Day 3

Today was a good first; going running in the Fort Caroline National Park/Timucuan Nature Preserve in North Jacksonville. The trail was amazing, dense forest with spanish moss overhanging the trail. Complete with winding hills and river views, it's easily the best run I've had in Jacksonville thus far.

On the banks of the St. Johns river, Fort Caroline is an interesting locale. Sixty years before the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts, French Huguenots seeking religious freedom landed at Fort Caroline in 1562, making it the first European settlement in North America. The Spanish showed up and founded St. Augustine a short time later, and things didn't go so well for the French protestants afterwards (note: the religious wars of 16th and 17th century Europeans are why we Americans enjoy religious freedom. It doesn't take too many readings of stories like what Don Menendez did to the French in Florida to demonstrate what our Founders were recoiling from. The first line of the bill of rights: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." It's not an accident the Founders put those words up front.)

The setting of the fort gives a great overlook of the river, and the national park and nature preserve around it give the visitor the sense of stepping back in time.