Feb 25- Westward Ho!!!

Oh, no! Our friend Jeff sent us a photo to encourage our westward movement...we're TRYING!!!

Feb 24-The Carter Center, Atlanta,GA

Made it back to the Carter Center today. Good thing we didn’t pay to go in yesterday because it did take us a long time to read everything and they would have had to kick us out yesterday. The exhibits are well done, but it’s quite different to read about a President that you actually voted for (at least I did). They have a film called The American Presidency that shows the growth of the powers of the president. Today, the office of President is much more powerful than it was when the real George W. was elected. One room is a reproduction of the Oval office just as it was when he was in office…he used the same desk that Kennedy used. I can’t think of much to tell you about Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter that you wouldn’t already know. He was born in 1924 (same year as Gramma). The best known events during his presidency were signing the Panama Canal treaties (giving operational control of the canal to Panama), getting Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to sign a peace treaty in 1979, signing SALT II treaty with the Soviet Union to limit nuclear proliferation, and establishing formal diplomatic relations with China. Oh, and freeing the American hostages in Iran in 1979…right after he left office (he lost to Reagan). It seems like Carter is more popular now than when he was in office. All his humanitarian work and Habitat for Humanity has been amazing. The State of Georgia is VERY proud.

Lunch was an event today, too. Atlanta has a drive-in called The Varsity. They claim it’s the biggest drive in restaurant in the world so we had to try it. It takes up 2 acres, so we had in mind that there would be rows and rows of places to get served in your car…like the Burgermaster in Bellevue. Nope. They did have spaces for about 20 cars, but most people went inside. It is enormous inside however, quite the busy place! I took the picture at about 2:30 so it doesn’t look all that busy, but it was earlier. They sell “more than two miles of hotdogs, 2,000 pounds (one ton) of onion rings, 2,500 pounds of fresh cut potatoes, and 5,000 homemade fried pies, daily”. They are the largest single restaurant outlet for Coca-Cola…only Gene would ask for a Pepsi. Hank—you would have loved it! I had a fried peach pie, which I have to say was delicious. Not quite like Thelma’s, but it was an experience.

The photos...flowers from the garden outside the Carter Center, it was 65 today by the way and Carter's Nobel Peace Prize medal.

2-23-07 Adventures in Atlanta and hiking up Stone Mountain

We were busy today. We started out at the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta, Georgia. King was born in 1929 in a home on Auburn Avenue. The home and the neighborhood around it are now owned by the Park Service. We toured the home, Ebenezer Baptist Church (where he and his brother were co-pastors, his father and grandfather were pastors), Fire Station No. 6 (a museum that tells about the desegregation of Atlanta’s Fire Department), and Dr. and Mrs. Kings’ Tomb at the Coretta Scott King Center. Ex-slaves started this community after the Civil War and blacks prospered there. King’s grandfather purchased the family home in 1909. By 1929 when King Jr. was born the community had banks, insurance companies, real estate agencies, medical and law offices, a library, and a business college…all black owned or black operated. This tight community with blacks of wealth living together with black workers was a huge influence on King. The area was a symbol of prosperity for African Americans. Outside the community of course everything would have been segregated. The area isn’t so prosperous today. Except for what the park service owns it’s a bit run down.

We met a lovely woman at the church named Shirley. She was raised just down the street from the Kings and now works as the historian at Ebenezer Baptist Church. She had great stories. We were starving after chatting with her so we asked for a recommendation for a restaurant and she sent us to “Thelmas”—she says “four blocks down, real Southern cooking”. Perfect. We go walking down…feeling a bit pale for the neighborhood. We REALLY looked like tourists. You have to be adventurous to try eating at Thelmas… it’s a little, run-down shack, practically under I-75. Lots of men asking us for spare change. We stuck out of the crowd for sure. Gene had ribs, sweet potatoes, cornbread, and black-eyed peas. I had fried chicken (the specialty), sweet potatoes, and collard greens. We really enjoyed it, and I think the other diners got a kick out of us! We still aren’t hungry for dinner and it’s nearly 9:00…must have been a LOT of fat in that meal!

