Field Trip #3 - Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve (Journal Entry #6)

The third field trip assignment is to visit a marine area. Since I live in Jacksonville, Florida, I obtained approval from the instructor to visit Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve & Fort Caroline National Memorial for this assignment. My husband (Steve) and I visited Timucuan Preserve on Sunday afternoon, May 16, 2010. Due to my upcoming foot surgery on May 21st – I was trying to get some of the field trip visits accomplished before the surgery. We had visited University of North Florida campus and natural trails that morning and then gone to church. After church we came home and changed clothes and drove out to Timucuan Preserve. It was very hot that afternoon. Timucuan Preserve provides a very unique look at the history of Florida. Pre-Columbian and Timucua Indians once lived at that location. The Preserve was established in 1988 and consists of 46,000 acres that includes Fort Caroline National Memorial, the Theodore Roosevelt Area, Kingsley Plantation, Cedar Point and thousands of acres of wood, water and salt marsh. The area we actually visited on May 16th was the Timucuan Preserve Visitor Center and Fort Caroline. (In the past I have visited the Kingsley Plantation also – it is located in Fort George Island. It is a beautiful location with slave quarters and all things related to an old southern plantation.) The Timucuan Preserve Visitor Center is a very large, nice, modern center. It has interesting and colorful exhibits. I enjoyed the visitor center . There was a ranger at the front door that you could talk to. They had a huge Timucuan Indian display. I found that particularly interesting since I had started reading “A Land Remembered.” The Timucua Indians settled along the rivers and islands near the Atlantic Ocean and took advantage of the waterways for transportation. The Timucua of this area first encountered Europeans in 1562 when French settlers arrived at St. Johns River. The Timucua helped the newcomers build a fort. However, as with other Florida native peoples, they did not survive contact with the Europeans. The Timucua had no immunity to European diseases and their population was devastated. Only 550 Timucua were recorded in 1698, from a population once in the tens of thousands. Today, no known indigenous people call themselves Timucua. My favorite display at the Timucuan Preserve Visitor Center was a large wooden owl. It is a rare surviving artifact from Florida’s pre-Columbian Indians. Here is a picture: My husband and I visited the remains of Fort Caroline. It was constructed right on the water’s edge. It is a beautiful view of the river. I enjoyed just standing there and looking at the water. There is not much left of the fort. The National Park Service acquired land from Willie Browne (600 acres) that make up the Theodore Roosevelt Area of the Timucuan Preserve. It has miles of peaceful, wooded nature trails. All along the trails there are piles of oyster shells. The Willie Browne Trail winds through a variety of habitats that include maritime hammocks, scrub vegetation, freshwater swamp and salt marsh. There is a shell peninsula that consists of mounds of oyster shells left over from 1,000 years of Indian habitation. The trails were very rooty. (The nature trails we had been on earlier that morning at UNF had been wooden planks for trails.) The trails were easily defined and well marked with signs, but the land was very uneven and the roots were tough to travel over. This is where the field trip became much less enjoyable for me. Since I am still recovering from surgery on my left foot – walking the trails over the uneven land was very uncomfortable, and painful towards the end. It is difficult to take in and appreciate the beauty when you are having trouble walking along a trail. We did not see any special wildlife. We saw some fish in the water, some birds in the trees, some squirrels. The Preserve has year round residents that include wood storks, ospreys, great blue herons, belted kingfishers, snowy egrets and bald eagles. We were told that it is also possible see alligators, otters, dolphins, bobcats, gopher tortoises, marsh rabbits and snakes on the trails. We did not see any snakes this time (like we saw snakes when we visited the swamp and that cut our trip short!). I enjoyed the beauty of the Nature Preserve. It was very hot though and not very comfortable. I very much liked one of the Indian tee-pees we came upon along the trail. I went inside of it. This reminded me of some tee-pees I had seen when we went to the Grand Canyon Skywalk last year. The skywalk is owned by the Hualapai Indian tribe. Many tribes travel to the location because it is sacred and reconstruct tee-pees. We saw many of them there and entered into them. They had a way of being cool in the summertime and warm during the wintertime. They also planted specific plants around the tee-pees that were snake resistant to keep the snakes out. Anyway – seeing this palm fron tee-pee along the trail reminded me of that. But it was not very cool in the summertime. I don’t know if it was because the palms were all dried out or not. I was surprised by the number of people at the Timucuan Preserve. There were dozens of families with children walking around the fort and along the nature trails. There were several joggers on the trails. There were lots of dogs on leashes being walked along the trails. It seems like a lot of people in this area are taking their children out to experience nature. I am glad the National Park Service protects and preserves this location. It is an important piece of Old Florida history. It is definitely a place someone could go to “get away from it all” – because when you are there you really do feel like you are out in the wilderness. The field trip was interesting, but I paid the price for walking so much when my foot became swollen and I had to spend the rest of the evening with ice bags over the area of the foot where the stitches are still healing.





NOTE: All photos on this blog entry were taken by my husband and myself with our camera at the time of our visit to this location.

