The Ponce Inlet Lighthouse

We visited the lighthouse in Florida called the Ponce De Leon Inlet Lighthouse because we were anchored close to it and it looked interesting.It was really fun. There are some pretty cool facts about it.

The ponce inlet lighthouse is the tallest lighthouse in Florida. There are exactly 200 stairs in the light house.
It was built in 1835 and was finished by 1887 and is built with brick. The stairs are really steep and narrow and they are really hard to climb up without falling.  and weighs about six tons and costs about $12,500. The lighthouse is 175 feet.
There is also a weather poem that helped to know the weather,

The pattern of the beam is different in all the lighthouses. The ponce inlet lighthouse is a group flashing six times every 30 seconds. The range of the light is 17 nautical miles; 32 kilometers. The lens they use is a Fresnel lens. A Fresnel lens looks like this:

Here is a poem about the weather that lighthouse keepers used to use:

Ring around the moon means rain soon
if fleecy white clouds cover the heavenly way, no rain should mar your plans that day
frost or dew in the morning light shows no rain before the night
fish bite least with the wind in the east
expect weather to be fair when crows fly in pairs
when ladybugs swarm expect a day thats warm
clear moon, frost soon

A cool visit to the fort Castillo De San Marcos

Castillo De San Marcos 

In St. Augustine, there is a fort called Castillo De San Marcos. The fort was made by the Spanish.

                                       This is the fort from outside

What its made out of and why

 The fort is made out of Coquina shells. the fort was made out of Coquina shells because it is a material that can absorb cannon balls and bullets and any other missiles shot at it.

                                         This is the gunpowder room

                                       

Cool facts about the fort include

The fort has an old message carved into the wall. It is written in old Spanish, but the message itself makes no sense, to many letters have been worn off to translate the sentence. There are also ships carved in to the wall.

This is one of the ships carved into the wall

This is the other ship carved into the wall

This is the message in old Spanish carved into the wall 

These are the soldiers sleeping quarters 

This is the Spanish soldiers giving a demonstration on how
 to shoot a cannon 

The horses of Cumberland Island

       horses of Cumberland Island

When we went to Cumberland island, we saw horses grazing in the woods. Curious, I looked up how they got there. This is the information I found. This blog entry talks about how they got there and the myth behind the horses.


 how they got there

the horses on Cumberland island were brought by the Spanish in the 16th century. There are about 150- 200 horses on the island. The horses on the island are probably descendants of the Spanish horses.


the story behind them


the horses are not native to Cumberland island. the myth states that the Spanish conquistadors brought them over to the island. Then, finding no use for them, then let them go feral by letting them roam the woods. After awhile people wanted to find a use for them and hired Robert Stafford, a plantation owner, to try and tame them. Robert let people use them for their own personal use. They were then used for cavalry in the american civil war. in 1972 the National Park Service bought the island and declared it the Cumberland island National seashore. Since then, the herd has become one of seven feral horse herds of the USA. This is only a myth because no one knows if this is completely true.






now you know all about the wild horses of Cumberland island.








here are some pictures of the horses