Jacksonville & St. Augustine

From Brunswick, we went to Jacksonville, Florida. Jacksonville is in Duval County. The county was named after William Pope Duval, the first Governor of Florida Territory, and Penny's second cousin five times removed. If for no other reason, we were glad to see the area for which one of her family members was the namesake.

We arrived in Jacksonville in time for the big University of Florida/University of Georgia football game. Shortly after we arrived, the fans started pouring in. These three coaches were Gator fans.
The Georgia fans were not to be outdone. Between a couple of these coaches was a pavilion tent with what looked like a pretty good party going.
We waited until the game was over to see downtown Jacksonville. In this photo, a water taxi is passing a signature fountain. There is no old town Jacksonville to speak of. A fire in 1901 wiped out much of the city. 10,000 buildings were erected between 1901 and 1912. Most of those have since been razed and replaced by newer construction. Jacksonville was once considered the winter motion picture capital, but the conservative nature of the local politics along with the emergence of Hollywood put an end to that.
Andrew Jackson was the namesake of the city. He was highly esteemed in the area because he chased the warring Seminoles out of Eastern Florida.
We found these whimsical signs, placed around the downtown area quite delightful.
As you might expect, it takes a lot of power to keep all of those air conditioners running. In this complex are generators powered by coal, oil, natural gas, and biomass.
In the edge of Jacksonville is the Timucuan preserve, named after the local tribe of Native Americans. American beautyberries, such as these, were once a folk remedy used to repel biting insects. They are plentiful in this party of the country. The trees in the background ranged from two species of liveoaks, to at least three species of hickories, to longleaf pines, to baldcypress in wet areas, and were heavily festooned with Spanish Moss.
This reproduction of a Timucuan hut sits next to a pile of oyster shells, indicating a staple of their diet.

This column is a reproduction of the column erected by the French Huguenot explorer Jean Ribault somewhere near this area.

There weren't a whole lot of people at this monument, but we had plenty of company. These little guys were everywhere.

Two years after the Ribault expedition, Rene Gaulaine de Laudonniere, seeing an opportunity for the French Huguenots to have a place of refuge where they could prosper, established Ft. Caroline, reproduced here. It was the first European settlement in the new world. Unfortunately, the following year, a Spanish force from nearby St. Augustine overran the fort, and killed virtually everyone here. It's unclear whether this was a reflection of the Spanish Inquisition of nearly 100 years earlier, or simply a pragmatic desire to not have to share this land with any other country.

This is the only entrance to the Castillo de San Marcos. Construction was initiated in 1568 after a pirate raid left the surrounding town of St. Augustine devastated. The moat over which these bridges are constructed is and was designed to be dry. During hostile action, the Spanish drove their cattle here to keep them from being stolen and give them some semblance of safety.

About the only type of rock available to build this fort was a local stone known as coquina. It is the compressed calcareous remains of millions of generations of small shelled organisms. In a few million years, this would have turned into limestone, but as it was, it was excellent for construction of a fort. When cannonballs struck this stone, rather than fracturing, a few inches of shells simply compressed into the numerous air spaces, and the projectile fell harmlessly

to the ground. This model illustrates the ingenious configuration of the fort. Cannons of the day could only be swiveled a few degrees. Despite this, overlapping fields of fire could cover any direction from the fort. It was never taken by hostile action.

Some of the cannons facing the Matanzas river line up in one of the corner bastions. During Spanish occupation, no soldiers lived within the fort. Rather, they lived in the surrounding community and came to work their twenty four to forty eight hour shift in the fort at the appropriate time.

This a the view looking down from one of the corner bastions. The oven was placed outside the main walls of the fort. Having something like this anywhere near the powder magazine was not a particularly good idea.

Here, in old St. Augustine is an oyster shell tabby wall similar to that shown in an earlier blog entry from Savannah. We've seen quite a bit of this stuff in several places. What a great way to use locally available materials.

Another building in St. Augustine is shown here. Built over 200 years ago, it is billed as the oldest wooden schoolhouse in North America. Of course, Penny had to have a photo of it.

