Science Sunday

Today's post is brought to you by my ghost writer, Steve!  

We started "Science Sunday" with a trip to Kennedy Space Center.  We expected to only spend a couple hours here but we enjoyed ourselves so much that we stayed until almost 1:00.  We probably could have stayed longer but had to move on to Canaveral National Seashore.  The Atlantis exhibit is incredible!  The shuttle and its story are impressive by their own merit.  NASA did a great job presenting the history of the shuttle program in a manner that makes the whole experience memorable.  We also did the Shuttle Launch Experience, which left us both with some white knuckles.  The bus tour to the Apollo/Saturn V center took us past the active launch pads.  It was cool to see what the future of space travel holds!  And we got astronaut ice cream.  

We ended our trip with a stop at Canaveral National Seashore, which is next door to Kennedy SFC, but a full hour's drive away.  The main visitor center is next to the quasi-ghost town of Eldora, Florida.  The early 1900s community of around 100 people has withered to a few crumbling structures and the NPS-renovated house of one of the community founders.  It was intriguing to see how a community could grow and decline as the state of Florida changed in the 20th century.  

A quick drive took us to Orlando International Airport and the end of our vacation.  The memories will surely last us a lifetime and slaked our thirst for parks...for the time being... 

Driving and DeSoto

Today was a blah day because it was mostly a day of driving.  We went to GTM Reserve first this morning because it was recommended to us.  We didn't spend a whole lot of time here because we had to get to DeSoto before it closed, but that was a four hour drive away.  GTM had potential to be pretty cool, but we didn't have any time to do any hiking if we wanted to go to DeSoto.  Instead we went through the visitor center and checked the marsh behind it for any cool birds.  We really didn't see anything there that we haven't already seen in Florida, so we left pretty quickly.

On our way to DeSoto, we made a quick stop to Alligator Farm in St. Augustine.  We haven't seen an alligator in Florida, so we decided we weren't leaving until we definitely saw one.  We didn't just see one here, they have about 800 total!  It's also a zoo, so we checked out some of the other animals they have, which was mostly birds and reptiles.

DeSoto National Monument is a tiny park and has a few hiking trails.  We only had time to do the Short Nature Trail while we were there so they didn't lock our car in the parking lot.  The nature trail goes to DeSoto Point which is where Hernando DeSoto landed (and then decided to be a jerk to everyone, but that's just our opinion).  The nature trail is pretty easy, flat, and all in shade.  It walks along the water for half of the trail and points out some interesting plant life.

We ended the day with a two-hour drive to Orlando with a stop at Two Henry's Brewing for dinner and beers in small glasses.  They had great beer, decent food, but our bartender was awful.

Our last day on vacation is tomorrow where we will be going to Canaveral National Seashore and Kennedy Space Center.  I'll try to blog from the airport tomorrow if they have free wi-fi.

Cumberland Island National Seashore

First, sorry for the lack of a creative title today.

We spent all day at Cumberland Island National Seashore today, so this won't be too long of a blog.  We took the 9:00 ferry from St. Mary's over to Dungeness on Cumberland Island.  Dungeness is actually the ruins of a Carnegie mansion that burned down in 1959.  The mansion had been vacant for a few years before that though.  Based on the ruins, the 40-room mansion looked like it was beautiful back in the day.  It doesn't hurt that it's near the water with a lot of trees covered in Spanish moss too. For some reason, that look is so pretty to me!  While we were at the ruins, we saw several wild horses too.

We weren't able to get off the island until the 2:45 ferry so we ended up with a lot of time to kill after exploring the ruins.  We thought ahead and wore our bathing suits so we could spend time at the beach before catching the ferry.  I am so glad we did this, because it is extremely hot and humid down south!  We had about a mile long hike to get from Dungeness to the beach and it took us forever to finish that hike because of the heat.  Before going to the beach, we went to the nearby ranger station to eat lunch and we were joined by a young cardinal on our picnic table who was very interested in our lunch.  This bird was so close to us and would not leave us alone, so it made me think it was used to getting fed.  It was cute at first until its dad deposited a little something on Steve's head from the tree above us, so we moved to the porch of the ranger station where both birds followed us and landed on our chairs to beg for food.  It was cute at first, but then got really annoying after they followed us.  Seriously people, don't feed the wildlife, no matter how cute they are!

