June 12 - Playing Tourists

Yea, the beginning of our weekend! We had our regular Sunday breakfast, but then after that it seemed like our Saturday. I did some laundry and Bill washed the back of the RV where we discovered a raccoon has been climbing up the ladder to the roof. I told him I was hearing stuff so now I have proof. Later in the day we used zip ties to attach a piece of plywood about 3 steps up so will see if our raccoon shield does the trick.

We left about 12:15 for our Sunday trip to McDonald’s to use the WIFI and Bill went to get a Sunday paper. Dell was still acting up but Bill got some stuff done on Toby. I am going to try a computer place on the island tomorrow and see what they can find. Bill had a burger and fries and I ate a cheesestick as we did have a late big breakfast so I was good.

With the musket team

With original cannon

Once we finished up, our goal was to play tourist at the fort in the afternoon. We made it to the 2:30 musket demonstration, which was great. The rangers and volunteers were in Federal soldier uniforms and after explaining all about the musket, and procedures of the soldiers there were 4 that shot 3 times each. One of them was Meghan, who we work with in the VC and she’s super nice. Bill took my picture with 3 of the musketeers. Just after that were the cannon firings. They explained all about the 2 cannons and the 9 steps the 5 cannoneers would be performing, although not at the speed they would if they were in battle. They fired each one once. One was a howitzer and the other was a parrot. The parrot has rifling and was the kind used by the Federal army overtaking Ft Pulaski in 2 days of battle. It could shoot further and straighter than what had been the traditional cannons at the time of Civil War. Bill took my picture with the cannon crew and 3 were rangers that I work with. We went up on the top level of the fort and walked all the way around and took photos and the view is really nice in some directions. We could see the Cockspur Lighthouse that we road out to the other day. We saw where there was once a lighthouse keepers house built on the top level. He planted a fig tree and pecan trees in the yard of the fort that are still there. It’s the biggest fig tree we’ve ever seen and it was cut back not long ago.

Time to head home and put the last of the wash in. Bill was grilling for dinner so I didn’t have to do much prep:  potatoes and steamed broccoli. Before we got to the cooking I fixed a piece of trim on the side of our bed and worked on getting the washer not to vibrate so much on the spin cycle. Then I put fresh sheets on the bed before dinner.

Our new pets

After taking Xena for a nice walk along the river, we switched to the bikes and did about 4 miles.  We road to the bridge, then to the fort and half way around to see the projectiles embedded in the wall and what we learned all about today.   We could see fish jumping in the moat.  I’m going to ask our ranger boss if we get fishing licenses if we can fish in the moat.  Some of those rascals are big.  Yum!