Wednesday August 3rd 2022

It rained loud and hard overnight. Thunder and lightening accompanied heavy rain for nearly an hour in the middle of the night. The day began very humid but sunny. More rain was in the forecast for the afternoon, but as of night fall it still hasn’t arrived.

I drove through downtown St. Augustine on my way to the boat launch on the Inter coastal waterway that was overflowing with cars and boat trailers on Saturday. Parking in the downtown area is scarce. In the area of the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument the spaces had waiting lines. There are parking garages further inland, but I wasn’t prepared for a lot of walking in the Florida Summer sun. The way to find available “free” parking is to park away from the downtown area at one of the parking lots run by the trolley services, but then you have to buy a ticket on the trolley. It has been many years since I explored the fort and I think it will be a few more.

When I arrived at the boat launch area just before the bridge out to the barrier island and Vilano Beach it was busy, but nowhere near as busy as Saturday. A steady stream of boats were launching and landing at the three boat wide ramp today. On Saturday empty trailers were parked along the road and boats on trailers were waiting to get into the parking lot. During the half hour or so I was there fifteen or more boats came and went. They ranged from little boats with small outboards to boats that look to big to be trailered.

The boats were interesting, but the hand full of Egrets hanging out with the seagulls were more interesting. Several of the pier posts had a Great Egret camped out on top. They were in competition with the seagulls for discarded fishing bait off of landing boats. Most of these Egrets were pretty tame. One could walk within a few feet of them as long as you were walking directly at them.