My last post was months ago, just as we arrived at our next Visitor Center Host position at Fort Frederica National Monument on the island of St. Simons, GA. There were high hopes of island exploration and observing coastal wildlife. But it did not work out that way.
After nearly two years in the remote deserts of Arizona and Texas, with our shortest drive to something that could pass for as a grocery store being 85 miles one way, we went through nearly a month of culture shock. We could actually leave our job, change out of uniform and be at a full-service grocery or one of dozens of excellent restaurants in 15 minutes. Amazing.
We knew we had been on the far reaches of the grid for too long when we caught ourselves being mesmerized by the tall, shiny buildings of the big city.
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| Gleaming buildings of Atlanta catching the setting sun. |
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| Only a few minutes later the same buildings glowing in the night. |
While looking across the parking lot and framing up these photos a woman was approaching from a parked car and she kept looking at me and then back over her shoulder in the direction I was shooting. The expression on her face made it clear that she could not find what I thought was photograph worthy. When she got close, her curiosity got the better of her and she put her hand on her hip, cocked her head and said; "What are you taking a picture of?" I replied that I was really impressed with the way the setting sunlight was playing off the buildings. She said that she had heard about people like me and walked off shaking her head.
Our November arrival on the island was just in time to see a decline in the weather. It seemed that every time our three days off came around the weather was foul and we huddled in the comfort of our rolling condo, dry and warm. However, we did quickly learn that the power feed to our RV pad alongside the maintenance building was lacking. For every electric appliance that we turned on there was a corresponding drop in voltage to our power distribution center. The power management system on the rig constantly monitors the incoming voltage and if it drops below the minimum set limit it will isolate the rig from the bad power by shutting off the connection to the power. We had many a power outage before we learned what could be run in combination without causing a service-clipping drain. It turns out that there was very little we could run at one time. If you wanted heat there was not much else you could do. If you wanted to use the microwave, run the washer or dryer or heat water, the heat had to be shut off. Constantly turning off one thing so another could be turned on got to be a drag but it became routine. Multiple requests to the park service to have the power problem investigated went ignored.
In addition to now being in the middle of civilization we are also plopped down right in the middle of a beautiful park setting. And not just your everyday park, this is a park of the deep south, coastal deep south where live oaks grow to massive proportions and they are draped heavily in Spanish moss.
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| This is the walking path between our RV pad and the Visitor Center. |
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| On the walking path to work looking west, towards the Frederica River. |
The national monument, Fort Frederica, is not very large, just a couple hundred acres of archeological digs with only two tiny partial structures left standing above ground from the original 1736 construction.
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| About a third of the fort's powder magazine remains. The Frederica River meanders through the salt marshes between the island and Brunswick, GA in the background. |
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| The only original piece of military equipment from the fort. This canon was fished out of the river during the archeological digs in the 1950's, hence the heavy pitting. |
But back to my opening remarks about things not working out as planned in regards to making blog posts. Despite being back in the middle of civilization, our connection to a cell tower was abysmal. Getting a phone connection was sketchy at best, getting a connection for the jetpack to the internet was rare.
And to top it off, the National Monument assignment really wasn't much to write home about. Visitor ship was about one hundredth of what we are accustomed to. And the visitors we did get tended to be of the "shuffle" variety, which tends not to lead to a lot of adventure stories.
More later.
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