Flagler Memorial Island is an uninhabited artificial island in the city of Miami Beach in Biscayne Bay, Florida. A 110-foot statue stands as a monument to Miami pioneer Henry M. Flagler, who died in 1913. For more information, click here.
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Every wealthy family needed a vacation home by the ocean in the late 1800's. Cumberland Island was it for the Carnegie family. Now it is a National Seashore owned and maintained by the National Park Service. It reminds me of Cape Lookout, NC. Bring it, or you won't have it. There are still a few structures and homes that a few people who negotiated time with the NPS still live in. But mostly it is moss covered trails, beaches, wild horses, wild turkeys and squirrels. There are more animal tracks than footprints. We did find what we thought was an orange tree. Of course we climbed up to pick one. After one bite, we realized it was not an orange, but a super sour grapefruit!
We just loved anchoring off Observatory Beach at Morgan Island. It was such a unique experience. Seeing such diverse wildlife living together was an unforgettable experience. Put it on your bucket list!!! While waiting for family to arrive for the weekend, we had a few days to kill between Charleston and Beaufort. I pulled up Active Captain and began clicking on all the various anchorages and found this: Famed 'Monkey Island' - anchor out and watch the monkeys come to the beach in the evening to play. Decent anchorage for going out to sea next morning. Quiet and peaceful. Tidal range of 3 feet. Some wind protection from the east. No wakes or parties. Being skeptical, I thought, yeah right, must be a little sarcasm because Monkeys don't live in South Carolina. They must be joking. This is probably a place where small power boaters pull on shore to party and the monkeys are really drunken boaters. So I googled it. We all know Google knows everything! Sure enough it was true! Real monkeys do live on this island! They were brought here in 1979 to research on the oral polio vaccine. Since then they have grown into a breeding colony of 4,000 Rhesus monkeys with 750 babies born each year. That was good enough for me. I was ready to go! Within 5 minutes of dropping the anchor, we saw monkeys playing on the beach while watching dolphin swim by the boat. The next morning deer came down for a stroll along the beach, while eagles hung out in their nest. Blue jays and pelicans flew past. We felt like we were watching Wild Kingdom Live! It was amazing. Check out these pictures! And to think this wasn't even on my bucket list! Thank you Active Captain!!!
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