How we spent our 4th of July. By Asela Hopkins....lol.
Kind of reminds me of when you got back to school and teachers always wanted a recount of your summer vacation, usually mine went something like this - We drove down the coast of Florida, no seat belts or air-conditioning, with my feet hanging out the window, until we ended up at Disney!. Ah the good ole' days.
Well now I have the vacation spots in my backyard, well sort of!
We took a drive down to see Fort Matanzas.
Matanzas means massacre. It's at the southern tip of the inter-coastal waterway and the first line of defense for the city of St. Augustine. There are gorgeous beaches and natural habitat everywhere you look. While waiting for the park ranger ferry to take us to the other side of the shore the boys took a look about. Wow, the water and the sky were beautiful! Look just beneath the largest cloud and you can see the fort.
Once at the fort we were greeted by 2 re-enacters wearing Spanish uniforms of the time period. They gave a a brief history of the fort and then we were able to go anywhere we pleased. We walked to the tippy top, on the roof, through a very narrow hole, up the steep ladder. Wow, what view!
Funny part, I was heading back down the ladder with my sunglasses clipped on my shirt. And they fell! All the way down to the floor and out the second story door and right down to the foot of the cannons. The men in uniform watched as one of the lens popped out and shattered right in front of them. Oh how embarrassing. Luckily it didn't shatter much and they swept up the pieces using a replica broom of the time period.
Can you just imagine being a soldier out on this remote outpost? The heat, the bugs and the solitude.
Talking about bugs. If you are squeamish you may not want to follow along with the rest of my adventure.
After the tour of the fort we rode the ferry back to the other side of the waterway. We decided to take the self guided nature walk. We picked up a leaflet and started our walk.
Along the way we came across Banana and Orchid spiders. From the moment we began the trail these HUGE spider webs were stretched between the trees and above our head, from one side of the trail path to the other. YUCK!!! If you are scared of spiders this definitely would not be the nature walk for you. The Banana spiders are big. And I mean BIG!
This is a picture of the female that greeted us as we began the trail. Yes, I actually had to get up close and personal to snap this shot. She's really pretty and always hangs looking down at you as you walk by. I asked my hubby if she was poisonous. "Well, the pamphlet say's, nope!" Okay, well......I did a bit a research when I got home...ahhhhhhh.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_spider Guess the park service wasn't gonna say that 'cause
who'd ever walk down the trail! LOL.
They call them Banana spiders because of their yellow coloring. Hello, I never saw a banana look like that! Creepy!!!! See hubby's hand behind her web? Well, shall I just say this, he's 6'3" and has really big hands. Ahhhhhhhhh, yep, that's one big spider.
The other spider was small, only about 1/2". Small....right! LOL
They said in the brochure it was an Orchid spider. But I can't find anything like that on the web. So your guess is as good as mine. They were really
pretty little guys. Their webs were everywhere also. (Looking on line, apparently Black Widows are out here...oh that looks pretty darn close!)
Funny thing, I've hiked and lived in Florida for years and I never came across these spiders. That's a good thing, huh?
Okay, are you grossed out yet? I know I am. I just about freaked out when I got home and looked at the pictures. They were creepy in real life, looking down at us from their webs, ready to pounce at us, but looking at the pictures, YUCKY!
Now there were other things to look at on the trail, native plants and flowers. So it wasn't all that bad. And it lead us to the site of the massacre of the
French by the Spanish. 250 slaughtered. Sad.
It's nice to be able to not only have beautiful beaches, native trails but early history to learn about here in Florida. There's definitely more to the state than Disney World!
So, this is how we spent our 4th of July.
Hope you had a wonderful day too.