Northeast Florida State Parks

We set out this morning on a run to Hardees  for my much craved Country Ham and Biscuits breakfast.
While enjoying the biscuit  I thought  lets go towards Jacksonville  and check out the state parks over there. Beautiful day, lets enjoy the beaches some.

We decided to stop at all parks and check out  if they needed/used  volunteer host.

Ocean Pond Campground in the Osceola National Forest. We found a volunteer and after Gil talked with him, we decided this was NOT a park we wanted to help in.  So we set off to search out other parks. so back out on HWY 90 we went towards Jacksonville.

Smoke in the air so thick  it was hard to see oncoming traffic  if they didn't have headlights on.

  Ranger  at the gate, informed us  we could not take Buddy in the park. There was no place that he was allowed.  So we turned around and drove down the street to visit the ocean.

I thought it would be fun to find the very end of the road here in Fernandina Beach.  So we left this beach and drove north  on the only road  we could go north on. HA!!  it was a dead end  with water all around us. A private yard so couldn't get a picture of the point created here.

Back down the road to another public beach with a boardwalk that allowed pets.

Nice beach, boardwalk handicap accessible. Life guard on duty.


Off to find Amelia Island State Park.

 This is a park to keep in mind for a horse ride on the beach. Or fishing on the other side of the bridge.

Next park to check out will be the Talbot Island parks.

We drove down to Talbot Island. Ranger had a hard time getting up to come to the door. We asked about driving through and checking the park out with Buddy. He also stated, Buddy wasn't allowed in his park.  We could go back to Nassau County  and take him to the public beach. Sad, I wanted  to check out the campground for future reference. Guess, we wont be back.

So far on this journey  we have not found a park  that  we would make this drive to return to. This saddens me, I  had hoped all Florida Parks  would be clean and inviting as the ones over in White Springs area.  I used the restroom in 2 of the above parks. Dirty stalls  and no soap or towels.  

 We found one more park.
This is a City park. Boondock camping on the beach.

 Largest horseshoe crab I have ever saw. The shell was over a foot across.

Honestly, this park is the only one today that excited me.  Plenty of place's to tent camp or put a small camper  on the rise above the beach. Air was cool, even with 102 temp.  Intriqued by the Navy vessels and the Helicopters circling and escorting a big vessel in  port.

 We managed to get stopped at a train crossing. And this odd looking tubes ran beside the track overhead. There  was a power plant  to our right, so probably they used these tube to move coal off ships.

I-10

Getting late in the day, we need to head back to camp.  Decided it would be best to take I-10 back to Lake City . Had to do a little back tracking in Jacksonville to get on I-95  so we could get over to I-10.   AS you can see, 6 hours later  we still encountered  heavy smoke on our way home.  I believe the smoke was over a 30 mile section of I-10, then it more or less disappeared.

Home and neither of us real hungry. Sandwiches for us tonight, then off to shut the parks 4 gates.  Mr. Paggent stopped us  and gave us some fresh cucumbers.  This is another local that knows this area history.
I took camera hoping to get a shot of the deer jumping in front of us. Nope..... these animals must have ESP. They tend to only jump out at us when I do not have the camera with me. One day  I will get my shot.