Field Trip #2 - Twelve Mile Swam (Journal Entry #5)

For the second field trip assignment, I visited Twelve Mile Swamp Recreation Area. It is located in St. Johns County, Florida, approximately eight miles north of St. Augustine. This was a miserable experience. I was scheduled to have my foot surgery on Friday, May 21st. I received approval from the instructor that she would accept Twelve Mile Swamp for this field trip assignment on Tuesday, May 18th. I was trying to get as many of the field trips accomplished as I could prior to my surgery. So, my husband and I left work early on Tuesday to go visit Twelve Mile Swamp.

We came home from work and changed clothes, got some bottled water to drink and loaded up our two German Shepherd Dogs into our vehicle for the trip. I had read on the internet write up about Twelve Mile Swamp leashed dogs were allowed at the swamp and on the trails. We thought it might be fun to take the dogs walking on the trails. According to the internet write up about the location, there was fishing, hiking and horseback riding allowed at the location.

The Twelve Mile Swamp Recreation Area is a 378-acre recreation area which is part of a 21,898 acre tract that is under a long term timber reservation. The larger tract – Twelve Mile Swamp Wildlife Management Area is managed by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and is open for public hunting season. Together, these swamps form the headwaters for six major tributary systems. Three of these tributaries (Turnbull Creek, Mill Creek and Sampson Creek) discharge into the St. Johns River. Two other tributaries (Moultrie Creek and Red House Branch) discharge into the Matanzas River, while Stokes Creek discharges into the Tolomato River. Preservation of this site serves to protect the water quality and quantity of these creek systems and benefits the groundwater and water supply for St. Johns County, Florida.





It was about a 35 minute drive from our house to the Twelve Mile Swamp. The directions took us down Nine Mile Road at International Golf Parkway. Nine Mile Road is a BEAUTIFUL road with a large canopy of trees the entire length of the road. We have ridden on that road many times with the motorcycle club because it is such a scenic route. The road is wonderful to ride on when you are on the motorcycle because the tree canopy creates wonderful shadows on the road of dark and then light and then dark and then light as you are driving along. Here are some pictures of Nine Mile Road I took while we were driving down the road:





Even though we had been on Nine Mile Road on several occasions, we had never heard of or seen Twelve Mile Swamp. It was very difficult to find (even with the google directions and directions from the website). There are several entrances to the area. Many of the entrances are closed off with locked gates. We drove around about an hour and a half looking for an entrance we could actually access. This was extremely frustrating.





We did stop at one of the gates and walk behind it up to a map box and it was part of the Twelve Mile Swamp Wildlife Management Area. I picked up a copy of the 2009-2010 Hunting Season brochure. I thought it was extremely interesting to learn that animals you could hunt at Twelve Mile Swamp include deer, wild hog, turkey, gray squirrel, quail, rabbits, raccoon, opossum, armadillo, beaver, coyote, skunk, bobcat, otter and some migratory birds. I never knew we had coyotes and otter in that area!






Anyway, we could not access the area there because of the locked gate, so we drove around to another access point.






According to the website, the common wildlife sightings at Twelve Mile Swamp Recreation include white-tailed deer, foxes, songbirds and a variety of snakes. We should have paid more attention to the “snake” part. When we finally found a place we could park and get out with the dogs to walk the trails, we had only gone a little way when we saw snakes all along the trails. Here is a picture of one of the snakes we saw crossing the road right in front of where we were walking:




Well, of course, the dogs wanted to go after the snakes, so we had to take them back to the vehicle, for everyone’s safety. After seeing all the snakes, I was not at all inclined to walk any further on the trails or any deeper into the swamp area. We could see the swamp and the water in the distance but had no desire to venture further. Plus, by now, since we had driven around about two hours trying to find an access point, it was starting to get dusky dark and this was no time of day to be wandering out in the swamp.







Anyway, it was a miserable experience – because my husband was mad and annoyed because of all of the driving around to find the access point; the two dogs were frustrated in the car because they could not get out and walk and we wouldn’t let them chase the snakes. I was upset because I did not get to see or explore the swamp area as much as I would liked to have done – because I am afraid of the snakes and it was getting dark. I knew we would not be able to come back any other time, because of the distance to get there and because of my foot surgery, I will not be able to drive myself and would have to ask my husband to go back and I knew he would not want to do that because of the events of this day. The swamp area was really like you would expect a swamp to be. It seemed like a very “wild” area with all the animals I read about that were in the area. The grass and the trees were very green.
Seeing the swamp reminded me that Florida’s swamps remain threatened by human activities which include draining, pollution, logging, mining, flood plain alterations and introduced invasive plants. Human impact on swamp lands also threatens associated rivers and lakes and directly affects the plant and animal species that depend on them. I am glad that the St. Johns River Water Management District is working to protect the Twelve Mile Swamp Recreation Area and the Twelve Mile Swamp Wildlife Management Area.





NOTE: The very first photo at the top of the blog entry (swamp trees at sunset) was taken from the Twelve Mile Swamp website at http://myfwc.com/recreation/WMASites_TwelveMileSwamp_index.htm. All of the rest of the pictures were taken by me and my husband at the time of our visit to the swamp.

