The Adventures of T&A

We went out in the morning to check the trap at the pond, but it was gone.  It looked like someone may have cut the wire holding the trap to a stake.  We looked around to see if we could tell what happened.  If a person came by and cut the wire to the trap, would he take the animal and eat it or would he dispose of it?  Would he take it home or just throw it in the brush?  We guessed that he wouldn’t eat it, he’d probably throw it out.  We looked around to see if we could tell if something had been thrown into the brush.  Another possibility that Colbert considered was that the animal was moving enough to break the wires.  No way to know for sure.  He ran into someone he knew on the road and asked if he had heard anything.  The guy didn’t, but then asked Colbert to please come take care of the raccoons that are eating his grouse on his property!

We went back to camp and we all loaded up for a canoe trip around the sloughs of the river that runs through his land, The Little River.  It was tough paddling for novices like me and Andrew, with lots of portages and adventures.  At one point during our canoe trip, we had to slip between a large tree and a shallow shore.  The side of the canoe hit an ant colony on the side of the tree and knocked a bunch of ants into the canoe on Andrew.  He jumped up and started dancing around like he had ants in his pant!  I thought we were going over like we did on our Okefenokee trip!  We finally got up to Colbert’s other cabin, one that can’t be reached by roads.  We portaged around the fast water at the bend in the river and continued on downstream back to camp.  Don had some dried bear meat that made for a tasty spaghetti dinner.

Colbert went out to check his fish traps while Andrew and I got our gear back in place after our backpack.  The traps are empty.  Andrew helped Colbert set up a solar panel that he’d gotten some time ago but never installed.  He wants the solar panel to charge a car battery that he uses to run a TV/VCR that he watches tracking and nature videos on.  Colbert has no electricity and has been charging this battery by hooking it up to his truck and driving into town. 

We got an early start to catch the morning ferry off the island.  The beach access to Stafford Campground was flooded and impassible, so we took the Parellel Trail, an inland trail, south to another access road and hiked out to the beach.  While hiking down the beach to Seacamp to catch the ferry, Carol caught up with us while doing her beach patrol.  We were happy to see her again and thank her for letting us stay on Half Moon Bluff.  The ferry got us back to the mainland in time for a lunch feast at St Mary’s Seafood. 

We stopped in Brunswick, GA at the Hostel in the Forest.  Andrew and I have been there on a few occasions and others have told Colbert about it.  Colbert had talked about making his “Fish Camp” into a type of hostel, so he was looking for ideas.  Mark and Mikey showed us around and Andrew and I were surprised to see some major improvements in their facilities.  It seems they had a problem with the local college using the Forest hostel as a cheap party place and as many as a hundred students trashed it every weekend.  So they redefined themselves as a “Spiritual Retreat” and restricted the number of guests (and their intent).  It’s a very fun place and I recommend it if you are in the area and feel the need to retreat spiritually. 

We hiked the remaining 4 miles to Stafford Beach Campground, the one closest to the ferry dock to leave the island.  We hiked through beautiful live oaks forest.  We stopped at one really majestic tree, maybe 30 feet around.  Both Colbert and Andrew climbed up and stood in the crotch of this tree.  Andrew said he could feel an energy from it.  Our last campsite, Stafford Beach, now has a bathroom with hot showers.  This is unheard of in backcountry camping!  I didn’t take a shower because I’d have to come outside in the cold with wet hair, but I enjoyed having my private porcelain throne thoroughly!   I heard one of the feral horses running down the trail in the dark, his eyes glowing red in my flashlight.  Kind of eerie!  The weather seemed much colder than we expected.  Colbert made a leaf bed and said he stayed quite warm.   

A beautiful morning on Half Moon Bluff.  We attempted to cook cornbread on the camp stove without any oil… the results were not good.  However, clam shells worked well to scrub the burnt bottom of the pot.  Before leaving, we left a note on Carol’s gate, since she was already out on her four wheeler on beach patrol.  We decided to hike south, seeing all we could along the way.  We stopped at the old First African Baptist Church, the one John Kennedy Jr got married in, stopped at Terrapin Point, Burbank Point and wandered through High Point Cemetery, an old slave cemetery at the north end of the island.  We hiked down to Brickhill Bluff Campground and stopped for a while, but the bugs (no-see-ums) were terrible.  We decided to continue on to Yankee Paradise Campground. 

