The Sandcastle – Page 148 – Blowing in the wind

Okefenokee

Today is a dampened day. Do you remember taking a soda pop bottle, filling it with water, putting a special top on it, and using it to dampen clothes to make it easier to iron them? Maybe today is getting ready to help get the wrinkles out of our travels.

Reading another RVer’s blog found this quote, “Spontaneous travel takes a lot of preparation.” This person understands me spending so many hours online researching spots and sites ahead of us so we can spontaneously decide each day which things to do that day. Our daughter says my research is worth charging people to share it with them. But, I feel it is so special to our own tastes and interests that most other people wouldn’t find my lists useful. So, I just randomly put the public camping parts of my lists on my blog. I hope people are finding that useful.

Today we chose Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge as our site. We explored their visitor center and saw a great film there.

Check out this display that is overhead so you see things as if from the bottom of the swamp.

Then we drove down Swamp Island Drive. Some of this looked a lot like the Everglades but some was very different.

Dave took a hike down the Homestead trail and brought back these pictures of the Chesser Island Homestead. Notice there is no growth in the yard. That’s to reduce fire danger and increase visibility of snakes.

The Chessers were a typical family eating what they could grow, catch, or hunt. For cash they grew corn or sugar cane and tapped trees for turpentine. Work and play often came together such as at at hog butchering and syrup grinding time. Life was hard but it could be fun, too. The Chessers were fond of four-note, or sacred harp, singing. Chesser descendants continue to sing the primitive, a capella, harmonies today.

Dave’s next hike was down the Swamp Walk Trail. This is the boardwalk that runs the 3/4 mile length of this trail. It is smooth and level enough to be wheelchair accessible. I could have ridden my Segway down it if I’d been willing to risk more bug bites. But, since I still look like I have chicken pox, I decided not to do so.

This is one of the carnivourous plants that grow here.

This is a gator hole–the place where a gator digs himself in to keep cool or warm depending on what the weather is doing. His digging helps keep ponds open for the use of other wildlife as well. This one is supposed to be a good place to watch for turtles if you have enough time and patience.

This is a transition from pond to forest. The pond is slowly filling with vegetation that may eventually support large trees.

These are dead cypress trees. They were killed by wildfire back in the 1950s. They are now favorite scratching posts for the 400 or so bears who live here.

This is a view of a prairie and a deep pond. Alligators nest near here. They lay 30-50 eggs on peat mounds. The heat of the decaying vegetation incubates the eggs.

This is the Owl’s Roost Tower located a the end of the boardwalk and the views from it.

I hope you enjoyed our visit to the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.

TTYL,

Linda

Shopping Day

While being a tourist is fun you can’t do it all the time. There are still chores to be done wherever and however you live. So today is shopping day.

First stop, Napa Auto Parts. Our oil is low. Our engine is a Mercedes Benz and it requires a type of oil not readily available. We weren’t too surprised when Napa didn’t have it.

Second stop–Publix Food. We managed to get some groceries we’ve been having trouble finding at WalMarts lately.

Driving up the US 95 towards Kingsland, Georgia, we lost our turbo again. I asked Dave how he could tell while driving on the flats and he said there was a sudden drop in the manifold pressure. So we got off the highway at the next exit and found an abandoned building with a circular drive where we could safely stop. Turning the engine off, waiting a couple of minutes, and turning it back on again resets everything so our turbo is back. An easy ramp back up to the freeway and we are on our way again.

We stopped at a Georgia visitor center to get a new highway map. I really appreciate that states give us these maps that I can fold, spindle, and mutilate however I want to make them most useful to us. I write all over them, too, circling places we need to be able to find on them.

Then we went to Ace Hardware trying to buy new tips for my cane. I wore one completely though so Dave made me a temporary cover from duct tape but I’ll feel much safer when we get real tips in it again. Unfortunately, Ace only had 7/8″ and I need 3/4″.

Then we went to Cracker Barrel for lunch. Have I told you yet how much I like their roast beef and hashbrown casserole? And the fact that they serve me enough of it to make two meals out of it? Yum!

A search on Dave’s iPhone for medical equipment found Jones Medical Equipment just up the street from us and they assured me they have cane tips but they hung up before I could ask about size. Yup. We got there OK but they had a choice of too small or too large. They recommended Rainbow Drug in Brunswick, Georgia.

But we’re not going that far today so we pulled into Crooked River State Park where they told us to feel free to take any empty spot. We choose #8. The whole area is one big grassy field with trees and electrical boxes scattered around. The ground is lumpy but that mean moving a few inches once way or another is likely to get you level enough. It would be a good place to have an RV rally, I think. Do you happen to know anyone looking for such a place around here?

TTYL,

Linda

Fort Clinch State Park

Fort Clinch State Park is our last stop in Florida.

I saw an armadillo walking by the side of the road here. I think of Texas when I think armadillo, NOT Florida. I have a hard enough time keeping track of where we are and what day it is without getting confusing signals like that.

We tried to go see the fort itself before checking into our campsite for the night but we got there just in time to see the last reenactor leaving for the day. We’ve probably seen enough forts for now anyway.

Our assigned campsite, #23, had a picnic table in the middle of it. We had to park on the narrow road while Dave moved it. People still managed to pass us, though. And once we got into the spot we discovered it was perfectly level. Yay!

But! When we plugged into the electricity we found an open ground so our EMS said, “No no.” Move or boondock? Too tired to move. So we opened the windows, turned on all our fans, and stayed put.

