1306 November 4, 2025 St.  Mary’s

I took the Palmetto Trail for my morning walk.  Tall pines with huge pine cones.

This is a gopher tortoise habitat and there are several active burrows in the park.

Later, we took the Jeep to St. Mary’s.  This town is most well known as the place to get the Cumberland Island Ferry.  This is a National Park and because of the current government shutdown, the ferry is not operating.  It is illegal for any other boats to take tourists to the island.  Maybe we will pass this way again!

We took our bikes and went to explore.

We found the Submarine Museum.  We browsed the exhibits, examining the collections and artifacts.  There was a real working periscope.  Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base is just a few miles away.

Missiles loaded and ready to fire.

Tim began talking with a woman.  She mentioned that her husband had been to the Naval Academy.  Tim told her of a couple of friends that he knew that had gone there as well.  Timmy Kobosko was a childhood friend that lived in Tim’s neighborhood.  This woman said that her husband graduated from the Naval Academy with Timmy and that Timmy was actually the president of her husband’s alumni class.  She took a picture of my Tim and sent it to Timmy Kobosko who responded with fond memories!  It’s a veery small world!

We had lunch at St. Mary’s Harbor Restaurant.  I had excellent grouper and Tim had a gyro.  We chatted with a couple at the next table who had come to live in St. Mary’s from Arkansas. 

We went to the waterfront park and sat on a bench.

There were hundreds of grackles in the trees around the park. They cackled and carried on!

A tide clock…I have never seen one before.  Every seaside town should have one!

We drove on to Kingsland and went to Publix for some groceries.

This evening, we took a small snack back to the picnic table by the river.  Tim spotted a dolphin!  We knew that the dolphins will come up into the rivers but we had not been lucky enough to see one.