This is old town St. Augustine. During early English colonization, St. Augustine accepted runaway slaves as a part of the community. It later became a part of the underground railroad. Obviously, it has now become quite a tourist attraction. There are a number of neat little shops and great smelling restaurants down this street. I'll have to admit, we did leave a bit of money there.

Dating from some time before 1750, this house was once owned by an early Spanish Treasurer. Later, it was a home for Governor John Moultrie, brother of William Moultrie, namesake of Ft. Moultrie, SC, and a revolutionary war hero. The house finally become the property of a local physician who willed it to the city.

This is Ponce de Leon Hall of Flagler College. Built adjacent to old town St. Augustine, it was once the Ponce de Leon Hotel. One of the driving forces and large benefactors behind the hotel's conversion to an institution of higher education was Lawrence Lewis Jr, Grandson of Henry Flagler. Flagler was a partner in, and provided $100,000 dollars seed money for John D. Rockefeller's business venture which later became Standard Oil. Flagler is highly regarded in much of Florida since he also provided money for many Florida development projects.

Brunswick, Georgia, Oct. 24 thru 25 - 2009

We stopped in Brunswick, Georgia to see my cousin, Ron and his family. When Ron and I were small, we lived in St. Louis near each other. Ron was about as close to a brother as I ever had. Like most brothers, when one got into trouble, we were usually both in on it. Diane and Ron raised their two boys while serving in the Coast Guard all over the United States. When my family moved to Oklahoma, Ron and I began to lose track of each other. We were able to catch-up and reconnect. Rob, Ron and Diane's son took this photo with Ron's camera.

Their grandson, Drake, is four and joined us for dinner - s0 cute.

Denise is Drake's big sister. She got to visit our RV with her grandparents. It was fun to see her enthusiasm for our way of life. She is in second grade so Penny enjoyed conversation with her. Her interest in science kept me captivated. Unfortunately, we didn't get a good photo of everyone. Rob, Ron and Diane's son, is hidden behind Drake. We were delighted to get to know Rob and his wife, Christy.

Ron works for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. On our last day there, he gave us a great tour of this state of the art facility. It was quite impressive and very interesting. These agencies such as the Secret Service, NCIS, Border Patrol, and many more that compose Homeland Security receive training in a variety of disciplines ranging from pursuit driving to marksmanship and other weapons training to explosives ordinance.

This picture, taken off the web photo, is of the memorial to graduates of FLETC, who have been killed in the discharge of their duties. We're extremely grateful for places like this and the people who work and train there.

Savannah

One of the disadvantages of this lifestyle is that there is always a pest du jour. We have fought gnats, ants, spiders, boxelder bugs, and probably a few more that I can't remember at the moment. Usually moving on eliminates the problem. When we were in Winchester, Virginia, these stinkbugs were everywhere. Fall was coming on, and they were looking for sheltered places to overwinter. The seals around our slideouts, our awnings, and several other places on our coach provided excellent overwintering places. We, however, have been moving steadily south into warmer weather, so we have been picking these little pests out of every conceivable place in the coach. Those of you not from the midwest may ask why are they called stink bugs. Because it you squish them, they stink to high heaven. So, this means each one must be captured carefully and taken outside before the death sentence is carried out or .... Releasing them is almost a guarantee that as night and cooler air arrives, they will return to sleep with us.

We stayed in a nice little RV park south of Savannah. Out our front window was a cute little lake with with several different types of birds. Penny got this photo of three cormorants perched on this branch. They were later joined by two more.
There were several different types of domestic and wild birds inhabiting this lake. On one end, there were several beautiful, graceful swans.
On the other end, were these Muscovy ducks with faces only a mother could love.

Toward the end of the lake was this small island with several trees and shrubs peeking out of the water. This is what they looked like during the day.

As the evening began to fall, however, flights of egrets began to emerge from the skies and land in these branches.

By the evening, just about everything was out of the water. I suspect this fellow had something to do with that.

