Way Down Upon The Swanee River

 Way down upon the Swanee River,

Far, far away.

That's where my heart is yearning ever, 

Home where the old folks stay.

It has been extremely hard to get reservations in state parks. There was a cancellation at the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park and I was able to snap up two days in the park. I was particularly excited because this state park was all about Folk Culture, hence the name. They had a small village where they had artisans working. There was a museum and also a carillon bell tower. I was all set to get my culture on.

Since I was there for only one full day, as soon as I got set up, I ran over to the museum to check it out. All the doors were locked. The museum and the artisan village have all been closed since last year because of Covid. I asked about the bell tower and why I hadn't heard any bells yet. I was told that the bells had been refurbished and something went wrong with the process. The bells sounded horrible and people begged the park to turn them off. I was a little disappointed but there were still some trails to walk along the Suwannee River. I did have a little bit of trouble though. Once you start singing the Stephen Foster song Suwannee River, it gets in your head and you can't get it out. There is nothing worse than an ear worm. By the way, Stephen Foster was from Pittsburgh and never saw the Suwannee River.  He also evidently didn't know how to spell.   

The bell tower

Water was so high that the flood marker was totally under water

My site - lots and lots of room

Jacksonville Florida is rather a surprising city. It has the most people for a Florida city and it is the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. I think of Jacksonville as a city of bridges connecting all the little islands that jut into the salt marshes and the ocean. It seemed like almost every bridge I crossed, I had to go up, up, up and then it is back down, down, down. This is because Jacksonville is also a big time harbor and these bridges need to accommodate ocean going monster ships. I found, especially when I was pulling my fifth wheel that it was extremely nerve racking.

Again I lucked out and was able to stay in a county park.  The Kathryn Abbey Hanna Park is a city park that has several hundred campsites.  The roads were extremely narrow and there were many low hanging branches.  It was tough getting in there, but get in there I did.  The great thing about this park is that on one side of the park is a lake with a rookery and on the other side of the park is the Atlantic Ocean.  There was also lots of lush vegetation to wander thru.

The Rookery.  There were three islands filled with birds.

A dog friendly beach

It's been a while since I've gotten any Junior Ranger badges. Today I will rectify this.

Fort Caroline – So, Fort Caroline was one of the first European settlements in North America. It was settled mostly by French Huguenots seeking religious freedom and perhaps who were also looking for gold and silver. It started out sort of like a stealth village since this was originally Spanish territory. It was another Mayflower story, where the local Native tribes (in this case the Timucuans) kept the settlers from starving. The Timucuans helped out until the French started doing their traditional European conquer the heathens thing. The French left the fort to attack the Spanish, got blown off course by a hurricane. While they were gone, the Spanish attacked the fort, massacring most of the settlers. Then the Spanish found the shipwrecked French, and did them in. Three years later, the French got revenge when they attacked the fort and killed everybody there. We humans are such wonderful beings, aren't we? Current day – nobody knows where the actual fort was so they built a replica fort that might look like it did originally and called it a National Memorial. Badge #1 achieved.

The replica fort was pretty lame, but I thought the door to the fort was sort of cool.

Kingsley Plantation – Google told me that it would take me 40 minutes to get there and I couldn't figure it out since it was only 8 miles away. Well, the road was narrow and pockmarked dirt where you really went maybe 5 mph. The plantation was interesting, even though you could not tour the plantation house. This was the first plantation that I have visited where the story was about the enslaved people. Other plantations that I've been to all emphasized the white owners and how nice and lovely life on the plantation was for everybody. This plantation was very much more about the enslaved.

Zephaniah Kingsley, the patriarch, was an interesting fellow. Although he was a slavetrader and slave owner, he did not think the enslaved were lesser beings. In fact, he bought a thirteen year old slave girl, Anna, in 1806. He married her and had children with her. He was also a polygamist, adding three more sister wives into the mix. All of these women were black. He freed them, educated the children to a high degree. Anna basically ran the plantation herself and also owned slaves herself. I had a hard time wrapping my head around that particular fact. Once the Kingsley plantation became part of Florida, with all of their laws pertaining to subjugated peoples, Kingsley up and took his family to Haiti where the laws were much more favorable to mixed race families.

The road to the Plantation

The main house