Day 926: Ak-Chin to Phoenix

I got up early this morning in hopes of flying.  The low pressure has yet to work itself out of the area, but I was treated to an amazing pre-sunrise:

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We hitched up the RV, said goodbye to our fellow pilots, and drove north to Phoenix where we will be spending Shabbos in this synagogue parking lot, visiting what may be our future neighborhood:

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Good Shabbos from Phoenix, Arizona!  See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.

Day 842: Fleeing the Bolivar Peninsula

This morning we woke up to a muggy, cloudy day.  Overnighting at the fishing pier wasn’t the most inspiring experience.  I backed in such that the final position had the truck at a right angle to the RV so that I wouldn’t block the thru lane:

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This pelican wanted a snack from the fisherman:

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We spent a few hours walking the beach:

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We looked through the shells we had collected:

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We really wanted to have an on-beach dispersed camping experience, but a beach flood watch was in effect for tonight as well, and we really didn’t want to spend Shabbos at the fishing pier.  Also, the weather looks lousy for most of this coming week, so we said goodbye to the Bolivar Peninsula and headed to Houston for Shabbos.  On the way out, construction crews were clearing the road from the sand washed up in last night’s flood tide:

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Good Shabbos from Houston, Texas!  See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.

Day 837: Fort Caroline NM, Fort Matanzas NM, Castillo de San Marcos NM

We had a nice Shabbos at the Chabad in Jacksonville, Florida.  This morning, we first visited Fort Caroline National Memorial, which happens to be surrounded by Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve:

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Fort Caroline was built by the French in the 1560s.  After an unsuccessful attempt by the French to destroy the Spanish Castillo de San Marcos, the Spanish attacked Fort Caroline in 1565, killing every soldier at the fort despite French surrender.  Three years later, in 1568, the French returned, capturing Fort Caroline back from Spanish control, killing hundreds of Spanish troops.  The French then abandoned Fort Caroline before the inevitable Spanish reprisals.

The park includes a replica Indian dwelling:

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The recreated Fort Caroline:

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We returned to the visitor center:

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This timeline shows who controlled this region, from France in the 1560s to the US in modern times:

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The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their badges:

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Our next stop was Fort Matanzas National Monument:

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Fort Matanzas was built in response to Oglethorpe’s unsuccessful attempt to take forces from Fort Frederica (which we visited on Wednesday) to assault Castillo de San Marcos.  The Spanish realized that the British could sail past the Castillo and then sail up Matanzas Inlet to attack the town of St. Augustine from behind.  To prevent this, the Spanish built Fort Matanzas near the mouth of Matanzas Inlet:

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Across the river, we could see Fort Matanzas in the distance:

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The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their badges:

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The kids did an additional optional project in the Junior Ranger books, for which they earned a Master Junior Ranger patch:

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We headed down to the beach:

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This fellow was playing with his windboarding wing:

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Our last stop of the day was St. Augustine, America’s oldest continuously inhabited town, and the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, the Spanish fort we’ve heard about at Fort Frederica, Fort Caroline, and Fort Matanzas:

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The Spanish troops fire the great guns:

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The kids completed their Junior Ranger books and received their badges:

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As at Fort Matanzas, the kids did extra projects in the book, earning the Master Junior Ranger patch:

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We drove back to the RV, and will be staying here at the Chabad of Jacksonville for one more night.  See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.

Day 835: Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve

This morning the parts to repair the truck’s DEF system arrived here at Bennett Dodge Ram.  After the repair was done, I was given the mass of solidified DEF that was blocking the injection nozzle:

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Thankfully, the replacement part has been redesigned by Dodge to avoid a repeat of this issue.  Also, it turns out that the emission subsystem has its own 96 month / 80,000 mile warranty, so we’re completely covered.

We headed south, crossing into Florida, then exiting onto this very kosher road:

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Our goal was to visit Kingsley Plantation, a unit of Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve.  Sadly, there was no signage to indicate that there was no way we were getting a 62 foot long, 13’ 6” high vehicle through this mess:

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After a quarter mile or so, we managed to turn around and head back to the main road, where we left the RV in the local marina parking lot.  We then drove back towards Kingsley Plantation.

Kingsley is the oldest standing plantation in Florida.  Kingsley himself married a freed slave, but was afraid that his unmarried children would be enslaved after his death, so he moved his family to the Dominican Republic to escape the same slavery laws that made his plantation so successful:

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Most of the buildings here were made out of Tabby, a concrete that uses oyster shells as one of its ingredients:

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The kids competed their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their badges:

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We headed south, crossing this bridge:

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We continued on to the Chabad in Jacksonville, where we will be spending Shabbos:

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Good Shabbos from Jacksonville, Florida!  See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.