Monday August 8th 2016

The weather continues to be a mad oscillation between sun and rain. One minute it is full sunshine and the next is a cloud burst for 5 minutes or so. Unlike yesterday, I didn’t let it get in my way today.

I put my focus for the day on the area west of St. Augustine. Specifically, I went looking for land based recreation opportunities on the shore of the St. Johns river. I wanted to find a hiking trail or a bicycle trail. I’ll need to do a little bit of internet searching, because the driving around approach was unsuccessful.

Looking south on the St. Johns river. The black cloud above opened up on me about 2 minutes after this picture was taken.

What I did discover was a lot of interesting roads, some with low hanging Spanish moss laden branches. You had the sense of driving in a tunnel of vegetation. I also stopped at a couple of boat launching areas and small parks to look for activity and wildlife.

Birds hiding in the shallows under the overhang of the trees.

My travels today took me across the St. Johns river into Green Cove Springs, then down the west side to Palatka. I didn’t return directly north on the east side. Instead, I angled north east toward I95. Later in the day I went back to checkout some of the east side of the St. Johns river. There is still more to check out another day.

Back at the campground this afternoon I extended my stay for another week. This seems to be one of the better campgrounds in the area. For an area as famous as St. Augustine there are fewer campgrounds than I thought. At the campgrounds that are available, many of the sites are occupied by long term residents.