Days 3 & 4: Still on Amelia Island

Fort Clinch State Park is located at the north end of Amelia Island, just across the Cumberland Sound from Georgia.  We'll be here tonight and tomorrow night and then will start heading north again on Friday.

Searching for driftwood on the Atlantic beach at Fort Clinch.

On Tuesday we went down to Jacksonville to do some shopping, primarily looking for some fleece clothing to give us a greater degree of comfort when the weather is a bit cooler than we like it.  That trip was successful, so on the return trip we stopped and visited Fort Caroline National Memorial.

An approximate replica of Fort Caroline.

The recreated fort commemorates efforts by French Huguenots to establish a colony in Florida in the 1560s.  It seems that one hundred years after the printing of the first Gutenberg Bible that a lot of people had started to take issue with how the Catholic Church had been interpreting the bible, leading to a rise in Protestantism, which included the Huguenots.  They, like so many others, looked to the New World as a place where they could freely practice the religion of their choice, thereby escaping persecution in Europe.  For the colonists at Fort Carolina the results were tragic, as most were later slaughtered by the Spanish who were garrisoned at St. Augustine.

Today (Wednesday) we toured the restored Fort Clinch ($2 entry fee), a Third System Fortification (the most advanced design of its time) masonry fort.   It mostly saw action during the Civil War, but was designed as a coastal defense fortification to protect the Cumberland Sound and access to the Amelia and St. Mary's Rivers.  Though Florida had joined the Confederacy, they were the least populated Confederate state.  Thus they lacked the manpower to defend the fort, so it quickly fell into Union hands.  

Our new replacement credit cards showed up today, so that issue has quickly been resolved.  USAA transferred the balance and cash rewards from our old card to our new card, so once the final corrective charges are processed through the old account it will be completely closed out.

I took some time to fashion nylon strap handles for our Dometic refrigerator this afternoon.  We've relied upon using our fingertips placed under a half inch ledge built into the sides of the Dometic to lift it in and out of the galley (it came with carry handles, but with the factory handles installed it is too wide for the galley space where it is stored).  With the added condensation that we've experienced since we first arrived in the Southeast, we've often thought that our old method of lifting it was a disaster waiting to happen.  So with two feet of 2" web strapping, four 6mm bolts and four fender washers I fashioned some new carry handles.  They are comfortable to use, don't interfere with how we store the unit and they make our life just a bit simpler.