When we got to Yankee Paradise, we found one other camp set up, it was the other couple we met on the ferry on Monday.  It seems we are the only campers in the backcountry this week, since the ferry didn’t run on Tuesday or Wednesday.  We attempted baking another cornbread, this time using a double boiler method.  This worked out much better.  Our camp neighbors came over and chatted for a while and we found out we have quite a bit in common.  Bill and Pat are from North Carolina and have a friend who built his own house from found materials (much like Colbert), has developed a solar portable power supply and a type of micro-hydro system that requires less flow than typically necessary.  (They gave me a website, but the address isn’t valid)  It seems they also know Doug Elliot, someone we know from Rivercane Rendezvous and other primitive skills gatherings.

Woke up early and got our backpacks ready.  We had coffee and breakfast at the Riverside Cafe and caught the 9am ferry.  We saw porpoise playing in the wake of the boat.  Andrew contacted Carol Ruckdeschel, a friend who lives on the island researching sea turtles. Carol has no phone at her place, but she does get email on her computer.  The ranger doing camper check-in knows Carol and, since we were going to a private residence, gave us a ride to the north end of the island.  He said he had to go to the north end for patrol anyway.  She let us stay at her parent’s place on Half Moon Bluff.  We camped outside the house, but we used the porch and the artesian well in the backyard.  We took a hike out to the beach and found many parts of the trail were flooded.  It seems that the island had 20 inches of rain during Hurricane Tammy last October.  Tammy was a tropical depression until it was just off the Florida-Georgia coast when it reached hurricane strength.  The ranger said it was one of the times they had to evacuate Cumberland Island, finding hunters during an organized hunt (they have organized hunts to thin the population of deer and hogs on the island, the backcountry is closed to campers during this time). 

We took much of the morning packing our gear for our trip to Cumberland Island.  Andrew and I are driving our truck with Colbert and Don in the back.  Don’s dog is staying with Ann while we are gone.  We camped in the parking lot across from the ferry dock.  Cumberland Island is a barrier island off the coast of Georgia just north of Florida.  There are no roads to the island, access is only by ferry or private boat.  In the winter, the Cumberland Island ferry doesn’t run Tuesdays or Wednesdays, so we can’t miss the ferry out on Monday.  After making dinner off the tailgate, we went to Seagle’s Bar for a beer.  Cindy Dean was not working that night.

Cold and windy morning, some folks are moving on today.  The Asheville group are off to Tampa and Derrik is going back to South Carolina.  Colbert, Don, Andrew and I are discussing a trip to Cumberland Island off the coast of St Mary’s, GA and the Hostel in the Forest in Brunswick, GA.  We went into town and showered at a truck stop, did some laundry and went to get some groceries.  By the time we got back to camp it was dark, cold and windy.  Ann came over and joined us inside the cabin.

The camp woke with Don clucking like a chicken.  The morning revealed that another animal, either a raccoon or owl, had eaten the best parts of the chicken.  Colbert joked that he should have set a trap at the bottom of the tree to catch another critter.  We check with the camp groundskeeper about the weather.  He confirmed what we had hard earlier, that rain and thunderstorms were expected later that day.  We broke camp and headed back to the park with the swimming hole at the springhead.  By the time we got there, the weather started looking bad.  We decided not to canoe after all and headed back to Colbert’s place.  We stopped along the way at Miccasukee Lake for a minute to look around.  When we got back to Colbert’s camp, the weather started catching up with us.  Although the sky turned dark and wind was blowing, the storm skirted the edge of where we were.  Colbert had run into town for something and said it was raining hard there, but since it didn’t rain here, we started a fire.  Colbert brought out beer.

The camp packed up for canoe trip, Sturgeon’s Fish Camp style.  All 8 of us loaded up Colbert’s big truck, an antique International army truck with a camper on back.  This truck is so big, four of us sat in the front bench seat!  The truck also has a steel rack mounted on the front where all of our gear was tied on.  The other four sat in the camper on the back.  Don’t forget the canoes!  Colbert’s motor boat was on a boat trailer, filled with cast iron pots of food for dinner and other gear.  Two canoes were then strapped on top of the motor boat!  We were definitely looking like hillbillies for this trip! We head down to a springhead in north Florida. The spring has a park with swimming and boating, but we head off to a place for free camping.  For the next hour and a half, we were on some of the bumpiest roads.  Goose Pasture is beautiful campground at the end of the ugliest road.  We set up our tents and start a fire.  The night’s entertainment is a chicken hanging around the campground.  Two of the guys tried to catch it, but it flew into a tree.  They did their best to catch it, throwing rocks and even bringing out a bow and arrow.  They chased it and finally caught it.  The next discussion is what to do with it.  We had a fresh raccoon that was trapped and skinned and in the cookpot, so we didn’t need the meat.  But the guy that caught it felt differently, so they cleaned it and hung it in a tree for the evening.