Our next stop was “the World of Coke”…Coca Cola was invented and is still manufactured in Atlanta. We thought the “fountain that shoots Coke to your glass from 20 feet away” sounded interesting so we gave it a try. It costs $9 each to get it! We couldn’t stand to pay to see their advertising so we walked right back out.

On to the Carter Library. The gardens and flowers were gorgeous but we didn’t have enough time to see all the exhibits so we saved it for tomorrow.

We are camped at Stone Mountain Campground, about 15 miles from downtown. We had left Elsie and the motorhome there. The campground is at the foot of the strangest mountain…it’s the largest, exposed, solid granite rock in the world. It’s just sitting there like a big potato. They’ve carved a drawing of President Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson into the side of it. The rock itself is five miles around, and has a 1 ½ mile hike up to the top. We parked the car and hiked up to the top as fast as we could to see the sunset. Got a bit dark on the way back down, but the sunset was worth it!

2-22-07 Ocmulgee National Monument

Now this place is WAY out of my comfort zone as far as history goes. We mainly stopped because I wanted to have a good long walk before we drove on to Atlanta. Ocmulgee has an archeological exhibit that shows that people have lived in the area for 10,000 years, from Ice Age hunters to Creek Indians. "Between 900 and 1100BCE (before current era) a skilled farming people lived there". Interesting huge funeral mounds, prehistoric trenches, an earthlodge, and lots of ancient pots, tools, and beads. Even a fluted Clovis point, which is the evidence of the earliest people as it would have armed the spear of an Ice Age hunter 10,000 years ago. Oh, my. I had a good walk!

Confederate Flags

We've been trying to figure out all the different flags that represented the Confederate States. Gene did some research and here you go! The pictures are from the Jefferson Davis Memorial. Gene speaks:

At the time of the Civil War (normally called the War Between the States in the South), the carrying of a flag into battle was very important. They were fighting for that flag, it would be carried into battle with pride, and was to be saved from peril at all costs. There were many occasions when the flag was picked up from a fallen bearer to continue into battle.

As the Southern States seceded and formed the Confederate States of America, it was paramount that they had their own flag to rally around and to fight for. Flag designs were chosen, made and used but problems seem to crop up with each one. In fact, Confederate government had to change flag designs several times due to these problems.

The first official flag of the Confederacy was call the “Stars and Bars” and was used from March 5, 1861 to May, 1863. The number of stars represented each of the Southern States that had seceded from the Union. However, it also caused too much confusion in the smoky, fields of battle because it looked so similar to the Unions “Stars and Stripes”.

The second official flag of the Confederacy corrected this problem by taking the well-known battle flag and placing it in the upper quarter of the new white flag. This flag was called the ‘Stainless Banner” and did correct the problem of the first flag, but, when a battlefields was windless this flag, when furled, would hide the quarter design and look more like a flag of truce or surrender!

This bad luck in flag design lasted almost the entire war. A third official flag was adopted on March 4, 1865, about a month before the fall of the Confederacy itself. A red vertical stripe was added to the end of the flag to counter the confusion with a flag of surrender, but wasn’t used very long!

If you’re like me, none of these flags are as recognizable as the fourth (but never official) flag of the Confederacy. The Navy Jack flag is the full sized “Southern Cross” ( it was a full-sized version of their battle flag). This flag was carried only by Confederate ships from 1863 to 1865. It was designed in hopes of becoming the first official flag but was rejected by the Confederate government. Today it is the most recognizable symbol of the South where it is called the “Rebel” or “Dixie” flag, in fact it has taken on the erroneous name of the “Stars and Bars” and was never considered an official flag of the Government. This flag is still visible throughout what we have seen of the South (lots at Daytona!), though I do notice that there are many flagpoles flying the Stars and Stripes above many homes during our State-crossing trips off of the Interstates.

Aside from Barb: Government offices are prohibited from flying the Southern Cross flag. At the Pres. Jefferson Davis Memorial Capture site however, there is a HUGE Southern Cross flying right outside the gate. Turns out that someone bought a small piece of property just so they could fly it. Evidently it is a bit embarrasing because when we mentioned it the Park Service Ranger was quick to explain that it didn't belong to the Park Service! Its on private property! He says that occasionally he'll see a TV crew pull up to film it and he has to run out and explain.

