Plum Orchard, Cumberland Island, GA (anchored)
June 23, 2025
We anchor in many beautiful, remote places but very few have an easy way for us to access the land. Plum Orchard is part of Cumberland Island National Seashore and has a day use dinghy dock. We’re anchored very close to this dock and we’re the only ones who used it while we were here.
Clearly Poseidon is happy we are here – he threw this little fish into our dinghy as we were tying up at the dock. John got her back in the water quickly.
Plum Orchard mansion was built in 1890 and has 22 rooms. Built by an heir to the Carnegie Fortune, it’s now part of the National Park Service.
There are picnic tables around the mansion grounds. This sign was posted near the one closest to a pond.
A few families still live on the island and the NPS gives tours of the mansion. It’s 7 miles to the ferry dock, so there’s very little traffic -we saw one vehicle twice and two other NPS trucks. The roads make great trails through the maritime forests.
A unique feature of Cumberland Island is its population of feral horses. They roam in herds throughout the island – these were on the grounds of Plum Orchard.
When we were here 3 years ago, we saw many armadillos but today we only saw one.
Before heading back on Lailia, we took a quick tour of part of the Brickhill River.
There’s an abundance of birds and other wildlife visible from our deck.
A pod of dolphins, including calves with their mamas, swam by Lailia in the evening.
A juvenile gator swam across our bow, too.
We need to leave early tomorrow morning to get through that skinny water before the tide gets too low, so we’re getting to bed early tonight.
We’ll be back in Brunswick for the night to pick up our Amazon packages and hull paint.
Life on Lailia 
Beautiful area. I haven’t been there yet and would love to check it out. Great pics and lookin’ good there Captain John 😊
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