We woke up Sunday morning and Sharon went online to see if there was any camp sites available at Huguenot Memorial Park. There was, so she made a reservation for that evening, so we would have a great place to watch the Lunar Eclipse that evening. It would also allow us to test how well we do on a cold evening with only our battery power.
The Mayport Ferry wants $20 to carry Ernie across the St. Johns River, so we made the drive over the Dames Point Bridge and up Heckscher Drive to Huguenot. The weather was sunny, cold and blustery, and the crosswinds on the bridge made us have second thoughts about the worth of the Ferry, but the Mercedes stabilization software kept the drive manageable, and Heckscher is a lovely drive. We got there early Sunday afternoon, bundled ourselves up and went for a walk in the park.
The tide was out, and the beaches were huge. The chill winds kept everyone sane far away, though watching a couple of kite surfers in the lagoon was fun. Huguenot took a hard hit from Hurricane Michael and had to close for many months, and even now it isn't back to its former self. None of the campsites have power or water, and the number of sites is far fewer than a couple of years earlier. The good news is construction is underway to build new roads in the park, and perhaps provide a challenge for this year's hurricanes. The park's dunes are protected for nesting birds, and they fared much better than the pavement. We walked for over five miles along the Atlantic Ocean beach, the lagoon side of the dunes, and the north shore of the St. Johns River where our campsite overlooked the Mayport Naval Station.
Returning to Ernie, we started to get ready for a long night waiting for first sunset and then the eclipse. We were ready for temps near freezing overnight, and were hoping the winds would ease up when the Sun went down. We had an additional run on the floor to provide a bit more protection from underneath, and we had Reflectix for the windows that didn't already have a barrier. We couldn't use our ceramic electric heater because it draws more current than our inverter wants to provide.
Dinner was our first big test for our latest gear. The batteries got an A+. I was concerned about our inverter being able to deliver power at its rated 1500 watts, and they came through. We bought an electric skillet for Ernie, and it put a strong load on our Relion batteries, but they delivered all the power it wanted, and we had a delicious piece of salmon cooked to perfection. Plugging in a skillet is easier than screwing in a propane cannister, and its easier to cook in than our fry pan over the Coleman burner.
Later in the evening, the electric blanket got an F. It worked for a few minutes, but when it came time to start warming our bed, it played dead. And stayed dead. It proved to be totally worthless, so we resorted to our back-up plan of blankets and sleeping bags. We have new, wonderful sheets that have a high threadcount that we were looking to enjoy, and we were able to.
We downloaded some stuff from Netflix to the Slate, and we were able to watch comfortably under the warm covers. The keyboard gave the screen sufficient stability so I didn't have to hold it between us, and the speakers provided good stereo. After an episode of Tidelands, we ventured outside to sit in our lawn chairs to watch the eclipse. The winds let up a bit, and Ernie provided an adequate barrier, but the cold kept it from being comfortable. And we're not used to staying up past midnight! But it was impressive to watch the full moon get progressively darker and redder. But the cold and late hour finally got the better of us, and we skipped the latter half of the eclipse.
In the morning, it was cold, just a couple of degrees above freezing, and we weren't interested in having breakfast in the cold. We survived the evening, got lots of nice pictures, and could find a warm house less than an hour's drive away!
Pictures from our one night stand are at https://photos.app.goo.gl/iTGHbtqAE6cWXMv26
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