2-21-07 Jefferson Davis Memorial State Historic Site, GA

Poor Gene. He stayed up late last night planning our route. We were rumbling down the highway on our way to Atlanta when I looked up from my book and saw a brown sign (state and national parks have brown signs). I read it aloud and said, “Aren’t we going there?”, and Gene’s plans go out the window. Fun stop though…it’s the spot where Jefferson Davis was captured. Jefferson Davis was President of the Confederacy (just in case history wasn’t your forte). The war ends at Appomattox, VA when Lee surrenders his army in April of 1865. Davis and a few of his remaining staff members crossed the Savannah River into Georgia on May 3, 1865. They were headed west where Davis planned to unite rebel forces and continue fighting for the “lost cause” as they called it. They camped at the site we visited, not knowing that pursuit was close behind. At dawn, Davis was surrounded by two independent groups of Union cavalry who were hunting for him, but also were not aware of the other group. Unfortunately, they started firing at each other (thinking, I suppose, that they had engaged Davis’ men). This “friendly fire” killed two Union cavalrymen. Davis was taken prisoner and held in a Virginia prison, without a trial, for two years. While he was in prison, his citizenship was stripped away for 111 years, until 1978 when President Jimmy Carter re-instated it.

Here’s an odd fact: Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln were both born in the same year, in Kentucky, and only 100 miles apart!

2-20-07 Way down upon the Suwannee River…GA

We took a boat ride on the Okefenokee Swamp to the headwaters of the Suwannee River today. We stopped at the Stephen Foster State Park located on the Okefenokee Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. Stephen Foster wrote Oh, Suzanna, My Old Kentucky Home, Old Folks at Home (Suwannee River), and several thousand other songs. He hadn’t even been to Georgia when he wrote the song…he was just trying to find the name of a southern river that would fit into it poetically. He and his brother found the Suwannee on the map. Now it’s the Florida state song. Aside from very orange/brown water, the swamp looked beautiful. Lily pads, warm clean air (no smell), cypress trees (no mangroves like in the Everglades), alligators, turkey vultures, ibis, and very few tourists. How do you like the photo of the Turkey-Vulture Love Birds? You haven’t seen or heard about Elsie lately so I’ll post a picture that proves we didn’t feed her to an alligator, at least not yet! It was a lovely stop on our first drive heading WEST! Now we are back to Wal-Marts again. We are just getting set up in Tifton, GA. Gene will be putting up the satellite dish and I’ll post this when he’s finished. It seems odd to be on the westward leg of our journey. As anxious as I am to get back home and see everyone, and to pat Caroline on the tummy, I’m sad to think that we are getting closer and closer to the end of our trip each day. Gene has a number of north, south, winding routes in mind…but our main direction is WEST!

Feb 18-The Great American Race!

That was quite an experience! Two hundred laps of craziness. Luckily everyone involved survived...but there were a few crashes where I don't see how it was possible. Dale Earnhardt Jr was the only driver I'd heard of before so I was watching him most of the time and wouldn't you know he crashed right in front of us. Actually several crashes happened in the 4th turn--right where we were parked. It all happens so fast that its hard to tell whats going on, so everyone turns around and watches it on the huge screen that is right behind us. I don't think I'll become a big race fan, but it was tons of fun to do once. I'll post a few more pictures. If the cars are in focus in the photo it means that they were under a yellow caution flag...when they were racing my camera could only catch a blur!

Feb 18-Race day at Daytona

Its almost time to climb up on the roof of the RV to watch the Daytona 500. Its sunny here but cool and really windy. You've all been asking for pictures so here are a few from yesterday. More to come.

