Fort Caroline, Jacksonville, FL High 90 Low70 nice now, BUT

We are on our way back into Florida to see the National Monument Ft. Carolina.  Fort Carolina was built in the sixteenth century.  This is the very beginnings of the settling of the new world.  We had to cross the St. James River.  This bridge was really beautiful.

This is a shelter the Timucuan Indians built for the chief to sit in to watch the building of the fort and surrounding buildings. 

These are oyster shells that our found at all Indian ruins along the coast.  They would have mountains of these.  We saw them on the river when we went swimming with the manatees a while back.  The settlers and Indians would use the shell to make Tappy, a mixture of sand crushed shells and water to make building materials.

The French were the first to settle here.  They measured a piece of land in  the shape of a triangle.  Then they processed to build it, using wood.  We learned from the other Forts that Florida does not have rock, only the coquina in the reefs. 

This is Rog at the entrance of the Fort.  Notice the hedge on the land side and the wood on the River side. I hope this is not how the fort was really made.  If so I can understand how the Spanish were able to over take them. 

The moat, I sure hope this is not to scale.  I think I could even jump this even with gators.

This engraving provide clues of the size, shape and location, but nothing definitive has ever been found to tell the full story of the Fort.

Ribault is the first Frenchman to land here  in the new world to claim land for the French.  The Spanish had been coming for a while and France thought they should be here too. 

This is what they think the marker looked like that he placed to mark the land for France.

This is the St. James River.  The fort was built at the mouth of this river because they knew it would be very important to them.  It is a big one.  You see here the devices they use to load box cars and truck trailers onto tankers.  These loading stations are all up and down the river,

Here you see a tanker on a small section of the river.  We also saw cruise ships too. 



We decided to go to the Fort today because we are going to experience something that Rog and I have never experienced before and that is a Tropical Storm.  It even has a name: Beryl.  The weather people are all excited.  They say it is a weak one, but.
 The way it is approaching we will be getting the biggest part of the storm in our area.  The storm  is suppose to be here Sunday night and Monday morning.  Rain, 3 inches and wind 45 mph.  We will report back and let you know how things went.  We are planning on staying close to home Sunday tucking things in.