Anyone who has seen pictures from my starfort visits knows that my number one priority at each fort is to make it to the pointy end of each bastion, and get a picture of my feet straddling that point. Sometimes this is dangerous (staggering in the driving wind 80 feet off the ground at Fort Knox in Maine), other times just silly (about a foot off the ground with Canadian re-enactors politely asking me if I could please get down off the bastion at Fort Erie in Canada). Why is this important to me? Because I am infantile.

Unfortunately, this picture represents that with which I was confronted when I tried to approach each of Fort Macomb's three bastions. Had I a machete or a flamethrower, I might have been able to hack my way through all of this high brush, which was surely teeming with all the snakes and alligators that I had not yet met at this fort. Additionally, perhaps you will recall how far out from the top of each bastion the wild vegetation reaches at this fort...I could very easily have walked right off the bastion into the surrounding water. Which sounds refreshing, but it would have ruined my phone and camera. In this one, single instance, I chose discretion. Sad emoticon.