Feb 16-Daytona International Speedway, FL

Back to the blog! I flew home to check on Mom’s new hip and left Gene responsible for blogging Savannah and Charleston. Well, he flunks! As soon as I left he got antsy and decided that he wanted to see car racing at Daytona. He spent the whole week I was gone on eBay buying tickets to the Daytona 500. That’s were we are now…parked in the infield of the Daytona International Speedway! Mom’s new hip is just fine. She could get around on her own immediately (using a walker). A nasty bout of pneumonia was the only thing that slowed her down at all. The pneumonia left her with laryngitis, so I had a “quiet” week at home. She couldn’t talk at all—still can’t! More than a week of silence is torture for anyone from the Trenholme clan. I flew back to Gene and left her to fend for herself without a voice—bad daughter! Hopefully she can speak soon! Daytona is amazing. I woke up this morning to a symphony of generators. The entire infield is covered with motorhomes…everything from homemade jobs to an entire mile long row of shiny new Prevost multi-million dollar models. Gene and I have no idea what is going on. Last night there were truck races under the lights. We climbed on top of our rig all dressed in ski clothes. I snuggled into a sleeping bag too. We rented a computer thing from Nextel that shows you the TV camera of the race. You can switch to the cameras inside the cars too. Somehow you can change it to the radio and listen to the individual drivers talking to their pit crews. We listened to them for awhile but couldn’t figure out which driver was talking. For the trucks we just listened to the Nascar station calling the race, and that helped. All we know for sure is that the first one over the finish line wins, and they seem pretty determined to be first! They go about 185 mph and are 2 feet apart at the most—sometimes they are only inches apart. There were 40 or so trucks racing last night, so when they go by its pretty loud. We wear headphones. We are parked in the second row of motorhomes at the end of the 4th turn. We can see the entire 3rd and 4th turns on the track, then watch them on the computer till they come by again. It only takes 43-48 seconds for them to come around! There were lots of crashes last night, which I gather is normal for trucks. Nobody got hurt which is pretty amazing when you see what is left of the trucks after the crashes. As they get wrecked they get towed back to the pits right past us. The drivers are required to take an ambulance ride back to the hospital that’s in the middle of the infield, so they go right past us too. So far so good, because they all just hop out and walk back to the pits! They are about to start practicing for today and will be a 300 mile race in the lesser Busch Series at 2:00 PM. The real Daytona 500 (the Super Bowl of the sport they keep saying) is tomorrow. Hopefully we will have figured out a few cars and their drivers by then!

Feb 5-Savannah, GA

Gene was supposed to write about Charleston and Savannah while I was in Seattle...he didn't, so I'm making him write them now that I'm back! I'm doing my homework. So, Gene speaks, and he's pretending to write it on time!:

Whereas Charleston got a whole day and a half of exploring time, Savannah, Georgia received probably the shortest visit to a city that we have mustered so far. We are not the earliest of risers. We are always the last to leave a parking area, usually around 10 AM. We could blame this on the effects of sleep, dog, breakfast, but it just easier to say that we are caressing the famous slowed-down and relaxed Southern way of life. I’d have to re-tool that excuse for the month of mornings in New England way back in October of last year!

It is now Monday and Barb flies out of Jacksonville, FL for her “early” 11 AM flight home to Seattle tomorrow. We are going to have to cover Savannah in just a couple of hours.

Hey! We had to drive the “whole length” of Georgia and find a spot to park the coach!! “Hey!, there’s a Wal-Mart, let’s park there!!” Extend the 3 slide-outs, level the coach, and --- we’re home again!!

We decided that the best way to learn something and to see as much as possible (but quickly!) was to buy a ticket on one of those orange trolleys that the real tourists take. It turned out to be what was needed: a quick, helpful, and informative tour of this beautiful city.

The one house that Barbara really wanted to see was Juliette Low’s house, the founder of the Girl Scouts of America. We were told that it was too far to walk to make it in time to complete the trolley run. After scurrying around to find the trolley station and get on, we then sat there long enough to get the house 4 minutes after its closing time! We sat down and ate an imaginary box of Girl Scout cookies (thin mints, of course), then hopped on the next trolley to finish the narrated tour. We were on the last trolley of the day so it was a shame that all the stores were closing as we traversed their famous riverfront shopping area.

A James Oglethorpe laid out the streets and public squares in 1733, and it remains today just as he drew it out. In this section of historic Savannah, there are a total of 24 historical public squares which are named after either an important person (from Franklin to Calhoun to Lafayette) or event in the history of the city. Monuments, statues, and an occasional gravesite or two can be found in most of these squares. The homes, churches, and buildings along these roads tell the tale of the Southern wealthy.

