Sea Islands Active Circuit: Cumberland, St. Simons & Sapelo

The day on Cumberland Island is organized around a long beach walk: south from the Dungeness area to the island's southern tip, where the Atlantic beach meets the inlet of St. Marys River. This southernmost stretch of the island is the most remote and wildlife-rich section of the beach — nesting loggerhead sea turtles (in summer), Wilson's plovers running the tideline, royal terns diving in the inlet, and ospreys working the shallow water of the sound. The walk is 3 miles round trip from Dungeness Dock through the ruins and onto the beach, with excellent opportunities for swimming on the beach section.

Midday on Cumberland Island's Atlantic beach is as close to true solitude as you can find on the East Coast: 18 miles of undeveloped sand, consistent surf, and the complete absence of any commercial presence. Swim, walk, and explore the dune system. Wild horses sometimes graze on sea oats at the dune crest in the middle of the day.

The afternoon walk through Cumberland Island's maritime forest en route back to the ferry dock is an excellent wildlife encounter: armadillos in the leaf litter, gopher tortoises at their burrow entrances, deer in the forest margin, and the horses moving into the shade of the live oaks as the afternoon heat peaks. The forest interior in the low afternoon light has a quality of extraordinary stillness.

The tidal creek system surrounding St. Simons Island — Frederica River to the west, the marshes of Little St. Simons Channel to the north, and the intricate network of tidal guts threading through the surrounding salt marsh — constitutes one of the most productive and beautiful paddling environments on the Georgia coast. A morning kayak through the Frederica River corridor, past the marsh edges near Fort Frederica, provides extraordinary wildlife access: great blue herons, tricolored herons, roseate spoonbills in late summer, wood storks, and bottlenose dolphins that work the marsh creek edge on the incoming tide. The paddle is relatively protected water, accessible to intermediate kayakers, with launch possible from various points on the island's west side.

East Beach on St. Simons Island's Atlantic shore is the island's primary ocean beach — a wide, clean strand backed by dunes and accessible from several beach access points in the island's east end neighborhoods. Surf fishing from the beach produces red drum, pompano, Spanish mackerel, and speckled trout through much of the year, and a late afternoon walk south along the beach toward the inlet provides excellent views of the inlet's bird life: brown pelicans, laughing gulls, royal terns, and in summer the occasional roseate tern.

Sapelo Island is Georgia's most remote and least-known barrier island — 16,000 acres of state-owned wilderness accessible only by a Georgia DNR ferry that runs a handful of times per week and carries very few visitors. The island has no bridge, no resort, and no commercial development whatsoever beyond the Hog Hammock community. Hog Hammock is one of the last surviving Gullah-Geechee communities in Georgia: a small settlement of descendants of enslaved people who have lived on Sapelo Island for generations, maintaining a distinct cultural tradition that includes the Gullah language, sweetgrass basketry, and the praise house tradition of religious gathering. The community's population has shrunk dramatically in recent decades as residents age and younger generations leave, making a visit to Hog Hammock not only a remarkable cultural encounter but a witness to a way of life that may not persist through the century.

Nanny Goat Beach on Sapelo Island's southeast shore is one of the most remote and least-visited beaches on the Georgia coast: a broad, wild strand of Atlantic shoreline accessible only to those who make the ferry trip, backed by dune vegetation and maritime forest, with no development in any direction. The beach is a significant loggerhead sea turtle nesting site in summer, and the isolation — no shops, no lifeguards, no other people for long stretches — makes it feel genuinely apart from the developed coast. Bald eagles have been documented nesting in the maritime forest behind the beach, a rare occurrence this close to the coast.

The Reynolds Mansion on Sapelo Island was built by tobacco magnate R.J. Reynolds Jr. in the 1920s on the site of a series of earlier plantation structures, and it served as his private retreat until the State of Georgia acquired the island in the 1970s. The mansion and its surrounding buildings — a swimming pool, guest cottages, and formal gardens now reclaimed by vegetation — document one of the last chapters of private island ownership in Georgia before conservation prevailed. The island's interior also contains the University of Georgia Marine Institute, which has operated a long-running ecological research program on the island since 1953, making Sapelo one of the most scientifically documented barrier island ecosystems in North America.