BACK EAST TRIP, PART 5 ~~ 2nd WEEK IN JACKSONVILLE

Today's blog brings us to our second (and last) week in Jacksonville. After having rested up a lot during the first week, Linda and I were anxious to get out and do a few things. So, we all decided to take a little trip to do the touristy thing.

ST. AUGUSTINE

Wednesday, June 12th, we all piled into my sister's car and headed a bit further south. We had all been to St. Augustine before, but it is a very interesting, picturesque little town and not very far from Jacksonville, thus it was everyone's favorite choice. The weather was not the best we could have hoped for because it rained when we first arrived there. But that is the norm for Florida, you never know when it is going to rain. The rain only lasted an hour or so, but it had managed to cool things off a little. Then the sun came out and all was good. By then it was lunch time, so we checked out a few places before deciding on Meehan's Irish Pub & Seafood House. Just across from the pub was the famous Bridge of Lions (click here for article) which spans the Intracoastal Waterway. Linda snapped a picture of the bridge and a lovely flower right before we entered the restaurant.

The inside of the pub was decorated in your usual pub style, but was a nice respite from the mounting heat and humidity outside. Of course, I was still cold so I had a hoodie on!

After lunch we ventured back outside to explore the downtown area of this quaint old town. St. Augustine has managed to preserve many of the old landmarks from the time when this area was under Spanish rule. We strolled down St. George Street and visited many of the shops along the way. We walked through the old gates to the city, which were opened in 1739. The coquina pillars on each side of the gates were build in 1808. We also found the Oldest Wooden Schoolhouse in the United States on this street.

Linda and I especially wanted to check out a place we had been to before when we first visited St. Augustine about 19 years ago. On that trip, we had come across a little pottery & ceramic shop and had purchased a beautiful ceramic sign of our house numbers for our little house in Lumberton. We wanted to get the same sort of sign for our house in Yakima. We found the store, Market to Market, and picked out our design. I believe it is going to look great on our house!

BIRDING DAY

One of the main things I wanted to do on this trip was to go birding with my sister. We are both avid photographers, having inherited that gene from our father. And we also both inherited the love of birds gene from our mother. So the next day we loaded up with our camera equipment and trekked off to visit some nature areas.

JACKSONVILLE ARBORETUM

First up on our outing was a trip to the Jacksonville Arboretum (click here for link), which is a huge (120 acres) woodland preserve right in the middle of Jacksonville. The natural surroundings there were very lush, almost as if we were in a jungle.

My sister and I took the Lake Loop Trail, which was an easy walk around a two-acre lake. The lake was surrounded by many trees and plants, with lots of blooming flowers along the trail.

We had hopes of seeing an alligator in the lake, as there were warning signs posted all around. But if there was one in there, we couldn't spot it. We did see some birds flying around and I got a video of this Green Heron.

We also saw a lot of these little guys (sound up).

Around the other side of the lake, we came across a turtle relaxing on a log. This is something we just don't see around Yakima, so I was quite excited.

After our walk around the lake, we decided to move on as we had a couple more areas we wanted to visit. We could have spent all day at the Arboretum, but I was anxious to see some of the places that my sister and my cousin Rob used to go to whenever they took a photography road trip. So, we got back in the car and headed for Cedar Point.


CEDAR POINT

As soon as we turned off the main road onto the driveway to Cedar Point we saw this guy plodding along right beside the driveway. I jumped out of the car and had to take his picture. This is a Gopher Tortoise (click here for link). Apparently they are very common in Florida but, big surprise, there are none in Yakima.

This lovely spot is a part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, and also is part of the Timucuan Parks Foundation, which supports no less than 23 preservation parks in the greater Jacksonville area. Cedar Point (click here for link) is located at the tip of Black Hammock Island, on the edge of salt marshes. The surrounding area here was similar to the Arboretum, but was more "wild" in the sense that it was not as much a planned and maintained environment as the Arboretum.

As you can imagine, there were many water birds there. We saw Sea Gulls, several different types of Herons, and a new bird for me to add to my life list, the Roseate Spoonbill. Below is a video of this beautiful bird taking flight. (This video features another example of my original music).

After seeing this magnificent bird, we walked around to a dock beside the boat launch. The tide was out so we could see countless little Fiddler Crabs, digging holes in the mud and fighting each other for their territory.

We met a couple and their dog and briefly chatted with them, then left Cedar Point and continued on our journey to Pumpkin Hill.

PUMPKIN HILL

After a short drive we came to Pumpkin Hill Creek Preserve State Park (click here for link), where we encountered a habitat very similar to the one at Cedar Point. We saw some of the same types of birds, but also noted an Osprey circling in the distance, searching for food. The Heron was the bird of the day at this spot. This one Heron was walking along the shoreline when he happened upon a school of fish. You can see the fish churning up the water as they try to escape. He caught several for his lunch while we watched!

Herons looks so majestic when they fly. They are such big birds and sometimes look awkward when they walk, but in flight they are very graceful.

We left this particular part of Pumpkin Hill and drove a short distance to another area. Crossing the main road, we came to a very different kind of habitat, one with an abundance of Saw Palmetto trees. This is the most common palm tree in the US and is a tree native to Florida. In this picture below, the Saw Palmettos are the low-lying trees in the foreground...they look more like bushes than trees.

We were on a search for more Roseate Spoonbills, but before we got too far we had to turn back because of an approaching storm. We high-tailed it back to the car on double-time and as we were just leaving the parking lot, the bottom fell out. Let me tell you, I haven't been in a downpour like that since we moved out West. You could barely make out the road, and I was very thankful that I wasn't driving! And so we ended our bird photography road trip, a very rewarding experience.

I had planned to make this blog incorporate our entire second week, but since I had so many pictures and videos, I have decided to continue our second week in Jacksonville on the blog next week. So tune in then to see how we wound up our visit in Florida!