Oddly, during the trolley tour we received a call from Sister Caroline. She told us that Savannah was one of her very favorite cities to visit. We preferred Charleston, possibly because we did our usual walking tour, that it was right on a big beautiful harbor, and that the Disney staff seemed to go to work there every night. Maybe it’s because we didn’t eat in Savannah! We had to have some time to pack suitcases and enough time to drive the 2 hours back down to the Jacksonville airport.

I left the coach in the Savannah area (Home Depot parking lot) and explored the SW corner of Georgia on the way back, driving a bit north through the Okefenokee Swamp and on back to Savannah via some unknown pathway.

OK, we aren’t giving Savannah the coverage and props that it deserves, but we did see the historic area and were told about the city and a bit of its history. Savannah still has the beauty and charm, history and warmth that made General Sherman decide not to burn it down like everything else in the Union march to the sea. In a message to Abraham Lincoln, Gen. Sherman actually proclaimed the city as being worthy of being presented to the President as a Christmas gift from the Union Army!

Feb 3 and 4-Charleston, SC and Fort Sumter

After limping to Jacksonville with my “repair” of a leaking air line, we spent the night in a true Florida storm, complete with thunder, lightning, heavy rain and wind heavy enough to leave our slide-outs shut tight. It was a night to batten down the hatches, try to point in to the wind, and basically be rocked to sleep with the winds buffeting against the motorhome. We woke to both a strange phenomenon and some very sad news.

We may have already mentioned before, but when the east coast gets a rainstorm, it is what I would call a deluge of 1 to 4 inches that is amazing in itself, but with the 4 or 5 storms we have been in it has always been clear and sunny the next morning. This is so different from what we have at home. It is no wonder that east-coasters, when they hear that it rains all the time is Seattle, think that it must be intolerable. I assume they are thinking that we get rain like they get rain. If that were the case, they would be right and the Pacific Northwest would be washed away.

The very sad news was that we witnessed the very outer border of a huge storm that crossed Florida just a bit further south of where we stayed in the Kissimmee area with Laura. I’m sure you have heard of the deadly tornado that crossed Florida as part of this storm. It traveled 20 miles south of the RV Park we staying with LJ, but hit directly at Melbourne along the coast where we stayed at the Canova Beach Wal-Mart 2 nights earlier.

This section of the trip from Disney World to Jacksonville was different than the rest in the fact that we drove for 2 whole days with the Atlantic a couple of hundred feet off of Barb’s side window and the Intercoastal Route a couple of hundred feet off of mine! We made stop after stop along the way to walk the beaches and let Elsie stretch her legs as you have already seen in Barb’s photos.

Anyway, I wanted to tell you about this fantastic storm on our way up the coast. Charleston, SC and Savannah, GA were our two destinations to visit quickly before Barb flies home for a week.

We left Jacksonville with a keener eye on the gauges, especially the boost gauge that can tell me if there is a further problem with the air line leak and how it affects the exhaust brakes. The air tanks stay full while we are driving but still slowly bleed out while we are stopped for the night.

We drove through Jacksonville and traveled the quicker path up I-95, across this small coastal area of Georgia to the SE corner of South Carolina and the old city of Charleston. After my usual “interview” of innocent passers-by, I formed my plan to drive in to town so we could take a late night walk along the parks, ending up at South of Broad, the restaurant that my walking poll voted best 4-1. Of course we talked our way in without reservations on a Saturday night and we enjoyed dinners of local flavors. The building has been a landmark since the Revolutionary War. The walls are two foot thick brick and the balcony is adorned with an intricate detailed cast iron balcony. The site was originally a cotton exchange, later became a bagging factory and then Sailors’ Tavern, a popular local watering hole.

The dinner was great, but the long walk to the restaurant and then back to the Jeep definitely was the hit of the evening. We parked along the harbor in what is rightfully called the Battery, with its cannons pointed seaward. We walked in to town along an elevated stone bulkhead right above the water. After dinner we veered in to the oldest part of the city and walked along narrow cobble streets with street after street of houses dating back to the pre-Revolutionary War era.