#4 - Calculate Your Ecological Footprint

(a) I took the quiz to calculate my ecological footprint and my score indicates it would take 4.8 Earths to sustain all the people on the planet if everyone lived like me. The quiz pointed out that the planet has 26.7 billion global acres of land and ocean and that is about 4.5 acres per person. So, if my lifestyle requires more than 4.5 acres, then the score equals more than one Earth. In that light, I didn’t think the score of 4.8 was so bad. Thinking about the ecological footprint just reminds me that all renewable resources come from the Earth. This reminds me of the importance of taking care of the Earth.

Part of the assignment is to evaluate my family’s lifestyle. My husband and I live together in a one story single family home. We have two German Shepherd Dogs that live with us. We have a Tahoe vehicle that we got so we could pull the motorcycle trailer. We also have a ten year old Toyota that we inherited when my mother died a couple of years ago. We try to drive the Toyota as often as possible because it cuts down on our gas bill. We have to drive the Toyota when we are taking the dogs to the vet and when we are transporting the grandchildren – because we need the room to fit the pets and to fit two car seats.

We both work in the downtown Jacksonville area, so we carpool to work. Our commute is only about 8 miles each way. In the Summertime we often ride the motorcycle to work (this cuts down on gas expense also.)



We are gone during the day so we do not consume a lot of electricity. Our heating system in the house is natural gas. We put in energy efficient windows about three years ago and that has made a big difference in our electricity costs. We have also switched to the energy efficient lightbulbs throughout our home, although I do not like them very much because they are slow to heat up and light up.




We do very little cooking at the house. We generally eat yogurt for breakfast. Then we meet for lunch downtown and have our big meal of the day. In the evenings we usually have meetings or other activities to attend – so we seldom eat supper at home. If we are at home in the evenings, then we usually snack by having some chips or cheese and crackers. We generally drink a glass or two of wine at night when we are home. Since it is just the two of us, I usually only run the dishwasher about twice a week and the washer and dryer about twice a week. We have tile floors – so there is no vacuuming. We recycle all of our glass, plastic, aluminum cans and newspapers. We have a recycle pickup every Tuesday.






I don’t think there are very many changes that we can make to our lifestyle. We are already recycling and cutting back on gasoline and energy as much as we can. I did look on the internet at an article by The OutPost that listed Ten Ways to Reduce Your Ecological Footprint to see if I could get any idea. Here are the suggestions and my responses to them:

1. Use energy efficient light bulbs – we do.
2. Reduce the amount of meat you eat – eat more veggies – this I can try. I know it would be beneficial for me to eat more fruits and vegetables.
3. Have a car with better gas mileage – we do.
4. Downsize your house next time you buy – we would probably do this, since our kids are no longer living at home and we do not need a large place.
5. Cut out a plane trip for the year – we seldom fly, so not really applicable to us.
6. Ride your bike - - this we do not do. We don’t even own any bicycles. We walk our two dogs almost every evening – if we were to take off on bicycles without them – they would be very upset.
7. Cancel newspaper subscription and cut down on junk mail – we try very hard to cut down on junk mail – but we do have a newspaper subscription, we like to read the paper in the mornings while we eat breakfast. I do not like reading the news on the computer.
8. Buy locally – we do buy at the local grocery store – but we do not travel to farmer’s markets or farms, because we do not eat that much at home. The fruit we buy at the store often gets rotten before we eat it.
9. Recycle – this we do.
10. Vote for candidates that want to make a real change for the environment. This is a good point and I will certainly think about this more in the future. This is one I can do.

I think one of the most important things I can do to help the ecological footprint is to set a good example for my young grandchildren. I am not unhappy with my quiz results. But taking the quiz makes me want to be more aware of what I am doing and makes me want to try harder to conserve and recycle.



(b) The assignment is to take a look at my specific consumption over a 24 hour period during a typical day.
1. energy usage – in a given day I use electricity to light my house and gas to run my dryer.
2. fuel usage – my husband and I carpool to work every weekday. On the weekends we usually ride our motorcycles. I don’t think we could use any less fuel than we do.
3. food intake – my food consumption has been discussed above. I can make an effort to eat less meat and more vegetables and fruits – this is something that would help the environment and be healthier for me and my family.
4. water use – my husband and I take showers each night and we generally wash about two loads of clothes a week. We do not water the yard with any regularity. Our dogs have to drink bottled water because the granules in the tap water was causing them problems – so we buy bottled water for us all to drink.
5. packaging – there is way too much packaging in the bills and other mail we receive, but I do not have any control over that. I seldom package anything for mailing. When I do send a package I use (recycle) the newspaper to stuff around the item.

“Ecological Footprint” is defined online at www.footprintnetwork.org as: A measure of how much biologically productive land and water an individual, population or activity requires to produce all the resources it consumes and to absorb the waste it generates using prevailing technology and resource management practices.”




When I look at my score from the quiz – I realize that if we (humankind) do not design ways to live within the means of one planet – we will never achieve sustainability.