DIE, YOU BUGGERS, DIE!

Having been denied at NAS JAX, we went just to the north of Jacksonville for the night, at the Fort Clinch State Park in Fernandina Beach.  We would have stayed through the Memorial Day weekend, but the place was booked solid starting Friday, so all we got was Thursday.  But that wasn’t bad at all.  Our site was right next to the dune that separated us from the beach.  Not bad at all.  Since it was still brutally hot, we headed for the beach.  I swam while Loni waded.  The water was bath warm, really great.  I love Atlantic beaches.  They

go out very gradually, unlike the big dropoff at our home beach in the Palisades.  Plus, you can’t beat the Gulfstream for temps.  This beach had a 1/4 mile fishing pier, so we walked out on it the next morning.

Our campsite is essentially that white blob to the right.  Here’s the view facing south, towards the posh beachfront homes.  All in all, a nice spot, even for just a

day.  And it didn’t hurt that we had roast pork loin, red cabbage, fried red potatoes, and fresh asparagus for dinner.  Oh, yeah.

We left Friday for the only place we could find that had space available for the Memorial Day weekend, a nice private campground in Darien, Georgia, about 90 miles south of Savannah, our next destination.  We’re in the middle of, essentially, nowhere here, but the park is neat, clean, and even pretty with it’s big old oaks with lots of Spanish moss hanging all over.  Plus, it’s within walking distance of one of the Waffle House franchises.

  I’ve been drooling over waffles ever since we saw our first one of these.  They’re ubiquitous in these parts.  We tried it Saturday morning and found it a pretty good deal.  Everything is cooked to order, including the bacon and eggs.  They were cracking eggs into the pans to cook them up.  For $5.99 you got a large waffle, two eggs, three bacons, grits (!), and toast.  The grits actually were good, as long as they were hot and wet;  when they cooled and dried, they were cement.

Well fortified, we offloaded the scoot and got ready to see whatever was in the area.  Turned out there was

enough to fill up the rest of the day.  Darien was established in 1736 as a military outpost by Scottish Highlanders under the command of General James Oglethorpe.  This is the second-oldest planned town in Georgia.  Nearby is the site of Fort King George,

which is described on the plaque above.  This was the southernmost outpost of the British Empire in North America, and was placed here to thwart the land claims of the Spanish from the south and the French from the west.  The garrison suffered mightily from disease, malnutrition, heat, biting insects (I sympathize), and threats from the Spanish and Indians.  It was abandoned in 1727, but had served its purpose to establish British presence in what became Georgia.  The whole place is a reconstruction, but they used original building techniques and materials, so it’s presumed accurate.

Since it was a holiday weekend, a bunch of volunteers dressed in period costume showed up to act as docents and to give musketry and cannon demonstrations.

They did fire the cannon, but quite reasonably warned that we better put our hands tightly over our ears, so no picture of the firing moment.  They were right.  Before firing, they asked for volunteer from the onlookers.  This poor kid wasn’t quite sure if they were kidding or not.

Having soaked up old military lore ad nauseum from a docent who absolutely loved the sound of his own voice, we got back on the scoot and headed south about ten miles to the Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation state historical site in Brunswick.  This wasn’t a cotton plantation, but rather a rice plantation!  The land was purchased in 1806 by a Charleston merchant of English descent.  With a lot of slave labor working in horrible conditions, it became a rice plantation, continuing to produce until 1913, when it was converted to a dairy operation.  The neat thing is that it was in the same family hands all the way to 1974, when the last descendant died . . . still living in the house.  The furnishings are all original from the many generations of the family.  It’s not fancy, but was interesting.  In the picture below, the middle shelf on the left holds the family Bible dating back to 1800.  The last family member, Ophelia Dent, died in the red chair at the rear.

The place didn’t get electricity until the late 1940’s, and indoor plumbing not much earlier.  The old stuff is still there.

This bed was in continuous use from before 1800 all the way through Ophelia’s death.  The near posts are carved with a rice stalk design.

El Gordo there was our genial, if somewhat disconcerting host.  He had this strange way of ending sentences with an almost accusatory glare as he stared at one visitor or another.  We also heard more about his own family than we needed to.  He waxed heavily nostalgic for the good old days.  Uh huh.

The grounds had several huge old oaks, draped with moss, that allegedly are 800 years old.  Gordo doubted that figure, but said they were at least 400.  Loni didn’t want to get any closer to the trunk because the biting flies were at their worst in the shade.

And therein lies the title of this post.  The flies were so bad that they had put these large tar balls all over the place, covered with the goo, to trap and KILL as many of the nasty buggers as possible.  Did, you buggers, DIE!