Kingsley Plantation:The First Weekend of Field School

Archeology field school started at Kingsley Plantation last week (for pictures from previous seasons, see the label marked Kingsley on the sidebar). DH was there all week, but came home Friday night, and Blaze and I rode back to the plantation with him on Saturday and spent the night.
We arrived too late Saturday to see anything at the plantation, because my real motivation for going, was visiting stores in Jacksonville that we don't have here. It had been a stormy day, anyway. We did have a little adventure while shopping, though. While looking at the imported food section of World Market, the electricity went out.
Sunday morning was beautiful! DH wanted to go check on all the plastic tarps that covered the places where the students had been digging, and some of the wildlife came out to enjoy the nice weather, as well.







The sea island cotton coming up in the garden:


The "big house" looks a bit run down this year, but that is only because it is being prepared for repainting.




This peahen was strutting around the cars when we first walked outside. She doesn't really belong to the plantation. There is a flock of peafowl down the road. The rangers believe she has been driven out of the group.



Then there was this gopher tortoise:


It decided to go for a long walk and didn't seem to mind if I accompanied it.







Blaze wasn't as interested in following tortoises around. He preferred sitting on the sea wall, shooting rocks into the St. Johns River (he doesn't get to use the slingshot at home very often).



Our animal adventures weren't quite over yet. Just as we were getting ready to leave, we found a female gopher tortoise laying eggs next to (almost under) our car. We had to wait until she was finished and walked away before we were able to very carefully, with a ranger looking on, move the car.