Cruisin’ Down The River
Saturday night, while we were at Amelia Island, my family took a “Family Friendly Sunset Cruise” down the St. Mary’s river basin with Amelia River Cruises. Complete with history narrative, we learned about the shrimping history of the island, saw Pippy Longstocking’s house, Villa Villekulla (!!!) {the movie was filmed here in the late 80’s}, and saw a few other really amazing sights that I’ll share here in just a moment.
I’ll confess to you that I’m a skeptic…I wasn’t completely excited about our boat tour as we made our way downtown to the docks…not really knowing what to expect, but half way into it {probably not even that far} I was standing up taking it all in.
First, we saw some old shrimp boats. Amelia/Fernandina was the birthplace of the modern shrimping industry and was the largest shrimping area in the US until farm-raised shrimp became so popular.
These are some old shrimp boats.
Farm-raised shrimp can be raised in about 5 weeks, whereas wild-caught domestic shrimp take up to 5 months to become “jumbo” sized. Farm-raised, imported shrimp is now more than 80% of what is sold in your local grocery. Crazy, right?! Go get you some local-wild-caught shrimp, where on the packaging, under ‘ingredients’, it only says: “SHRIMP”!! {I know that’s much harder for you land-locked folks…}
So with the decline in shrimping down at Amelia….this happened…a loose and abandoned shrimp boat…left to become a reef at some point.
Then, there’s this place…Burbank Sports Nets – this was a cool story. They hand-made all those shrimping nets in the pictures above {hanging on the boats} and basically had to transform their company with the change of times…no shrimp=no nets=no money. So they now make nets for different sports {think baseball, soccer, etc.}, and are the leader in their industry. Crazy, right?!
We also got to see some old homes in Old Towne, Fernandina from the water. Including the Downes House, or affectionately known as Villa Villekulla for those who remember “Pippy Longstocking”! As we rode by, it was pointed out by mentioning it’s copper roof on the high tower. {The picture is a bit blurry…it was pretty far away.}
Across the channel we were able to ride along the shore of Cumberland Island and saw some wild horses…even a foal! From the boat, in the distance, you could see a beautiful white horse as well as several that seemed to want to be seen by us and gave many opportunities of photo-ops!
Back across the river, towards Ft. Clinch, there was an area of dunes where white-tail deer were grazing for their dinner. My uncle Bill and cousin Jacob wished to have their rifles on their shoulders…
Over to Ft. Clinch we learned that there are staff-soldiers who reenact life from 1864. Our narrator mentioned that if we ladies went into the park dressed as we were that the “soldiers” would whisper behind us things like “floozie” or “jezebel”. 😀 Not that we were scantily clad, but since it was hot and most of us were wearing shorts…well, 1864 hadn’t seen the likes of our legs…
On our way back to the docks, our Captain made mention that all the boys and girls on the boat had been so very well-behaved {not the adults! the kiddos!!}. And as a reward, they could drive the boat. We had told him that this was Eliza Jane’s first boat ride {R went to bed early that night} and he offered her, as the youngest passenger, the first try at driving our boat!
I was just slightly excited about this…
She played it very cool. {I have visions of what the future holds for this poor child…I know I will embarrass her to no end with my excitement!!}
Andrew took some beautiful shots of the water and sky, in hopes that we might see a glorious sunset…
Instead…we saw an Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphin! Several of them actually. Then our Captain told us that there is a pod that they are very familiar with: Dad – Bob, Mom – Sandy and baby – Echo.
This is probably one of the cooler things we could have done on our family reunion trip down to Amelia Island, FL. If you get to go to this beautiful, quaint little island, do check out the river cruise! There are lots of options – just check their website for tour info.
Here’s my little family after our cruise…there are just a few people missing from this picture…but it sure was fun to have all of these wonderful people together!