After lunch, we headed to the beach where we got in the water to cool off, only the water was about 84 degrees.  So while it was easy to get into the water, it was only refreshing when a breeze came through.  We stayed at the beach about an hour and then headed to the campground showers to change.  While I was changing, I noticed a tiny frog in the corner of the shower stall.  I did notice when I got in the shower stall that it didn't appear buggy like most campground showers...now I know why!  ;-) On our way back to the ferry dock, we also ran into an armadillo, which we were very excited to see!

We ended the evening with dinner and beer in small glasses at Engine 15 Brewing in Jacksonville Beach.  Very good food and beers - the Belgian Golden was so yummy!

Fort Caroline - Da Da Daaaaa!

I hope you're singing today's blog post to Neil Diamond's famous song...more about that later.  :-)

We flew from Puerto Rico to Orlando today and quickly made our way to Fort Matanzas National Monument.  This was a pretty cool site - Fort Matanzas was actually a watchtower for "the back door to St. Augustine."  The fort itself was built in the 1700's, but there was a wooden watchtower even earlier than that.  This fort was super small, but it served its purpose back in the day.  It was never fired at, but in the 80 years it was active, it fired warning shots 12 times, resulting in the bad guys turning away each time.  This site also had a 1/2-mile long Nature Trail, and the only thing we saw on this trail were Golden Silk Spiders.  These things were all over the trail and they were huge, yuck.

Next we went to Castillo de San Marcos National Monument.  This is another fort in St. Augustine, FL, which seemed like a really cute town!  This fort was pretty cool and is the main fort that defended St. Augustine.

After Castillo de San Marcos, we went over to Fort Caroline National Memorial.  This was a very pretty stop and is the reason for today's blog title - we couldn't stop singing this in the car and while at the fort.  The fort doesn't exist anymore, and the NPS has recreated what they believed the fort looked like.  The hike to the fort is a very easy and shady 1/2-mile, and is a very pretty hike with all the Spanish moss in the trees.  We also started to hike to Spanish Pond and Aligator Pond across the street from the visitor center, but we turned around when the mosquitos were a bit too hungry and so were we.

We had dinner at Amelia Tavern which we thought was a brewpub, but it turns out they do not make their own beer.  They are a relatively new place, so I'm wondering if they just haven't started their own beer yet.  The beers they did have were good.  I really liked the brown and of course Steve liked the Belgian IPA.

Sorry, I'm a Grumpy Gus Tonight...

I'm currently on the balcony of our hotel overlooking the lagoon in Puerto Rico enjoying a Sprite and lemonade mixed with Bacardi dragonberry rum.  After the day we had, this is what we needed...

We started today with a delicious quiche breakfast at our hotel (seriously stay at Arawack Bay Inn if you come to St. Croix!) then headed over to the airport to fly to San Juan.  We purposely aren't staying in PR long because neither of us had the desire to stay here longer than it takes to see the only National Park site that is here.  I will admit, I had a lot of assumptions of Puerto Rico and I was trying to come into this place with an open mind and try to find the beauty in it.  But, it's just not here in my opinion.  A lot of people kept hyping up Old San Juan as this beautiful area, but we saw a couple pretty buildings in what is really a giant construction zone and run-down city buildings.  I'm sorry San Juan, but this isn't what I think of when I think of the Carribbean.  I realize the construction is temporary and it seems like they are trying to make the waterfront prettier with it, but I just can't get past the congested city feeling either.