The next day, Monday the 5th, we drove across their beautiful brand-new suspension bridge to visit Ft. Moultrie NM on Sullivan’s Island across the waterway from Charleston. This was another living example of a number of forts that protected harbors from invasions. Charleston has always been a very important seaport, which continues today, in competition with nearby sister city of Savannah as the 2nd largest shipping port on the east coast.

We then drove back across the bridge to catch the boat to Ft. Sumter, the site of the first action in the Civil War. The NPS, as usual, has a wonderful visitor center with all of the information one could ask for on that specific site. We bought the tickets for a short boat ride out to the fort and a great narrative from a Park Ranger that explained the entire story of the fort and the battle which signaled the start of the War Between the States – as it is normally referred to in the South.

The Fort and the man-made island on which is stood was Union-owned. While the fort was being built the Union forces were holed up at Ft. Moultrie but, in the dead of night, were transferred to the still unfinished fort called Sumter. Being on an island the idea was that it would provide more protection for the Union soldiers while both sides knew that it was a prime site to either protect Charleston or to cause mayhem to the ships coming into the harbor. The Confederates demanded that the Union abandon the fort in turn for a safe exit and passage back North. On April 12, 1861 the growing strife between the North and the South erupted when Confederate artillery opened cannon fire on the fort, definitely by an excited mistake! After a 34 hour barrage from both sides, the Union forces were forced to surrender the fort and head north. It then took the Union forces nearly 4 years to take it back.

A couple of interesting items concerning Ft. Sumter:

1. The island on which the fort was built was a shallow shoal. Ships sailed from New England (for 10 years!) with their holds filled with granite boulders used for ballast. The granite was dumped on this site which eventually made a rock-solid island in which to build the fort.
2. The Commander of the Union forces that were forced out of Ft. Sumter, as an item of surrender, was able to take the flag that flew over the fort with him. He was invited back fours years later to raise the same flag after the end of the war. That flag is on display there today. – But now for the 2 “biggies”:
3. Even with a 34 hour bombardment aimed at the fort, there was not one person killed in this initial skirmish. In fact, the only casualty of the entire affair occurred when the Confederates (actually!) gave a cannon “salute” to the Union forces as they sailed out of Charleston Harbor. A single cannon misfired and wounded a Confederate cannoneer/soldier, Daniel Howe. His right shoulder was removed from his body by the blast so he technically became the first casualty of the US Civil War. Leave it to a Howe to be in the wrong place at the right time! I, obviously, never knew this, but couldn’t help think that “could this be the real reason I’m left-handed”??
4. Now for the one that floored me (this NP Ranger was spectacular!): He explained that Abraham Lincoln, at the last minute, decided not to attend the flag-raising ceremony at Ft. Sumter just weeks after the end of the Civil War. He politely declined because he had tickets to Ford’s Theater that would “prevent his travel at this time”. Think about that for a while!

When we returned from Ft. Sumter we then walked, again, through the old streets that we walked the night before. We went inside the church that George Washington attended during a visit in 1791. Touching the square pew where Washington sat (again!) is just plain cool. He visited Charleston from May 2 through 7th, 1791. His popularity as our first President is very apparent wherever he visited. On his way out of town that day in May, many of the townspeople rode their horses to the city limits, a street aptly named Boundary Street. We walked to this street and back again on another just spectacular street bordered with beautiful old homes. Just like our first President that day, “our” next destination is Savannah, Georgia.

Charleston is everything I had imagined it to be. It’s beautiful harbor, old houses and buildings, fountains, the whole place dripping with history just as much as the more publicized Boston and other northern cities. As we were on our walks we made the remark that it appears that they clean the entire area just as Disney does at their parks. Everything was spotless, which was easily noticeable. Not bad for a quick 2 day adventure. Bye Charleston . . . On to Savannah!

