My Final Experiences in the Sunshine State... You Won’t Believe What I ATE!

I head to the airport this Sunday morning around 3:00am to catch my flight down to Medellín, Colombia! The past two weeks since Disney have been fun, relaxing and educational all in one.

One evening, we took Chloe out for a walk to what used to be an old Girl Scout camp. It is right beside the river so I kept an eye out for alligators.

Over the weekend, Kurt and I went to another Navy Base and he showed me a few of the ships that are in the marina. The photos dont really do them much justice, but they’re pretty large vessels that can hold a lot of people. I can tell you right away it wouldn’t work for me to be on there because I’d need at least a window to look out and if you look real close, you'll notice there aren’t any below deck!

We took the ferry over the intercoastal waters and made our way to Amelia Island! it was a beautiful drive along there where we visited a plantation.

This plantation used to actually be full of fields that grew sugar cane, cotton, rice and potatoes but over the last 120 years they have let it grow wild so it looks more like a jungle now! There’s so many adorable Georgian/Adam Federal/Colonial-style homes and old church’s on the island. It was a beautiful drive through Amelia Island to get to the main tour area of the plantation.

Back in the mid 1800s, the island was a farm that belonged to the Kingsley family. They had hundreds of African-American slaves and Kurt and I learned a lot about how they lived and saw the remains of the slave homes, the church and school as well as the main Kingsley family home. Slaves were traded or sold based on their skills and abilities, so those who had mastered more skills were worth more than those who didn’t have as many.

The homes here were built from a combination of seashells and cement. I learned that these homes were fire resistant because of what they were made of. The slave homes were in a row, likely each a family or two families lived in a single building. There were two separate areas in the slave homes - one that seemed it was used for cooking and one for sleeping. Both of the rooms were only about six feet by ten feet in size each, so those are some pretty close quarters for the people to be living in.

The main house, where Mr Kingsley and his wife (who was actually a former slave herself) lived was far nicer than the slave homes, of course. It had three additions built on over the years and even caught fire once but is still standing and is set up for people to tour today.

Finally, we checked out the school/church. Religion was forced upon the slaves so Sunday attendance at church was imperative.

After we were finished learning about the plantations dark history, we made our way to a sunnier destination: Fernandina beach! Kurt just recently got a new truck so we had to test out the 4 x 4 and drive on the sand, of course. I haven’t touched the Atlantic Ocean in quite a number of years and it is just as cold as I remember!

We drove a little ways after that to make it to the little town of Fernandina where we walked down the streets and admired the architecture of the old buildings and looked at little shops from the windows.

We stopped in at Florida‘s oldest bar! Apparently back in the day, this bar was unique to captains of ships from all over the world. They would come in and enjoy a beer or two (or 20...) after sailing the seas for months. The original owner, Louis H Hirth, consulted his good buddy, Adolphus Busch (yep, the founder of Anheuser-Busch), to help him design the elegant bar! They offered towels for each patron to use to wipe foam from their moustaches while they drank and you were billed on a monthly basis. This bar was also the first hard liquor bar to serve Coca-Cola in 1905! During the very beginning of the prohibition days, Hirth was one of the last bars to keep serving and grossed $60,000 in the day!

Kurt and I ended up walking down to the docks and spent our evening drinking beer at different pubs before heading back to Fleming Island. The following week we celebrated Kurt’s 28th birthday and I got to relax in the sunshine while he was at work. I even made some little decorations (with obviously limited supplies haha...). It was about 27-28 degrees during the week which was great as I am hoping to be a little more climatized to that temperature!

The craziest experience was that I ate ALLIGATOR. Yup, you read that right. We got “Gater Tail” at this place called Whitey’s Fish House which is right on the river (maybe they catch the alligator right on shore?!) It had the texture of a fatty, chewy pork/chicken and since it was deep fried, it mostly tasted like the breading. Ha! I don’t think I’ll have it again but I’m proud (?) to say I tried it.

I definitely learned a lot in these past few weeks about the history of the area and we really got to tour around! We’re going to celebrate Valentines Day together today by eating steak (yum!) and then likely go to Top Golf tomorrow as we spend our last couple days together. I’m sad to leave Florida and Kurt for a while but I’m SO excited to get into my backpacking world and head down to Colombia!

Stay wild,

T