Events of Friday, January 7, 2011

            When I grow familiar to a place, I memorize its sights and sounds. For example, over the course of my life I have gone up my driveway at home countless times. No one else’s driveway is quite the same. Driving home late at night from swim events, parties or trips, I remember the exact sound of us turning onto our street and then, after so long, the clunk, clunk, clunk, of us going onto the driveway. Coming home from different outings, pretending to sleep, I hear that and I know that soon I will have to get up and go inside, unload, and go to bed. Now that we don’t exactly have a driveway, I also notice other sounds. One of the most common is in the morning. Maybe someone coughing, or the heater, or my own natural alarm awakes me. Maybe I’m just half asleep. But, when I hear the clunk of Daddy open the door, climb in and the click when he turns on the light, I know it’s time to get up and get going.

            Hearing this familiar sound this morning, I prepared to fling my pillow in the direction of Ben’s bed. When we make our beds each morning, we have to put all our pillows and folded blankets somewhere, so we have a “put on bed”. When we awake, the first person to have a pillow on his or her bed, not counting his or her own pillow, is the “put on bed”. This person gets to lie in bed until someone else is done with their bed. Sometime this is good, sometimes it is not. Usually it’s not. So, having flung my pillow onto Ben’s bed, not knowing that he was on a run, I started to make my bed. At last everyone’s bed was made and we dressed and had breakfast. Following breakfast, we had devotions and pulled in the slide outs.

            Driving out of the overflow parking lot, we got on the road to Florida. On the road, we were determined to not be bored. Ben and I finished the last book of the trilogy of the Lord of the Rings, a book we have been working on since the beginning of the trip. Ben scanned the appendix, but I set out to read the whole appendix and pick up the Elvish language as well. We also played with those little handheld games, the favorite of mine being the Etch-a-Sketch. Other people read, slept, or just looked out the window. Soon we crossed the St. Mary’s River, the border of Florida and Georgia. Soon after the border was a rest stop. We pulled off to get some information about Florida. We found the parking lot filled with RV’s, the most RV’s that we’ve seen in weeks! The bathrooms were huge and the information center was packed. We made our way to a counter where samples of Florida orange juice and Florida grapefruit juice were being given out. After tasting these delicious juices, we started looking at the brochures. I found some brochures about Disney World – I’m so excited about it – and Mom got information about the National Parks in Florida. We went back to the RV and sent Daddy in to check on camping. He had found us a campground for tonight and reserved the last spot in an amazing campground practically right in Disney World! It even has a free shuttle to all the parks! Good job Daddy!

            After a short drive we arrived at Everybody’s Restaurant, a restaurant that we have had recommended to us by some source or another. Anyway, we went into this restaurant and were very surprised by what we saw. Personally, I saw a bar and a lot of strangers looking at me strangely. Then this voice with a clear Southern accent told us to find a seat wherever we’d like. We found a table that sat six and sat down. Soon the lady came and asked us what we would like to drink, and our unique lunch began. We ended up each ordering unique Southern dishes and sharing them around, and then finishing your own plate. Mom ordered a combo with fried catfish, hushpuppies, grits, collard greens, sweet pickled beets and vanilla pudding, and Dad ordered another combo with sausage patties, gravy, rice, field peas, and banana pudding. Caitlin ordered a fried shrimp basket with salad and fries, which came with a huge bottle of ranch salad dressing. Ben ordered a combo of mesquite grilled chicken breasts, fried squash, baked beans, and macaroni salad. Lindsey ordered the restaurant’s specialty:  fried pork chops with potato salad, mashed potatoes with gravy, and a dessert of vanilla pudding. I ordered a club sandwich, consisting of three slices of bread, three thick slices of ham, lots of tomatoes and lettuce, lots of cheese, and tons of bacon with a side dish of onion rings. The whole meal was very yummy and we ended up very full.

            Having satisfied our stomachs, we exited the restaurant and drove to Costco to buy food for Disney World and the days following. Lindsey, Dad, Mom and I all headed inside while Caitlin and Ben worked on the computer. We shopped and then went back through the crowded parking lot to the RV.

