Florida…The Promise Land! Sun, Sun, Sun!

January 20, 2014
This morning we packed up the camper and headed for a quick trip over to Savanna for a quick look at those charming 22 squares (gardens) in the old section of town.

The word between our
heads says it all! "Sunshine"

To get there, we had to drive five miles on base to the main gate only to find it locked shut with no one around. Martin Luther holiday was the occasion. We couldn’t get off base from the main gate. A five mile U-turn took us back to the gate next to the RV campground. Remember the old adage. “The truck camper is like a canoe going down a river without paddles”. It didn’t want us to go there, so we headed south to Jacksonville and the Navy base at Mayport, Florida. When we crossed into the “Promised Land” meaning the sunshine state, we weren’t disappointed. We stopped at the first visitor center and couldn’t resist taking a ‘'selfy” picture.

I relied on my navigation software to guide us to the Navy base. Oddly enough, I could see that we were headed towards the wrong side of the St Johns River. I knew that no bridge existed over the river, as super sized ships navigate into port. I nearly turned around, but the GPS said only three miles to the base.

Navy Sunset!

I figured, if anything else, I could get a picture of the base from a different vantage. Ah, soon there was a sign indicating “St Johns River Ferry”. I was trying to figure how much it would cost. The digital readout sign was scrolling too fast. Trucks under 20 feet were $10 plus $1 for passenger. Trucks over 20 feet were $20 bucks. You pay on board, so it was kind of hard to figure. The truck camper was inline and what ever it cost we were committed. The attendant came over and swiped my credit card on his reader. I said, “how much?” he said “$6 bucks” thank you. It was well worth $6 or even $21 dollars to avoid the dense city traffic in and around Jacksonville.

The ferry ride was only a five or so minutes across. We were parked second vehicle towards the front. Approaching the docking area, I noticed that the ferry was not inline and the captain revved the engines to correct. Over the loud speakers, he announced that we might have

 

to go around again. He then announced, “Prepare for a bump and motorcycles secure your bikes!” He somehow managed to guide the ferry into the docking area. It was our first time ever to be in a broadside approach to docking and we’ve been on a lot of ferries including crossing the mighty swift running Yukon river. Adventure always seems to find us. I guess I call it adventure verses disaster.

Mayport Naval Base is about three miles from the ferry. We drove into the RV campground and there were sites available. This campground is located right on the waterfront in the Navy yard. We were fortunate enough to watch several ships go in and out of port…from a cruise ship… a ship that had railroad cars on it… to a Navy destroyer, were all in our view from our truck camper. We took and evening walk around the park and captured several orange to red sunset photos. We stopped into the clubhouse for a cup of decaf coffee and chat with fellow campers. One of them also writes a blog and had just come back from touring Europe with there camper. That’s right they had there camper shipped there and toured the continent for eight months! We are supposed to exchange blog addresses later.

 

That’s what we did and saw!