Birthday Stamp - Hampton National Historic Site - 10/22/2016

When we drove across the country in 2012, it worked out that we were at the Jefferson Expansion National Monument (aka the St. Louis Arch) on July 12, which is Steve’s birthday.  Steve felt the need to gloat to me the entire drive home (which lasted 2 more days) about how he had a birthday stamp and I didn’t.  If you know me, you know that my competitive instincts kicked right in.  If you don’t know me, just know that this was killing me inside and Steve darn well knew it too.

We have the rule that we can’t go to a new park (or get the stamp) without the other one of us there as well.  So Steve’s gloating sort of backfired.  There is one National Historic Site about a half hour away from our house – it’s the closest park site to us.  For a few years now, we have had all sites in the mid-Atlantic region done, except for just this one in our home state.  I was never going to agree to go until we could go on my birthday.  This created a problem because with Steve being a teacher, we couldn’t go on October 22^nd until it was on a Saturday, which finally happened this year!  I had to endure four years of Steve’s gloating about this stamp, but it is worth it to finally have a birthday stamp (#222 on 10/22!), and I get the last laugh because it was in the National Park Service’s centennial year, which made it extra special for me!

That story aside – Hampton National Historic Site is a beautiful house dating back to the early generations of the Ridgley family.  They were filthy rich through the iron industry, and their wealth was prominently displayed throughout the home.  I should have written this blog sooner than I am now because I’m forgetting some of the facts already, but I think it took 7 years to build this massive house.  Hampton also has a bit of a dark history to it, although unconfirmed, about the mistreatment of their slaves.  We did a volunteer-led tour which was very interesting and the lady knew her stuff about the large Ridgely family.  It was hard to keep them all straight, but it helped that we would end up in the main hall with the pictures of the family members when she was switching gears to another branch of their tree!  All told, this was another interesting park site with a great tour!

St. Louis - 9/15 - 9/18

We had a whirlwind weekend trip to St. Louis!  I was headed there for a conference for work, and Steve decided to join me so we could hit a couple of parks (shocker, I know!).  I flew into St. Louis on Thursday, with my co-worker Irina.  Our conference was held at the Hyatt that is conveniently right next to the St. Louis Arch (also known as Jefferson Expansion National Memorial). Steve and I have already been up the arch when we drove across the country in 2012.  I knew Irina and I would have time to kill before the conference started on Thursday so I asked if she wanted to go up the arch, so we did.  For those who haven't gone up yet, you do get shoved in a very small tram car with four other strangers (or maybe people you are traveling with instead).  There are warnings that if you are claustrophobic you shouldn't ride it, but I promise you it isn't at all scary and the ride is only about a minute long to get to the top.  We lucked out with good weather that day, so we had some nice views at the top of the arch.  When we were done, Irina suggested watching the movie about how it was built.  I have no idea why, but Steve and I didn't watch this in 2012 (probably because we were short on time), but this was fascinating!  The footage they had of the arch being built and the engineering involved was crazy!  Surprisingly, no one died while the arch was built!  We also learned that the steel on the arch is only 1/4-inch thick - for some reason this was so shocking to me, and when we went back outside I checked one of the legs and sure enough, it's pretty thin!

Irina and I at the arch

The view from my room

For all intents and purposes of this blog, that evening and the next day were pretty boring because I was doing conference stuff.  But, Steve flew into St. Louis Friday evening, where he met me and my fellow insurance friends (notably Craig and Susan) for drinks at the bar.  We had a great time catching up!

After conference on Saturday, Steve and I were able to fit a whole bunch of stuff in the rest of the afternoon/evening!  Part of the Jefferson Expansion National Memorial is the Old Courthouse, about a block away from the arch.  Again, I don't know why Steve and I didn't go here in 2012, but we made time to do a ranger-led tour this time.  This courthouse is famous because many cases involving Dred Scott were held here and was eventually where he and his wife were freed.  Another famous case held here was about Virginia Miner and her lawyer-husband; they had attempted to win the right to vote for women.  Unfortunately, they were not successful in the many cases they had, but it at least got the conversation going!  I wouldn't quite put this tour in the "National Park Moment" status, but I will highly recommend talking to rangers when you go to parks - the tours are always so good.  With these two stories the ranger told, I felt like I jumped back in time to learn about these cases in much more detail than I did in school - in fact, with the Virginia Miner case, I don't think I ever learned about in school!  Sadly, the courtroom where the Dred Scott cases happened are no longer in the building, but they did have what they believed was the courtroom where he was freed.

