This is part 2 documenting our Northern Florida East Coast Greenway (and delightful side quests) that the Girl Child and I enjoyed from Wednesday, January 4 to Saturday January 7. This batch of photos are from the stretch of trail starting with a 3 mile walking leg at Big Talbot Island, and taking us 76 miles down the coastal barrier islands all the way to St. Augustine. (Past not only gorgeous beaches, but also untold numbers of riduculously posh beachfront homes. I did NOT photograph those, but ugh, we prefer the swamp, thank you very much! And we had some good discussions about what *we* would do with that kind of money rather than buying a multi-million dollar beach mansion.)
We ACTUALLY started this walk by taking a side trail to view Boneyard Beach on Big Talbot Island. It is so-named for the quantity of dead trees that have been battered by storms and scattered about the beach like skeletons.
Once we were walking on the actual Greenway, the Girl Child found a nice spot under a palmetto to leave our "No Bad Vibes" rock. She created a poem as we walked in Florida as well, entitled "Don't Walk on Palmetto": "The blades of Palmetto are not soft and sweet; the blades of Palmetto will cut up your feet."
At about this point a pair of cyclists passed us going the other way. One commented to the other "I've never seen any walkers on this trail." We thought that was very sad -- it's such a lovely, accessible trail! We had gorgeous weather for walking, too -- upper 60s/lower 70s and brightly sunny. I love Florida's idea of winter!
One thing I really love about the walking trails in the Greenway system are all of the educational signs. We have learned so much about various ecological features of the areas we visit as well as the history of the areas. We read every word of every sign!
Above, our end point after 3 miles of walking trail. From here it goes back on-road for a bit before jumping back to walking/biking trail on Little Talbot Island. Unfortunately, there was no access to that trail on this trip. Whether it is closed due to hurricanes this past season or some other reason, we weren't able to get in there, so we'll have to do that on a separate trip. We did drive the road that is parallel to that 2 mile piece of trail, so we have checked it off our list of having been traversed, but we will definitely walk it the next time we're driving through the area just so we can see it -- it runs along a beach, so I'm guessing is quite delightful.
The next part of the trail took us across the St. John's River on a ferry! It was the Girl Child's first ferry ride (since she was a toddler) and she absolutely loved it.
We then drove right along the coast on the barrier islands all the way down to St. Augustine. We did not take the time to explore in St. Augustine, as that is in our to-do list for the next time we're in Florida, and I don't have any photos from there. What I DO have are a series of photos from a great big moss-covered rabbit hole we fell down when I took a wrong turn:
This is the entrance to Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve on the outskirts of Jacksonville, and yes, that is a wild-growing orange tree in the photo above. (And yes, I stopped and stole that fallen orange. And we tried to eat it. It was very seedy and not delicious, but the whole experience was hilarious and fun.)
This site boasts "one of the only undisturbed natural salt marshes on the Atlantic coast", and it was absolutely incredible and wild. We did quite a bit of exploring in the half day we spent there, and will definitely return some day to explore the historical aspects as well.
And this is where we became obsessed with gopher tortoises. We startled one that was digging the burrow in the below photo before we knew to look for them, and it became our mission for the rest of the trip to see one. (I won't spoil the ending, you'll have to keep reading future posts LOL.)
The marsh was amazingly serene and peaceful and remote, very worth the walk through the "jungle" to get there. Like dopes, we forgot to grab the binoculars before we started walking, but still saw a quantity of birds, including this sandbar above, just loaded with White Pelicans, and this lovely Great Blue Heron below.
These travels brought our Greenway totals to 265 miles traversed, 82 of which were on foot, and 2735 miles to go! To be continued, there is one more stretch of this Northern Florida leg to cover, and several more side quests!
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