We went right from the airport to San Juan National Historic Site.  This is comprised of two forts about a 20-minute walk away from each other.  We went to Fort San Cristobal first and just driving in we were initially impressed with how massive it is!  We also went to Fort San Felipe del Morro which is big as well, but also a little more scenic.  If you can only do one, I recommend El Morro.  Both forts are big and like a maze!  I understand why these are National Park sites - they are actually really neat to see.  But here's my problem...we saw so many people smoking on the property and not a single ranger asking people not to do that.  We also ran into a crowd of locals who were blasting a radio that played 90's Cranberries and Jewel.  Again, no ranger asked them to lower the volume of the music.  There were also two cruise ships in town which means these forts were packed.  The smoking and the music really bothered me, especially since locals were doing it and that rangers really didn't seem to mind.  It really did kind of ruin the experience for me.  I've come to expect a certain level of respect to the park and the people in it at a National Park, and that just wasn't there today.

After the forts, we had reservations for the Bacardi historical tour.  This is a $15 tour that really only walks you through the visitor center and, of course, ends at the gift shop.  Honestly, we thought the Cruzan tour and rum were better.  Here's the other thing that bothered me today...as we were entering the Bacardi facility, we heard a racial slur from one of the Bacardi security guards that checks us into the tour.  Not sure if it was towards us, regardless, it certainly made me uncomfortable, which again gave me reason not to enjoy our time in Puerto Rico.

Sorry this post is so full of complaints, but I really don't think we'll be coming back here anytime soon now that the park is done.  The silver lining though would be that I do recommend the forts because they are really pretty to see, and hopefully you have a more pleasant experience than we did.

Ooooooh Barracuda!

Today was a super busy day, but so awesome!  We started by hitting Christianstead National Historical Site right when it opened.  We had intended to get the stamps (so we didn't have to carry our book all day) and come back later to actually tour the fort, but the fort was so small that we were able to get this done right away.  The fort was built by the Danish to protect their interests in the Carribbean, including slavery.  The dungeon had some very tight quarters!

After the fort, we boarded the Adventure through Big Beard's to head over to Buck Island Reef National Monument.  Big Beard's has a half or full day snorkeling tour, and we chose the half day.  I had my fill of snorkeling on St. John, and found out there that it really is just not my cup of tea, so I didn't snorkel here.  On the half day trip, Big Beard's makes two snorkel stops.  The first stop is at Turtle Beach on Buck Island and Captain John mentioned that this beach is always on "America's Most Beautiful Beaches" lists.  It was a very pretty beach, and was a lot like Trunk and Maho Bay on St. John.  At Turtle Beach, the crew gives a snorkel class on the beach and then you get about an hour there to get used to snorkeling.  During the class, I noticed a big moving dark spot in the water and thought it might be a turtle, but as it got closer, it was much bigger than a turtle.  Keep in mind this thing swam by just as the snorkelers were about to get in the water.  I asked Captain John what it was and he let me know that it was an 8-foot tiger shark.  Steve saw it from where he was also, but didn't have a good view of it.  He asked what it was and was so glad to hear he was about to swim with a shark.

After about an hour of snorkeling there, you move over to the East side of the park to snorkel in much rougher water to swim around coral reef.  Steve really liked what he saw but he said this was really hard to snorkel in because of the waves.  He was about ready to come back to the boat when he saw a barracuda.  Steve got a picture of him and thought it was time to head back to the boat.  Every time he took a break getting to the boat, he'd turn around and there was that dang barracuda, chasing him!  It really did follow him until he got totally out of the water.  A lot of people saw the barracuda, so it must have been having a great time scaring all the humans.

