuccessful. I ended up using a Bic on a piece of fatwood I had brought. I was going to make shavings and use the firesteel on those, but the women were clamoring for roasted marshmallows, so I gave in and used a lighter. I know, I am weak.
After a nice sweaty sleep, we got up, broke camp, and took our packs down to the dock. They have bike rentals there, so we rented some fixed gear clunkers to ride around the island while waiting for the 4:45 ferry. Like I said, the island was owned by the Carnegies, so they had some opulent dwellings there. Here are the ruins of Dungeness, which was the main house on the island that burned down a while back:
Wild horses roam the island. I think Carnegie left it in her will that they were to be untouched, so they receive no vet treatment and are not managed. They are obviously not a native species, so they wreak havoc on a lot of the sand dune habitats and other parts. There is always a public outcry when the NPS wants to do something about them, so they just roam around, being diseased and tick ridden. I think horses are beautiful and majestic animals, but it makes no sense to leave them on the island. Anyway, here are some of them on the Dungeness grounds:
We walked across the dunes to get back to the beach from Dungeness. White sand in the summer is not optimal for keeping your body's core temperature down, in case you were wondering. It is about a 20 minute walk across the dunes to get to the beach. I need to remember never to take a camping trip to the desert.
I had a neat picture of some dead trees in the sand dunes, but forgot to resize it. Maybe I'll get motivated and do that when I get home tonight.
Here is my girl f'ing with the seagulls:
It started thundering when we got back into the forest, so we headed back to the dock. There was a nice and nasty thunderstorm for the rest of the day, including the drive back to Atlanta, so that was about it for the trip. Again, I highly recommend the island, but go camping in a season other than the summer, unless you really enjoy being drenched with sweat. Also, bring a water filter. They have potable water, but I would avoid drinking it unfiltered unless you really like the taste of sulfur.
that place looks cool......great pics....:thumbup: