Sunday August 6th 2023

I finally made it to the Reddie Point Preserve Park in Jacksonville today. Last weeks attempt got rained out. The park is located on the south or east bank of the St. Johns River. My interest in the park started with a simple map search. A rather large green area on the map got my attention followed by a little googling.

With a lot of help from my GPS I found the park after driving south on the I295 beltway followed by a winding path through a business district, a university area and finally lots of residential streets. Without the mapping software assistance I’d never of found the right combination of roads and turns. The preserve park was a forested area on the bank of the river with a small pond near the entrance. At the river there was a long pier for fishing and temporary boat tie ups. The view up and down the river was impressive. There were several family groups using the picnic area and even more people fishing from the pier. It was much busier than I thought it would be.

At the preserve park I walked the trails. They weren’t all that exciting. I found several groups of wildflowers worthy of pictures and startled or perhaps more accurately woke up a great blue heron roosting in a tree near a small pond. It took off with more screeching than normal for the species. After my heart rate slowed down I continued my walk. Overall it took less than an hour to check out all of the park. It was interesting, but I don’t think it warrants another visit.

I expected to get caught in an afternoon thunderstorm on my return to the RV park, but it remained dry. The temperature peaked in the low nineties.