January 31-Mom's new hip and our busted RV

Well, we didn’t get very far. We had just left St. Augustine, driving up the coast and admiring the beautiful beaches when the rig just slowed down and stopped in the middle of the road. No power. Figures we’d be on a two lane road with no shoulders. Luckily we rolled along slowly just far enough to pull into a driveway to a really fancy condominium complex. Evidently professional golfer VJ Singh lives 4 doors behind us. Maybe he would see us an urban renewal project! Just down the road is the Sawgrass G&CC, a very fancy TPC golf course complex. I spent the day working on my homework and keeping tow trucks away from the rig. Gene did an amazing patch job (he’s getting to be quite a mechanic) and we limped to the nearest big parking lot—Costco in south Jacksonville! Here we sit, with our internet antenna up and TV on. Too bad the beach is too far away to walk. Gene is greasy again trying to figure out this latest problem. I've been hanging by the telephone waiting for news about Mom's new hip. Laura is handling all the details and it sounds like Mom is doing well. Hugs to Mom and thanks to Laura for filling in for me. Love you.

January 30-St. Augustine, FL

Ready for more than you wanted to know? OK, you asked for it! Forget Plymouth. Forget Jamestown. Enter: St. Augustine, Florida. Not much public relations work has been done here, but according to the president of the St. Augustine Historical Society (whom we talked to for about an hour) and the history books that are written without the political pull of the publishing companies, St. Augustine is the oldest, continuously occupied, European settlement in North America. Even the historians have admitted to numerous other earlier settlements, but St. Augustine is the first continuously occupied. The reason we don’t learn about this spot in favor of Plymouth and the Pilgrims seems to be partly public relations (Plymouth wins there!) and partly because St. Augustine was founded by Spain instead of England.

According to the National Park Service:

“Traveling aboard the Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery, 104 men landed in Virginia in 1607 at a place they named Jamestown. This was the first permanent English settlement in the New World.”
“Thirteen years later, 102 settlers aboard the Mayflower landed in Massachusetts at a place they named Plymouth. With these two colonies, English settlement in North America was born.”
Well, that’s not the whole story, is it!?! Simply put in terms of time, we could say the children who helped found St. Augustine in 1565 were playing with their own grandchildren when the English stepped ashore in 1607 at what would become Jamestown!
Just a bit more, I promise: The earliest inhabitants of this area were Timucua Indians who predated the European “discovery” of the New World. One of the earliest European visitors to NE Florida was Spain’s Juan Ponce de Leon, who briefly landed between in 1513 (he was unsuccessfully searching for gold and the fountain of youth). In 1565, in response to the presence of a French Huguenot settlement on the NE Florida coast, Spanish naval commander Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles sailed for Florida to destroy the French colony at the mouth of the St. John. Menendez led his ships along Florida’s east coast, where he landed on September 8, 1565 (St. Augustine). He took possession of Florida in the name of Spain. Twelve days later, his force attacked the French colony and killed the occupants. If he hadn’t wiped them out we’d be talking about their settlement!
We’ve got a nasty history, don’t we! Disease brought by Europeans wiped out most of the Timucua…as it did with the native people all over North America.
Gene and I have been curious about this place for quite awhile. It’s a nice little town with lots of tourists. There are lovely art galleries, an amazing fort (Castillo de San Marcos), little tour trains, a beautiful harbor, and beaches with golden sand. It would be a good place to spend a vacation. We skipped the tourist stuff and found the Historical Society. We thought it was really interesting. I’m going to put a newspaper article on the blog for anyone who wants more…and so Gene and I can remember the details.

Newspaper article about St. Augustine, FL

Facts mark our city’s singular place in history, by Susan Parker
Published in the St. Augustine Record, Feb 12, 2006


