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.
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