Pretty lazy lay days. We had a delicious breakfast with Dean and Susan
followed by a very productive shopping trip at the multi-vendor farmers market. We are looking forward to boiling the likes of home made sweet potato fettuccine -- the eggs and other filler replaced with the pureed potato. Afternoon and evening plans were replaced by the threat of a storm so we hung out on ILENE with some cleaning and polishing and a quiet night at home. The rain came, and heavy, but not until about 2 am and continued until morning. The second day was warm, with a very light shower in the evening. After bailing many gallons of rainwater out of the dink I visited the Amelia Island Museum of History,
located in the former county jail and took its 2 pm "eight flags" tour. The ninth flag, except that they did not have one, would have been that of the matriarchal peaceful people, the Timucuans, who the Europeans wiped out. (The Seminoles, who married with escaped slaves -- slaves escaped to the south, to the Florida wilderness, where the Spanish left them alone -- came later, from the north.) The Spanish wiped out the Huguenot French saying: "not because they were French but because they were Protestants" and held the island several times, including, for a period after the Treaty Of Paris, which ended our war of independence. That treaty gave Florida to Spain for their help to the new republic against the British. Various pirate regimes were established. David Levy Yulee campaigned to have the Florida Territory become a state and was the first US senator from Florida (and the first Jewish senator in the US senate) when Florida was granted statehood in 1845. But Florida was the third state to secede, in 1861, so its first period as a US State was short lived. Yulee (a nearby town is named for him) also built Floridas first big railroad, which ran from Floridas Gulf Coast northeastward to Fernandina, a deep water port, to permit the transport of goods from the gulf states to the Atlantic without having to go all the way around the peninsula and the keys by boat. But it was finished just in time for the Civil War and sections of rail were removed by the Confederacy to be used in more strategic locations. You get the idea that no one really cared that much about Florida until tourism put it on the map. All of these "regime changes" were accomplished without a shot being fired. Flagler offered to build a spur of his east coast railroad to Fernandina but the existing tourism on Amelia Island was so good in the 1890s that the town fathers declined his offer, much to their chagrin, because the tourism industry relocated to southern Florida until the 1990s when it returned here. What made the museum so enjoyable was our docent, Bobbie Fost, a history professor who knew and loved her subject, shown here under a depiction of the eight flags, in chronological order.
The museum has much more to offer so if you want more, ask me -- or visit yourself.
After returning to the boat to pick up Lene, we dined on interesting dishes at "29 South" with Dean and Susan, and plan to head over to St. Marys tomorrow morning, less than seven miles.
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