Although we spent a day continuing to recuperate from our colds, we did manage to get out a bit more here. This is River Street. It is filled with cute little shops and restaurants on the one side, and, of course, the the Savannah River on the other side.

One of this first things we saw as we walked was this model of the S.S. Savannah. Departing from Savannah, it became the first steamship to successfully cross the Atlantic in 1819. Before departing, it was toured by President James Madison.

At one time, Savannah was the cotton capital of the world. This building was the old cotton exchange. This photo does not do the age of this building justice. When Sherman took Savannah, there were several bales of cotton in nearby warehouses. Sherman inventoried them several times, then at the insistence of Secretary of War Stanton, they were surrendered to a United States Treasury agent. Almost immediately, several thousand bales of cotton disappeared and were never accounted for. Some things never change.

At the east end of River St. is East Factor's Walk. Along this walk is this statue of the Waving Girl. It was constructed in memory of Florence Martus. After an intense but unfruitful love affair, she began waving at every arriving ship hoping one might bear her beau. Eventually, she starting waving at departing ships. From the late 1880s until 1931, often accompanied by her collie, she waved a greeting to every ship coming into port, and a farewell to every departing ship day or night. It was said she waved at over 50,000 ships during this period.Here, River Street and the Factor's Walk curl around these walls to E. Bay Street. I wondered if these small windows were originally gun ports.

Above East Factor's Walk is Emmet Park filled with live-oaks and Spanish moss. As we began our walk around the city, we passed a police station. We thought these old police cars out front were a neat touch.

One of the things you notice quickly as you walk around the old residential area are the windows and doors painted this dark bluish green color. This is "haint paint" It is supposed to keep evil spirits or "haints" from entering the house.

There were lots of neat old houses near downtown. This one was the birthplace of Juliette Gordon Low. For those of you who were Girl Scouts, you may remember, she founded

the Girl Scouts of America.This flashy building is the Savannah city hall. When it was built in 1901, it generated considerable controversy because of its price tag. Several architectural features of the original design were omitted to save money.

In several places, streets and walks are paved with this cement-like stuff, oystershell tabby. It is made from whole oyster shells, ground oyster shells, ashes, and sand. It is, apparently, quite durable since some has been in place for over 100 years.

This is Colonial Park Cemetery. It was filled with these neat historical markers. Bulloch was an early advocate of American Independence. You may have heard of his great-great-grandson, Theodore Roosevelt. Some of the stones behind this marker likely belonged to some of the nearly 700 Savannahians who died in the great yellow fever epidemic of 1820. The population of Savannah at the time was 7,523. They lost nearly 10% of their population.

This was one of those cool little serendipitous things. The vault you see was the first resting place of Major General Nathaniel Greene, Savannah native, and probably the most brilliant tactician of the American Revolutionary War. He was interred in the Graham family vault. For years, the whereabouts of Greene's remains were unknown.

This is a monument dedicated to General Greene. The Marquis de Lafayette laid the first cornerstone. After resting in Colonial Park Cemetery for 114 years, Greene's remains were eventually located and moved here.

After walking all over Savannah and working up a hunger, we came here to The Lady and Sons restaurant for lunch. For those of you who aren't Food Channel addicts, it belongs to Paula Deen, the Southern Foods guru. Unless you are a party of 10 or more, you must make reservations in person on the day you intend to dine. We made our reservation at 11:30 am and the next available spot was at 2:30 pm. However, the buffet cost $13.00 and was absolutely delicious. Penny had the first collard greens she ever liked. We were surprised at the quality and impressed with the organization. Service was impeccable. She has it wired.

The next day we went to Tybee Island. We had lunch at the Crab Shack shown here. My lunch was quite good, but Pen didn't care for hers. Note the light fixtures and the tables with the hole and trash can in the center. Great for discarding your empty oyster and crab shells. Everything is disposable so no dishwashers needed. For $3.00, you can buy food to feed the alligators. The owner was actually quite an alligator fan. There was a sign saying that there are 5-6 attacks on humans each year. His contention was that you should be more afraid of the family dog.

