A day in Jacksonville

We started out the day by driving down Main Street from the north end to the St John Riverfront Park, where we walked around the park for about an hour and toured the Jacksonville Maritime Museum. Just a little place but it covers the history of the waterfront and shipping on the St John River.


After a little walk around the waterfront we headed over to Fort Caroline, this fort was established by the French in 1564 and lasted a year before being attacked and destroyed by the Spanish. It's not a very big fort but did have some nice views of the river and salt swamp.








On the way home we stopped by Fort George Island and walked around the Kingsley Plantation, this is out in the middle of nowhere. There is a very small plantation house, unlike the larger ones in Georgia that was built around 1814 when this was still Spanish Territory. The house is in pretty good shape and the are 34 ruins of slave cabins on the grounds.

Jacksonville Day 2

T o day wes was goin tO jackysville gain an desided ta stap at da palce , I thunk its kalled it is wear threy…..mure abut ths a litle lader.


Next Morning.

OK where was I when I left off, oh yeah, yesterday we drove down to Jacksonville a took the tour at the Budweiser Brewery, this place is huge and all they do is brew beer, and give it away free when you go on the tour. They start you out with a short film giving you a bit of the history of the company. From there you go down a long hallway, one side is all windows so that you can watch them brewing and bottling the beer and the other side is a wall with a pictorial history of the company.

The building is five stories tall and each floor is a separate brewery, the one we were at had a sign saying that it bottled 1200 bottles of beer each minute. That’s a lot of beer, all of the beer from this brewery is for Florida and Puerto Rico and that’s all. At the end of the tour they leave you in the courtesy room where you may sample their ware, they have a bar with about 15 different beers that they brew and you may sample them, for the non-drinker they also serve soda, stop by the gift shop, pick up a souvenir keys chain and you’re on your way. It was about an hour but a very interesting hour.

A history of the pop-top Can







This is where the Beechwood aging is done. THe best count I got was that there are 68 of these vats here.

Discovery Gardens

This is a little garden just south of Tavares on Woodlea Road, look for the sign at the parking lot after turning off of US 19 or you'll miss it. This is an extension garden from the university and has over 20 different themed gardens and over 700 verities of plants with a lot of fountains and a butterfly house, a frost had hit the garden about a week earlier but there were still a lot of blooms.

Guard of the Garden

2008

Another Whispering Giant
It's here and that means that its time for us to start moving northward, hopefully at a fairly slow pace. The first thing we did to start the new year out was track down another Whispering Giant, we found this one right down by the riverfront in Punta Gorda.

This one is named "Calostimucu" and is the only Whispering giant that has a carving of a face on both the front and back, the front has a more friendly face with an eagle and the back is a meaner looking face with a bear. I think the reason the Toth made this a double is that the owner of the hotel, commissioned him to do this one and left have room and board at the hotel (free) until he finished. Since it was winter and he was in Florida I think that it took him longer then normal to do this one thus extending his freebee stay at the motel.


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Another day long road trip
We did a little drive out to Gasparilla Island, it took a little to find our way out there but it was worth it. This island was one of the original gulf coast islands that the rich came down to for the winter. It's a very interesting drive through the neighborhoods and city to get to the State Park at the far south end, there is a small lighthouse and museum, a nice sandy beach but no swimming because of the currents.