Beach, pool, breakfast. Then we got to the dock in time for a ferry ride to St. Mary's. St. Mary's is not that wonderful a place, but the ride was great. Captain Scott and his sidekick, Johnny, told us lots of interesting facts and pointed out dolphins.

The shrimp fleet is seriously diminished, because people do not look for wild caught local shrimp. And because the cost of owning and maintaining a shrimp boat makes it hard to make a living that way. There are about 12 boats still catching shrimp at Fernandina Beach. There are oysters growing everywhere. Too bad they are not as popular.

Cumberland Island was owned by the Carnegies. We went by it. It is now a national park, deserted sand beaches. Scott said that the Carnegies were too nouveau riche and were snubbed by the millionaires on Jekyll Island, so they bought their own island. There are wild horses there. It was one of Mrs. Carnegie's conditions that they be left there when she gave it to the park service. We saw one of the horses on our way back.

We docked at St. Mary's, looked briefly at the Cumberland Island Park service visitor center (and gift shop--I love park gift shops), and walked a few blocks in the heat to the Orange Hall. We had to stop for a while in a lovely air-conditioned book store with comfortable chairs to get our strength up. The air conditioning wasn't working throughout the house, but it was cooler than outside and the guide was quite entertaining. She was from New Jersey...and let us sit on the furniture. Like so many of these stories, the woman for whom it was built died of yellow fever before it was even finished. Her husband remarried, the oldest child died too, and supposedly haunts the house. Other people bought it and took care of it, although it was broken into apartments at one point. It had somewonderful old furniture, some that reminded me of my grandmother's, not original to the house. We enjoyed it very much.

 After, we plodded through the heat, along the deserted streets, to the best restaurant in town, Langs' Seafood. It was wonderful and cool, we drank beer and iced tea and ate fresh seafood. It was that rarity among seafood restaurants: everything was good, the hushpuppies, the cole slaw, it was delicious and fresh. Mom and I had grouper. Dad and Ray had shrimp and scallops. The waitress was fun. The Langs own most of St. Mary's, including the license to run a ferry service to Cumberland, perhaps the thing that kept the town from disappearing altogether, since there is no other industry here now. We didn't have time to order dessert, but picked up a couple of giant double-scoop waffle cones to take on the boat. They melted faster than we could eat them, making a mess on the boat. Ray and the Captain enjoyed talking to Captain Scott about anything and everything and the speed of the boat made a cool breeze.

Back at the house, we swam, read, eventually ate dinner. Ray and I went out for a bit and did some shopping in Fernandina Beach.