            After loading up our groceries, we drove a short leg of our journey and arrived at St. Augustine late in the afternoon. Finding that there was no parking immediately by Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, we drove around this quaint little coastal town for a while looking for parking. Finally we found a parking lot reserved for buses and RV’s, and, after a short walk through a schoolyard, arrived at an information center. We used the restroom and then learned what there was to do in the area. Since mostly everything closed at five, we decided to do the fort first and finish whatever else we didn’t get to tomorrow morning.

            To provide some background information for you, Castillo de San Marcos was the oldest continually occupied European settlement in North America. When the Spaniards found treasure in the Caribbean and Mexico, they sent this treasure back to Spain on sailing ships. To protect these ships, the Spanish felt that they needed to have a settlement in Florida. They sent a group of 700 soldiers and colonists that successfully drove out the French garrisons that had recently established there. Thus they founded St. Augustine in 1565. Raiding pirates and Indians made life treacherous for the settlers and starvation was a constant threat. When English burned the fort, the queen of Spain, Queen Regent Mariana, ordered a new fort of stone to be built. This evolved into Castillo de San Marcos. The stone used in the fort was called coquina. It was made up of shell and stone packed together. Coquina is easily shaped and quarried, but it did not crumble or fall easily under cannon fire.

            It was 1695 when the fort was finally finished. In the years following it protected the community from various attacks. The soldiers working in the fort didn’t actually live in the fort, except for when they were on guard duty. They lived with their wives and children in the village like the other civilians. When it was their turn to stand guard they would spend a 24 hour period in the fort. Throughout that 24 hour period, they would guard most of the time. When they weren’t guarding or sleeping, they made one pot meals with seafood to flavor their soups and enjoyed other side dishes and desserts made by loved ones. The officers always lived on site, and had rather comfortable housing, suitable to their rank. In order to reduce trouble caused by Native Americans on the reservations, certain families were separating from their people and brought to the fort. However, the Spanish treated them kindly and even taught the children the basics. Spanish “tourists” traded foreign food, such as cake, to the Indians for arrows that they made.

            To enter the fort, we walked across a drawbridge above a dried up moat. The Spaniards didn’t fill it with water; they used it as a storage place for their livestock during attacks. After the moat, we went through the sally port, or the entrance way, and learned that a ranger talk had just started. Instead of joining it, we decided to tour the fort by ourselves. We headed into a room where a movie was playing about the Spanish and their constant drilling and process of firing a cannon and a flint lock musket. The Spanish originally stored all their powder and arms in a stone magazine, but, finding that these conditions were too damp,  the munitions were moved to a more safe location. We walked through these rooms including the three rooms of the original magazine, which required us to crawl through the last doorway in order to access the third room. After walking through several more rooms, we entered a Catholic chapel that was a haven to the soldiers and civilians that found shelter in the fort during attacks.

            Finished with the interior of the fort, we exited the buildings and headed up a flight of stairs to the bastions. Bastions are “a structure projecting outward from the main enclosure of a fortification, situated in both corners of a straight wall” according to Wikipedia. The fort is shaped like a square. On each corner of the square is a rhombus overlapping the corner. This gives very good shooting coverage of every area. For example, if one cannon misfires, two other cannons from the side are able to cover the same area.  Cannons were situated every ten or so feet along each of these walls. This allowed for their shooting ranges to overlap. On the far corner of the rhombus is a large, stone tower to shield off ammunition. I climbed into one of these things and bonked my head on the hard stone. I don’t advise you to do that. Wandering around the bastions was a guy dressed up like a period Spanish soldier. We asked him a couple of questions and then made our way back down the stairs and out of the fort. We took a short walk along the Florida seashore and then went back to the RV.

            We drove to Winn Dixie Foods and bought materials for s’mores as a finish to a delicious dinner tonight. After shopping, we drove to our campground and got ourselves situated despite the darkness. Dad and Ben started a fire and cooked the bratwurst on skewers. They brought them back inside and we enjoyed a delicious dinner of bratwurst, potato salad, yams, and French rolls. After dinner, we hiked outside and roasted marshmallows for our s’mores. It was very yummy and we had a lot of fun playing with fire and then extinguishing it. Tired and well educated, we decided against doing math and headed to bed, eagerly anticipating Orlando tomorrow.