Outside our window is a clothesline installed as an Eagle Scout project.

Hanging from that clothesline is a blue glove of the type used to wash cars. Inside that glove is a bird nest. Next to the nest is a sign saying the birds don’t mind you using the clothesline.

Do you suppose the birds were too tired to move, too?

TTYL,

Linda

Fort Caroline and Kingsley Plantation

We waited for a lift bridge. It went way up for a small sailboat with a tall mast but came back down before the excursion boat passed under it.

We tried to go to the Castillo de San Marco in Saint Augustine, Florida. Their parking lot is limited to vehicles under 21 feet long. We are 24 feet not counting the Segway on the back. So we followed the signs to the over-sized vehicle parking but all we found was a parking ramp too short for us to get into. Oh, well. At least they were open. And I got a picture as we drove by.

We saw a boat so big it had a baby boat on the back of it which Dave called a “toad”. That’s what RVers call the cars they pull behind their big rigs. Sometimes they call it a “dinghy” since that’s what boaters call their rowboats they use to get to and from ships they anchor out a ways because they draft too much water to get into port. Technically the baby boat I saw was a dinghy but since it was the type motorboat often seen cruising on lakes and rivers in Minnesota it’s hard for me to think of it as a dinghy. It was a baby boat only in relationship to the one hauling it.

We then went to Fort Caroline National Memorial. According to their timeline we’ve all taken turns wiping out one another. The Timucuan Indian’s helped the French build Fort Caroline only to see it destroy their way of life. The Spanish attacked the French, who were Protestants, and Catholicism became the ruling religion. The Spanish then planted citrus trees. The British fought the Spanish then spent 20 years clearing the land. Spain regained control at the settlement of the Revolutionary War. During the Civil War the fort protected the plantations. Then the railroad brought the tourists. And here we are today being tourists reading about all of them. But are we learning anything?

At least Fort Caroline made us feel welcome by providing this:

Kingsley Plantation greeted us with a mile and a half of this road:

Definitely not big rig friendly. Not even small rig friendly Fortunately, other drivers were friendly.

At the end of that road we found this:

Mr. Kingsley owned many slaves including the one who became his wife and the mother of his four children. To me, that makes the following portion of the plantation even more astounding. This is what remains of 25 of the of the 32 slave cabins that housed as many as 60-80 slaves during Mr. & Mrs. Kingsley’s tenure.

Here’s a bit about the lives of those slaves.

And here’s some about the cabin materials.

What remnants of your culture still exist today?

TTYL,

Linda

Florida’s Space Coast

The bus in this area is called the Space Coast Area Transit. SCAT?!

We went looking for the Surf Museum in Cocoa Beach. Found an empty lot. We saw plenty of surfers at the beach but apparently not enough of them were buying stuff at the store that housed this museum. So, there’s another part of Florida’s story we don’t get to learn about. Bummer.

We drove by Port Canaveral. There were two big cruise ships in port. One of them was a Disney ship. We’ve cruised with Disney and had a good time. We were there for the Ebert & Roper Film Festival at Sea. For three years in a row we spent a weekend seeing films and discussing them with Roger and Richard and other film buffs. My favorite story of those trips is the time we were supposed to see Who Framed Roger Rabbit. That’s a Disney film and we were on a Disney ship but they couldn’t show us the film because they didn’t have the right projector to do so. Roger Ebert got pretty upset with them making us all sit in the theater while they tried to get it right. So he talked the staff into letting us move to a bar next door where we could at least visit with one another while we waited. Then he announced to us they would be serving beverages in the bar. The staff person’s mouth dropped open. But, serve us they did: screwdrivers and bloody Mary’s and fruit juice soft drinks since this was before lunch. We never did get to see that film that trip.

We headed north on I-95. We haven’t spent much time on Interstate freeways this trip so, even though we are nearly out of Florida, we came to our first Florida Rest Area Nice place. Vending machines. Recycling bins. Family rest rooms.

I learned to appreciate family rest rooms after Dave’s Dad had his stroke. While Carl was still in the hospital they made an appointment for him to see a dentist to replace the caps they lost when they intubated him. They provided transportation but he couldn’t go alone so I went with him. While there Carl needed to use the men’s room. He couldn’t go there alone either so I went with him. When the door opened while we were in there I was quick to announce my presence to the gentleman coming in. He looked startled, said he was only there to wash his hands anyway, did so, and left. Poor guy! I hope there was another restroom close by.

I saw a sign that said, “The cost of D.U.I. is sobering.” If only that was true. Many people pay the cost without ever getting sober. I have family that succeeded and family that didn’t. It’s hard to do.

Our next stop was Fort Matanzas National Monument. I wasn’t feeling well and this is a park that requires riding a ferry boat to an island then climbing 15 steps up to the fort. So I stayed home while Dave went. According to its website “The park commemorates the killing of nearly 250 French Huguenots by the Spanish, an act that gave the river and inlet the name Matanzas, Spanish for “slaughters”. One hundred seventy-five years later, the fort was constructed to help protect St. Augustine from a new threat – the British.” Here’s what Dave saw:

When we pulled into Anastasia State Park and were lucky enough to get a site for the whole weekend. It helps to stop for the weekend on Thursday instead of waiting until Friday.

So here we sit. Catching up on our computer stuff and researching Georgia, the next state on our trip up the Atlantic Coast. Our first stop in that state will be to pick up mail. I wonder if we’ll hear anything from any of you. Probably not. You all know by now the fastest way to reach us is e-mail.

TTYL,

Linda