March 5, 2020 – March 17, 2020 ~ After leaving The Villages, we had reservations at the Pelican’s Roost Campground on Mayport Naval Air Station.
We had a front row, pull through site with FHUs. For those with Class A motorhomes, the view is of the mouth of the St John’s River through the windshield. We have a fifth wheel however, so we had to go outside to watch the parade of ships that passed in front of us.
There was a constant and interesting flow of ships both pulling into Mayport and continuing up river. Some seemed to be on a regular route and became familiar to us.
We took daily walks on the beach, usually in the late afternoon.
It was interesting to note how much the beach changed day by day. Some days, the shells were scattered evenly across the sand, other days there were large mounds of shells where the tide had bunched them together. I found something interesting each walk to take a picture of.
We think the object below is a “sword” from a swordfish!
Here are some of the more interesting things we found on the beach…
One day as I was walking on the beach, a woman came up to me and held out something in the palm of her hand. She said “You know to look for shark’s teeth, right?” No I didn’t! She showed me the one in her hand and told me the easiest way to spot them. She ended up giving me the one in her hand because she said she had “hundreds” of them at home already. No kidding, within 5 minutes Scott and I had each found one. We caught up to the woman on the beach and showed her our teeth. She had a picture on her phone that identified different species of sharks according to the shape and size of the teeth. The big one pictured below just might be a Great White’s tooth! Unfortunately, that day we were graced with “beginner’s luck” and never found another tooth for the rest of our stay.
Our neighbor told us that Chick-fil-A was going to be passing out free chicken sandwiches on base the next day. Apparently they did that frequently as a show of support for the military. We are huge fans of their chicken sandwiches so we decided to be sure to remember that tidbit around lunchtime the following day. In our walk around base that afternoon, we spotted a Chick-fil-A truck prepositioned for the giveaway the next day.
I took a picture of the truck and chuckled at the saying on the back of it. Covid 19 was all over the news and the times really didn’t call for gathering anymore.
We had a really enjoyable and delicious hot chicken sandwich for lunch on what turned out to be the last Chick-fil-A sandwich giveaway for the foreseeable future. Thank you, Chick-fil-A, for your support of the military.
I love finding hidden jokes or bits of humor where they are least expected. We did find one such gem on base during one of our walks.
Note the small silver colored disk on the tree truck in the above picture.
Now see the picture below to see what the disk says…
A “branch manager” in the military is someone who oversees the service member’s career, making sure they are progressing through their career path while also fulfilling the current needs of the military.
This tag was placed by an entirely different type of “branch manager” I imagine.
On another of our walks, we discovered the most decorative manhole cover we had ever seen.
One of our favorite things to do is to ride our ebikes, and one day we took a ride on the Jacksonville-Baldwin Rail Trail. The trail is 14.5 miles long, nicely paved and open to walkers, joggers, bikers, skaters and equestrians. Along the trail we discovered Camp Milton Historic Preserve that was once a Civil War encampment. There was a well-constructed boardwalk that we rode our bikes on because we were the only ones on it at the time. It wound through the woods and passed Civil War era earthworks.
The primary trees in the woods are Longleaf Pines. The pinecones they produce are rather large. Keep that in mind when I tell you that we stopped to read some signage about life in a Civil War encampment and learned about “The Pine Cone Battles.” In March, 1864 over the course of two nights various Regiments and Brigades created quite a melee by tossing pinecones they had lit on fire at each other for sport. There was estimated to have been over 1,000 flaming pinecones that were airborne at any given moment during the heat of the battle. Sometimes, when pinecone supplies ran low, soldiers would light pieces of wood on fire to hurl as substitutes. A good time was had by all until a General put a stop to it because of the injuries to the participants.
I will finish up with a picture of Scott fishing on the rocks out in front of the campground. We enjoyed our stay on Mayport NAS, especially the access to the beach. While we were here, it became apparent our summer plans had to change due to Covid 19. You can find out what happened here.
