Hello from San Antonio! My loyal blog readers will be relieved to know I don’t have (as) much to say today. Since leaving Savannah the middle of last week, I’ve skipped my only Florida location, done a Lot of driving, and had rain ruin my hopes for any good shots at my beloved Natchez City Cemetery in Mississippi…all this leaves me with to ramble about and post pictures of is my trip out to the Cumberland Island National Seashore, and I even came back from there early once I was sure I’d gotten the shots I wanted. Technically, I’ve started shooting the San Antonio Missions, but I need to head back to each again in the morning, so the photos from there will have to wait until Albuquerque…

Unlike my last trip out to a National Park-managed island with my sleeping bag and camera gear in tow (Isle Royale), the weather was perfect, and the ferry ride was only about 45 minutes long. I was already off to a much better start. I opted to stay at Sea Camp, the walk-in campground, rather than do any backpacking, and since it was only a quarter mile from the ferry dock, I didn’t have to worry about packing light or making sure everything could fit in my backpack. The park is gearing up for the upcoming busy season (I’ve been told that it starts in the next couple weeks, after the first frost kills off all the bugs and the temperature drops) and three-fourths of the campground was actually closed for hazardous tree removal, leaving only four sites open. I wound up getting to know two of the three families who had sites neighboring mine quite well. Alicia, Rafael and their son Rafi, and Jim and his daughter, Lizzie (on their father/daughter trip for her tenth birthday)…Really wonderful people, I couldn’t have asked for better neighbors.

I came to the island to shoot the Dungeness ruins, the remnants of Thomas (brother to the more famous Andrew) Carnegie’s  mansion home that he shared with his wife, Lucy, and their nine children. After his death, Lucy stayed and continued to raise their children, and eventually had a very self-sufficient community on the island with a staff of roughly three hundred people. The mansion closed and fell into disrepair following Lucy’s death in 1916, and eventually burned in 1959, leaving the brick and cement shell that remains.

The ruins themselves are fascinating but the island itself is equally interesting, in that though it’s approximately twenty miles long and there is quite a bit of privately held property scattered about, there’s not much by way of roads, and the ones that there are are single-laned bumpy, dirt roads through a forest of live oaks hung with Spanish moss. And let’s not forget the herd of wild horses that roams the island, grazing wherever they please (I saw some in someone’s front yard) and when I stuck around the ruins to do some moonlight photography, I was more worried about stepping in a pile of horse poop than anything else. Prior to coming to the island, I’d also seen photos of some rusted cars and had thought I’d have to hike back into some swamp to find them, but as luck would have it, they’re all set together right off the main road near the ruins.

Even though I’d already spent several hours shooting at the ruins Thursday night, I headed back there again Friday morning (I’d survived the hike in the dark back to the campground without stepping on any snakes or being trampled by the horses, and gotten in a few hours of not-great sleep in the heat and humidity). I was lucky enough to have a great set of clouds roll through and soon had more photos than I knew what to do with (it took eons to narrow down my favorite shots). I was confident I had the best shots I was going to get so rather than spend another night on the island, I hung out with Jim & Lizzie for a while and then packed up my gear and caught the last ferry back to the mainland.

I left my headphones in the car and there is a really loud group of college girls at the table near me (Panera’s, of course) and I’m finding them highly distracting, and keep losing my train of thought…I think that sums thing up enough…I’ll be in San Antonio tomorrow morning to finish shooting the missions and then I’ll be working my way towards the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, and I intend to do one more post from there before I head home. I’m looking forward to heading towards a colder climate, I’d forgotten how much I hate Texas, and it would be nice to get out of the bug zone and not acquire any new bites for a couple days….

New photos are in the Georgia album…