This moat surrounds one of the places that Ted wanted to see - Ft. Pulaski. Following the war of 1812, a series of coastal defenses was constructed. One of the engineers was a young Second Lieutenant Robert E. Lee. It was considered invincible. Early in the war, it was surrendered to the Confederates without a shot being fired. After it had fallen into confederate hands, General Lee visited the fort and told the commander that the Union may attempt to take the fort, but he could sleep soundly knowing it couldn't be done.

What Lee did not know about was this newly developed weapon, the thirty pounder-Parrott Rifle. This one is now at the fort, but at the time would have been on Tybee Island, aimed at the fort. It could fire further, with more accuracy, and hit harder than anything previously known.

This section of the fort, now manned by this damaged Columbiad cannon was quickly demolished by fire from nearby Tybee Island.

This is the area underneath the Columbiad shown above. It was completely demolished. When a shell was fired through the large hole in the fortification and landed only a few feet from the powder magazine, the Confederate commander, knowing that a hit on the magazine would destroy the fort and kill everyone inside elected to surrender. You can see where new brickwork, laid by the victorious Union soldiers meets the older, darker bricks. This battle was the death knell for heavy fortifications of this type. It was an object lesson on the illusive nature of invincibility

There were two, more durable, legacies. Cockspur Island, on which Ft. Pulaski is located was the landing place of John Wesley, founder of American Mathodism, when he came to America.

With the Yankees now World Champions, the second seems especially pertinent. A photo of a Union formation was taken inside the fort. In the background, a group of soldiers were playing a game defined by rules formulated by Union General Abner Doubleday. It was the earliest known photograph of a baseball game being played by. . . . a bunch of Yankees of course.

The Carolinas

After leaving Virginia, we drove to the Golden Triangle of North Carolina.

Our trip here had one major objective, and this was it. It had been far too long since we had seen our niece Lauren.

Lauren was recently awarded her Master's in Environmental Science, and is now on the staff at Duke. She is very bright, and very involved in a fascinating program designed to characterize the effects of global warming on forest community structure. Ted, the biologist, had a great time talking with her and swapping war stories.
Lauren suggested that we meet at a local restaurant, The Magnolia Grill. They're famous for combining seemingly incompatible flavors and coming up with something wonderful. We had, perhaps, the best meals we've had this year. These desserts were too beautifully presented to snarf without at least taking a photograph.
Almost everywhere you drive there are these little roads that seem to invite you to follow them for a while. This may be a place we will have to return to take advantage of a few more of them.From there, we went to Charleston. As we drove in, we saw many of these little roadside stands selling"sweetgrass" baskets. They are made by techniques brought from Africa by early African-American slaves. They were extensively used by residents of Gullah Island to hand-separate rice from husks. As the name implies, they are made primarily with a local grass called sweetgrass, also known as purple muehly. These baskets are true works of art, and carry prices that reflect that. I'm talking $250 for a bread basket!
This is the view we had from our front window. A large live-oak tree covered with Spanish Moss extended over our campsite. The upside was that it was beautiful and shaded. The downside was an almost constant rain of ripe nuts on top of our coach. Unfortunately we came down with some form of creeping crud while we were here, and didn't get to take full advantage of the area. If we had to be sick, however, this was a nice place to sit and heal.

We did, however, recover well enough to spend at least one afternoon in Charleston. On the way in, we passed a fire station with this whimsical casting outside.

There was block after block of these neat old homes on the riverfront.

This is South Battery Street. To the right is White Point Garden. It is filled with beautiful big willow-leaf live-oaks covered with Spanish moss. True to the state nickname, there were palmettos everywhere.

This is the Charleston customs house. Construction was began in 1855, but funds began to dry up as it became apparent that South Carolina was about to secede. It was completed after the conclusion of the Civil War.

We wish we had felt better, we feel that we gave Charleston short shrift, but since the next move was to Savannah, we were eager to get on the road.