Fort Caroline "Cowspotdog" Park - National Bark Rangers

We got up nice and early to go check out the Fort Caroline Park which of coarse I have renamed the Fort Caroline "Cowspotdog" Park - I have peed there - therefore it is mine - those are the Reilly Rules :)  And if you are wondering why they don't apply to Denny it is because the weird little Dweeb won't pee at the park - he will only pee in his own backyard!  The other amazing thing is this park is like a half  mile around the corner from our house! Fort Caroline was settled by the French in the 1500's.  It was originally named La Caroline (land of Charles) after King Charles IX. In 1565 the Spanish attacked and massacred all but 60 women and a few children out of the 600 hundred people that were living at the fort. Also living near the Fort were the Timucuan Indians who sadly died off due to the introduction of European diseases.

Here we are at the beginning of the park where we went to check out the visitors center and pick up a map. Now we must tell you - this is one the shadiest parks with huge big trees draped in Spanish Moss - Mom said it gave the whole park a magical feel - yeah what ever Mom!













 Having picked up our map we head down the trail marked 'fort' and along the way came across one of the kennels houses the Timucuan's lived in. We sure hope they only had little families as this thing was barely big enough for us ! The next thing we came across was SUPER cool. It was a display of dog pictures - yes dog pictures!!! These are all doggies who have become Nation Bark Rangers - and guess what - when we went back to the visitors center they took pictures of us too, put our names in the book and we are now officially National Bark Rangers too! Our next stop was the actual fort - which is really small and an odd triangle shape - it sits right on the waters edge.







































From Fort Caroline "Cowspotdog" we went across the road to the Spanish Ponds. From here you can take a walking trail to Timucuan Preserve which is another area of natural bush land. Now something else we learned was all this park land was once owned by an old guy by name of Willie Brown. He was offered millions of dollar for the land as it is in a super prime location but in his own immortal words he said "Pretty soon there will come a day when there will be nothing but concrete jungle from New York City to Jacksonville - that is why I want this place saved - so you can come and see some of God's handwork" In 1969 he donated all the land for free to the National Parks Service - way to go Willie - we thank you from the bottom of our paws to the tips of our tails!