We had Christmas with family and I will be going on a cruise at the end of January. My 70th birthday present is a Carribean cruise/sightseeing week given by family members. Fourteen members of our family will be cruising together including me! It is ironic we start in the Tampa area (my dad lived around there for 15 years) and we leave on his birthday. He would have been 94 on January 24th. He would be very happy for me. John will be holding the fort down and attending to Emma, our dog. John will not cruise.
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| Fort Frederica is in a beautiful setting |
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| This is the Visitor Center we ALMOST staffed at Fort Frederica National Monument |
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| John looking at the remains of the fort itself |
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The beautiful live oaks with moss are everywhere on the grounds of the soldier town. Ruins of the town have been located and researched. It is next to the fort and was a very early settlement - 1734-44.
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| Where we would have taken visitors on a tour of Fort Frederica NM, GA |
BACK TO OUR VOLUNTEERING AT FORT FREDERICA NATIONAL MONUMENT: To make a long, long story short, we started out from CT on 12/27/14 and traffic was very heavy heading down to GA. We spent New Year's Eve at midnight on the beach watching fire works on Tybee Island, GA visiting with friends. We arrived at St. Simon's Island on January 1st to find we could not get into our site at the RV park because of our height AND it was the only site available. Wires and live oak branches were just too low. We stayed at Fort Frederica NM for one week while they explored options to keep us volunteering. We dry camped (no permanent room for us) in the volunteer area while waiting. It just did not work so we headed south thinking we would just be exploring GA in the warm weather until spring arrived. My flight is out of Jacksonville, FL for the cruise. At Crooked River State Park, almost in Jacksonville, we paid for 5 nights. We must stay around for my flight out of JAX so we planned on a few GA parks to explore. Now the ironic part..............
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| Our state park view from the campsite is a small pond with a bird blind across the street |
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| Emma in her bed ignoring the wildlife, palms and pines |
They had a volunteer couple who could not come. We were casually talking about our situation and as fate was with us we now have filled that volunteer Crooked River State Park position. We will be volunteering here until the end of March. When a door closes a window opens. So Tuesday I start at the nature center learning the ropes. We will be jack-of-all-trades volunteers. On MLK Day a special nature program is planned and we will be helping with that. We will be training at a bait shop (I worked one in SD at the fish hatchery), maintenance, and housekeeping, as well as the nature center. I think we have the skills to do the jobs required and the chores do not seem hard at all. All is well that ends well, I guess.
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Our home for the next 2+ months
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