The End of Florida

Days 21-24

This 17th Century Bronze statue and its twin were brought back from China by Mr. Ripley, Believe It or Not!

When you reach St. Augustine many will stop at the Pirate & Treasure or Ripley's Museum, but  it's obligatory to check out the historic side of this city. There are a few interesting old churches and graveyards with their back stories, but the main draw from a historic point of view has to be the Castillo de San Marcos overlooking the old harbor as the only extant 17th century military construction in the country . Nestled snugly into the ground, it looks deceivingly diminutive from not too far back on its expansive grounds, but formidable when up close.

Castillo de Marcos

 Legend has it that on full moons atop the castle walls you can witness the ghosts of Ponce de Leon and his men battling it out with Seminole Indians and later would-be  invaders of the New World in a perpetual duel of swords, arrows, musket and cannon fire. And on really foggy nights angry spatterings of their native tongues can be heard echoing  across the waters. O.K., I made all that up, but hey, it's just another ghost story of which there are many in this, "America's most haunted city". 

Continuing up the coast I passed another ancient looking castle which caused me to double take and then bang a u-turn to have a closer look. It couldn't be real, but it looked as if it was out of Camelot. Pulling in for a closer look I read a placard that stated the castle was built not long, long ago, but fairly recently as a tribute to Jesus. Medieval castles for Jesus, that's a new one to me!

Up in Jacksonville Beach the population, at least at the beach, seemed to be decidedly less gray in the hair than the rest of Florida. Lots of action on the volleyball courts along with Frisbee playing and even a bunch of hippy culture young adults twirling balls on chains and playing with Hula hoops.

With the Florida tour quickly coming to an end I made one last stop at Osceola National Forest as I headed west towards Atlanta. Stopping at the Ranger's office to check-in and get a map I seemed to have interrupted the girl from her game of solitaire based on the wry look she gave me. "There is no check-in, no fees, camp anywhere, just don't dig anything up or burn anything down!" I was actually quite pleased with this reply and laissez-faire approach to managing the forest. Just the way I like it, you leave me alone and I'll leave you alone and we can both just mind our own business. 

I'm not sure what to say about Osceola. Historically, the Confederacy and Union armies met in the largest battle fought on Florida soil during the Civil War, the Battle of Olustee . Today apparently they do a lot of hunting there, but it's an odd park. I believe in the past it was over forested and then non native species began to take over. More recently they decided to burn out all the non native species (and everything else) and then replant and restore the area. The weird part that I noticed as I rode my bike along the fire roads is that all they seemed to replant are really tall, thin Pine trees reaching for the sky and short Date Palms holding down the fort along the ground. No oaks, no bigger palms, no anything else! It makes for a monotonous view with no points of reference (same flatness as the rest of Florida. Have I mentioned how Freaking Flat Florida is?!). However, if you do lose your way one thing is for sure, if you just stay between any one of the millions of perfectly straight lined rows of Pines you know at least you won't be going around in circles! So who knows, you might be "down" with it, or you might not "dig" it; just don't burn it "down" or "dig" it up! 

With that said there is one small section of heavily wooded swamp which is really cool. They've built a boardwalk a nice distance into it that gets you right out in it and makes you feel like part of an ecosystem which you wouldn't otherwise experience unless you were brave enough to put on waders and get chest deep in gators. Lastly, I have to give props to the 5 ft. Black snake who I nearly ran over. He seemed completely nonplussed by my presence, then hung out long enough for me get my camera and even posed for a few shots.

Late, on my last night in Florida in the wee hours of the morning, I had to get up to wee. The scene of stars through the canopy of towering Pine trees was spectacular. I almost set up the camera to capture it. Then I decided to capture some more sleep instead. I figure the stars aren't going anywhere!

 I, however, am!

 I've got Georgia on my mind.....

The Path Taken So Far.

{Technical Note for you number crunching engineers: At 4:30am (~max. Depth of discharge for the House Batteries) I had a reading of 12.56 Volts. That's only 0.04V less than full charge! Awesome!!} (Or maybe I was dreaming?!?!?)