Story and photos by CNN Interactive Writer/AP Jeremy Church

(CNN) -- "Welcome to paradise," a friend said after I walked off of Cumberland Island's Sea Camp dock and under the trees of the maritime forest, from which he and four other friends had emerged to greet us.

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Two of the greeting party had rented a sea kayak and paddled most of four hours in blistering mid-September heat to the same dock the day before. Our party of three, as well as the other three already there, landed on Georgia's southernmost barrier island after a pleasant 45-minute ferry ride from St. Mary's on the mainland.

After six months of anticipation, I hoped the exotic greeting was sincere and we had just arrived on a pleasure island where you wiggle your toes in the sand as an egret combs the shorebreak for food and you just daydream, free of the intrusion and distraction of other people.

That is what I had in mind and I would find, over the next few days, that Cumberland Island fit this ideal pretty closely, with the exception of a couple of paper mills and a few more humans than I had anticipated.