Good Friends and Small Airplanes

I flew to Cumberland Island, Georgia,  yesterday to photograph a wedding. I shoot about 4-5 weddings a year on the last island off the coast of Georgia (before you get to Florida).   Most people don't know it exists.  It's got a rich history and almost no development.  It was purchased in the 19th century by the Carnegie brothers - Andrew and Thomas.  They built a handful of mansions on the island for their children.  The family has owned most of the island ever since.  They have done an amazing job of preserving it in it's natural state.  There are no cars and no roads.  Wild horses have roamed the shoreline and inner woods since a Spanish galleon brought them here in the 1500's.  One of the mansions has been converted to an Inn and they offer weddings as well as running a regular resort-type hotel.  It's called Greyfield Inn.

Saying that I "flew" here is only partly accurate.  I took Delta from Portland to Atlanta and then another Delta jet to Jacksonville, Florida.  From there, my friend Dave, who lives on the island with his wife who is a Carnegie descendent, flew over in his little Cessna to bring me to the island.  I've flown over with him several times and my favorite part of the trip is to buzz the grass landing strip to clear the wild horses out of the way. Yesterday, we never got that far!  As we took off from Jacksonville, Dave felt a funny vibration in the plane.  We circled back around and, as I held my breath, we made it back to the airport that we'd just taken off from.  A mechanic came out and looked it over and didn't see a problem. So we hopped back in and made another attempt.  This time, the vibration was gone but Dave was having a problem getting enough speed up to fly as high as he wanted.  So he decided to land 10 miles away at another airport and call a guy who runs a boat service to the island.  Bottom line is that I made it to Cumberland Island last night, but not via the means of transportation I had expected and with a little bit more grey hair in my beard than when I started the day.  But, as always when things don't go as planned, I did manage to find a couple of pictures.  We got to the boat around sunset and came across the scenes posted here.  Sometimes the best interrupted plans offer the better pictures.   Oh, I didn't physically kiss the ground but I sure thanked my lucky stars!