The courthouse from the top of the arch (my hotel is to the right)

The atrium in the courthouse - so pretty

Where Dred Scott and his wife were freed

On the steps of the courthouse

After the courthouse tour, we headed to the free tour at Anheuser-Busch.  Back in 2012, we did the Coors tour in Colorado, and while that was really cool, this one was...prettier.  It is obvious AB has serious coin and that is reflected in what felt like their own small city where they brewed beer (and this was one of 6 locations that offer tours).  The tour starts off with a visit with the Clydesdales where I learned that they even have their own breeding program there.  After that, we went to see where the beer lives while brewing, and the beer was in enormous tanks!  So big, that if you wanted to drink one, you'd have to drink a beer every hour for 137 years, and there are over 200 tanks on that property!

One of the tanks that would take 137 years to drink.

Our first free sample - don't get too excited, it was just Budweiser.

The brewhouse

Our other free sample - both were Spaten beers (Optimator and Oktoberfest)

After the AB tour, we had a pretty late lunch at Schlafly Brewing and of course had a sampler.

Schlafly sampler

We got to Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site with enough time for a house tour.  You can only go into the house with a ranger present, and before getting into the house, the ranger gives a brief talk about how Ulysses came to live here.  The house was actually his wife's childhood home and when Ulysses and Julia marry, they end up living there.  Family dinners were interesting because Grant and his father-in-law didn't exactly see eye-to-eye on political issues, especially slavery.  The house was neat, but they don't have anything in the house, so you end up looking at empty rooms.  When we were getting ready to leave, the ranger asked where we were from and when we told him Maryland, he told us that Julia's mom was from Cumberland, MD and loved seashells from the shore.  She actually had some shells in the house that Julia always wanted to play with but her mom wouldn't let her.  One day, one of the slaves stole the shells and gave them to Julia to play with.  Julia warned that her mom would be very upset, but still played with them anyway.  When she was done with them a few nights later, she tried to put them away without anyone noticing, and when she got done, her father was standing right behind her!  They decided it would be their little secret and Julia never even implicated the slave.  See - talk to rangers so that you hear cute stories like that!

President Grant's House

We ended the day with a long drive to Ozark National Scenic Riverways (or as our GPS called it, Senick Ryverways...silly GPS).  We stopped for a sampler along the way at Public House Brewing Company.  The beers there were okay, but nothing too exciting.  We didn't get into our hotel in the Ozarks until late, so we saved all the sightseeing for Sunday.

Public House Sampler

Ozark was totally awesome!  I think it now becomes the second on my hidden gem list!  This park has so much to do in the summer - canoeing/kayaking, hiking, springs, caves!  Sadly, most of it is only open Memorial Day to Labor Day, so we didn't get to do the caves.  But we did get to several of the must-see springs.  We started off checking out Alley Spring and Mill which was so cool.  This spring's water output is about 81 million gallons a day!  The mill is super cute situated right on the spring, and the spring itself is crystal clear and a beautiful shade of blue/turquoise.  After Alley Spring, we attempted to go to one of the two Blue Springs.  We were sort of misguided on directions and found the river, and possibly what was Blue Spring, but it wasn't that exciting to see. We moved on to Big Spring, which had a cool "old park" feeling to it, which makes sense because the CCC worked on a lot of stuff in this area.  Big Spring's water output is over 200 million gallons of water a day, and again super clear and pretty!  We finally found a visitor center that was open after that so we could get our stamp and magnet and found out that the Blue Spring we went to was one that people often mistake for the other Blue Spring that the ranger highly recommended we go to.  First we went to Rocky Falls, which was really cool to see, then we went over to the "real" Blue Spring.  Crater Lake is a beautiful shade of blue, mostly because of how deep it is, but this shade of blue seemed unreal!  We marveled at its beauty for a while and then went over to Round Spring, which was our last stop in the park.  If we had time, we would have gone to Devil's Well, which looks really neat, so try to make time for it if you go.  But, that was a wrap for us so we drove a few hours back to the airport and headed home.

Alley Spring

Alley Mill

Big Spring

Big Spring

Rocky Falls

Us at Blue Spring - see how clear that is?!

Blue Spring - I still can't get over how clear that water is!

Blue spring - the picture doesn't do it justice how pretty this was.

Round Spring - this was bigger than what the picture makes it seem

Round spring is actually above what is shown here and drains down to this

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.