The English who planned and led the Jamestown settlement were well aware of our 42 year old town. The English settlement was located in response to the existence of St. Augustine. British historian Ralph Davis, a graduate of the London School of Economics, wrote that England’s King James told the Virginia settlers to keep well away from the Spanish in Florida. Davis asserted that the English would have preferred to settle farther south in a warmer climate with a longer growing season, but Spanish Florida and its capital of St. Augustine made that too risky.
The early settlers of St. Augustine were not the “lazy fellows” as foreigners accused. By 1607 they had built several church building and several forts in St. Augustine as well as churches in established Indian communities. After a fitful first seven years of settlement, St. A’s residents laid out the town and its streets that we still use today. They also kept records of the activities of officials and of the important events of ordinary lives. The oldest document of American origin in the US is the record in the books from the Cathedral of St. Augustine, of an infant baptism performed here in June 1594. The priests had recorded baptisms, marriages and burials of people of European and African ancestry and of Native Americans in earlier books that have been lost. The Cathedral Parish Records offer an almost continuous record of residents of our nation from that day in 1594 to the present.
The first “melting pot” in the United States took shape in St. A. Residents of all races, of many languages and from many places lived in this town. Spaniards had Indian wives. Blacks and Indians married each other. Indian laborers, shopkeepers and even prisoners-f-war walked St. A’s streets. Free and enslaved blacks had arrived on Menendez’s ships, and slaves were escaping from St. A to Indian towns before the establishment of Jamestown.
According to archivists at the Library of Congress, “the earliest engraving of any locality in the United States” is a map of St. A, published in London almost 20 years before the settling of Jamestown.
It is life’s irony that the map was generated by an attack in 1586 led by Englishman Francis Drake. It depicts building and cornfields before he burned them. Yes, the English of those days knew very well of the existence of St. Augustine.
In 1598, Florida’s governor established the oldest public space in the United States—our plaza. We still use this landmark common area for public ceremonies and celebrations. In the same year the governor established standard weights and measures to regulate the vendors in the plaza market. In 1599, a hospital was opened in St. A; in 1605 Franciscan friars started a seminary in St. A, the first school in today’s United States.
St. Augustine was the first to endure as a city and as a community and it still endures. But St. A was not the first at everything, so let us make our claims with caution and with knowledge.
Spaniards planted the settlement of San Miguel de Gualdape on the Georgia coast in 1526, almost 50 years before St. Augustine was founded. But it lasted only three months. Christian worship during both sad and glad times had been part of the doomed settlement. Spanish Pensacola hung on as a settlement for about 18 months following a disastrous beginning in 1559. Three years before the founding of St. A, the French established the settlement of Charlesfort on Parris Island in 1562 and then Fort Caroline in Jacksonville in 1564. But these settlements did not last. St. A did—and that endurance is what makes ours the oldest city.
The attention to history arising from the Jamestown commemoration presents an opportunity for St. Augustine to present itself to the nation.
We should do so on our own credentials, not as a response to Jamestown. Many factors contribute to our uphill struggle to get the historically correct recognition that St. Augustine merits. It is my belief that it is in the classrooms of the United States where our case must be made.
We must convince the textbook publishers to include St. Augustine and inform the teachers. I am too often astounded at how many well-educated adults will hold tight to what they learned about history in elementary school, even in the face of solid facts.
We also should take notice that 10 years ago Virginia’s then governor began the planning for the Jamestown anniversary with statewide participation and support. In a little less than 10 years---2015—St Augustine will celebrate its 450th birthday. We should be planning now.

Kennedy Space Center

I promised more information about the Space Center. How about a test instead? See if you can remember the names of these astronauts! We had two good days at the complex. It’s huge. The buildings are huge. The rockets are huge. Looks just like it does on TV. It would have been a lot more interesting with a Space Shuttle ready to launch, but it’s up at the International Space Station at the moment. There are several really interesting movies to watch at the visitor center—one about walking on the moon, and one about the space station. Great bus tour too that takes you from the huge building where they work on the shuttle and the rockets, then out to the launch pad. Gene was in heaven in a place they call the rocket garden—lots of old rockets from Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions, including the Saturn 1B. We saw the Saturn 5 inside one of the buildings—it’s the biggest things we’ve sent up…2 football fields high (Statue of Liberty times 1 and ½).

Here's a cool timeline of the history of flight and our family:

1898-Gran was born

1903-First powered flight-Wilbur and Orville Wright

1926-First liquid powered rocket flight-Robert Goddard

1948 and 1953-Gene and I were born

1957-Sputnik-Russia orbits first space satellite

1961-First American in space-Alan B. Shepard, Jr.

1965-Gemini 6-first rendezvous and docking in space

1969-Apollo 11-First human to land on the moon-Neil A. Armstrong

1973-Skylab-First space station

1975-Apollo-Soyuz-First link up in space-Apollo-Soyuz test project

Look what happened during our lifetimes! Gran's lifetime really saw a lot of changes!