St.Augustine, day 5 – trip to Jacksonville

Wednesday 13 Jun: Road trip to Jacksonville.
Leisure morning, then ready to explore the shoreline up north and the next big town, Jacksonville. We drive on A1A, the beach road. Quite pretty here and there, and we admire more housing than we do beach, as the properties are lining the shoreline and there are very few access points towards the ocean.
When we can access the beach, we find ourselves on very wide beaches, with rough reddish sand and lots of seashells, clear sign that the ocean waves are breaking high on the beach when the tide is up. Very few people, most of them fishing. It’s a cloudy day and we imagine it can get quite busy on a sunny weekend.
We also come across the 38 deg 8 min latitude point, where Ponce de Leon first sighted Florida while he was actually looking for Bimini island in Bahamas. Very nicely presented point, with informative boards and a viewing point overlooking the entire stretch of beach on the east side and the natural reserve on the west side.
Then we drive on a very pretty road along Vedra Beach, with lush vegetation, canopy of trees, and amazing properties at the end of fancy driveways on both sides of the road. We try our luck to enter The Plantation at Pinterest Vedra Beach, but we were not allowed in. Very posh gated community with spectacular grounds and residences.
Then quick stop on Jacksonville Beach, very pretty and quite a few people enjoying the day on the beach. Even lifeguards on duty, and Oana giggles thinking of the Baywatch series, as a beautiful young lady was seated in one of the posts.
One important task ticked, we bought a SIM which allows us to hotspot, so we are back in business on the laptop. Great!
Our attempt to explore the old town, or historical area of Jacksonville was unsuccessful, we found only a downtown with tall office buildings. We had a short walk on the river’s edge wondering where are all the people and how come nobody is walking. Being a very hot day might have something to do with that… We returned to the car a bit disappointed, and started a slow drive back south, hoping that we come across an inviting cafe or diner.
Instead, we came across a West Marine chandlery which of course we had to visit, and a Fuji Sushi restaurant where we had a delicious lunch.
As it was almost 5pm, we drove straight back to return the rental car. Great service at Budget, offering us a lift back to the marina.
We tested the new GoPro today and eagerly downloaded the footage to see how it came out. The 4K image is unbelievable sharp, but the sound is not so good, as we just noticed the protective case covers 2 microphones. Hm, not sure how we can get around this issue, Google might reveal a solution, now that we have Internet to play with.
Cloudy Bay behaved herself again today, we were relieved to notice it hasn’t been any thunderstorm here while we’ve been away. But we spoke too soon, as few minutes later we see dark threatening clouds approaching us. So the usual drill: engine on, all electronics in the microwave, and brace ourselves for the lightening show which was developing both in front and behind us. We believe we saw a lightening hitting the Lions Bridge. 2 hours of thunders certainly got our hearts racing.
Once the thunderstorm passed us and electronics were safe, the internet frenzy started. Most important activity of the evening was to investigate where we go in Savanah and when we need to be there. Good old Google, what would we do without it? Once we have a plan for our departure tomorrow, the rest of the evening is spent on various admin tasks, mostly emails and trying to recover some lost videos (unsuccessful so far).
We had a great time in St.Augustine and Florida, people are very friendly and polite here, so many things to see and do, and we are certainly happy we stopped here. But we need to continue with the next step of our trip, so tomorrow we move on, towards Savanah, Georgia.