A couple things made this a really fun trip for me, because you're probably wondering how I had fun if I didn't snorkel.  First, no one saw turtles while snorkeling, and they are rarely seen while snorkeling here.  Instead, you see them on the boat ride while getting to/from the Monument.  We saw about a dozen of them and this honestly makes the trip worth it for me!  It is mating season, so they spend more time at the surface now, which is why we saw so many of them.  The bad news is, it's really hard to get a picture of them because you see them in a wave and then they disappear.  We did however get a picture of two of them mating, so my apologies for the turtle porn when I do eventually add pictures.  ;-). The other thing that made this fun was that a couple people on the boat were really interested in our hobby.  Steve and I love the National Parks and we love what we see and experience in a National Park.  It's even more fun to talk about with people and hopefully encourage them to go "find their park" as well.  I think the couple from Michigan that just got married may have caught the bug because of us and that makes me happy.

We had lunch right on the water after the boat tour where Steve tried conch fritters for the first time. He said they just tasted like "deep fried."  We wrapped up our time in downtown Christianstead by picking up some souvenirs and trying on some beautiful tanzanite rings.  Stupid house budget for next year got in the way of actually purchasing said beautiful tanzanite rings.  :-(

We drove to Point Udall after lunch, which is the eastern-most point of the United States.  When we got there, there was not a soul to be found.  So we took a few selfies and admired the view for all of 5 minutes when a car with two sketchy people drove by (it's a dead end road), so we quickly got in the car and left.

We did an early dinner at Rowdy Joe's again and I enjoyed another giant mojito.  They put basil in their mojitos which is a really nice touch!

The other park on St. Croix is Salt River Bay National Historical Park & Ecological Preseve.  Before we left on this trip, we tried to book a kayaking tour of the bioluminescent bay, but they warned us that it would be a very bright moon that night making it a less than thrilling experience.  That and the fact that I really had no desire to kayak made us turn it down.  But, today we mulled it over some more and thought if we didn't at least try it, we might regret it.  So we called up Bush Tribe Kayak Tours and they still agreed to take us out.  It was just the two of us on the tour with Chris, our tour guide.  Boy am I glad we did this!  They warned us again that the bright moon would mean not much bioluminescence, but it was still really cool!  We started the tour at 6:30 and we went to the rookery first, where we saw some egrets, pelicans, and ibis.  Then we headed over to another bay right next to the bioluminescent one to find some small sharks, but they didn't cooperate.  Then we ended the tour in the bioluminescent bay where we saw the plankton that light up.  This was so fun - once you move your hand in the water, it glitters!  We tried getting pictures, but I'm sure they won't show up.  We tried to find a jellyfish that lights up, and we didn't find one, but another kayak tour did and they had it in a cup for their tour (they let it go at the end); they were nice enough to share their jellyfish with us, where we were able to touch it to make it light up.  You can definitely tell Chris loves his job and he was an awesome tour guide!  He was also interested in our little hobby so we ended up just swapping a lot of stories as well.  I highly recommend doing this, especially through Bush Tribe, and even better if you can get Chris to be your tour guide!

Is It a Boat that Flies or a Plane that Swims?

...That was the question Steve posed to me today before we got on our first ever sea plane ride to go from St. Thomas to St. Croix.  The sea plane was a fun experience and the flight was only about 20 minutes long.  We got a few pictures from the air, but again, I'm not dealing with pictures on the iPad.

After we landed, we checked into our hotel and then headed right out to the Cruzan Tour.  Stephanie was a really fun tour guide/bartender!  All of Cruzan rum is made on St. Croix and then they ship it off to Jim Beam in Kentucky to add fruity flavor to some of the rum and bottle it.  They give you a lot of free samples of the rum and two free mixed drinks!  Needless to say, we enjoyed ourselves quite a bit at our first stop!

Our next stop was to the St. George Estate Botannical Gardens.  This was beautiful but it was so HOT!!  The estate used to be a sugar plantation so it was cool to see some of the plantation ruins along with some very pretty gardens.

We ended the day with dinner at Rowdy Joe's only a couple miles away from our hotel.  This place was so good and their homemade ice cream was really yummy!  More adventures tomorrow in St. Croix!