The Girl Child and I wrapped up our explorations on the northern Florida portion of the East Coast Greenway on Saturday, January 7th, with a 66 mile foray starting in St. Augustine and following the trail south along the barrier islands to Daytona Beach, where we ended with a 1 mile walk along their beautiful Esplanade, which is an official part of the Greenway. To say this has been our favorite leg to date would be a vast understatement. We enjoyed every minute of our time in sunny Florida, and very much look forward to returning to our journey there in the future!
Our first stop of the day for a little exploration was the River to Sea Preserve in Palm Coast, a lovely bit of the Greenway trail running along the Route A1A Scenic and Historic Coastal Byway.
We learned all about Coquina rock, which is a naturally formed concrete of shells incorporated into sandstone, which historically was mined for use in construction of forts, churches, housing, and other structures.
Our next on-trail stop was beautiful Flagler Beach, a community still trying to recover from Hurrican Ian this past fall. Much of the beach access was damaged or wiped out, so it took us a bit to locate a safe way down to the beach, but our persistance paid off, and we pretty much had the entire beach to ourselves.
The Girl Child nick-named Flagler Beach "Lavender Shell Beach" because the vast majority of the shells we saw here were these lovely little lavender colored ones. It was admittedly difficult for us to leave this lovely, serene location, but we needed to press on so we had enough time left in the day for our on-trail walk at Daytona Beach.
Daytona Beach Esplanade was nothing short of gorgeous. Definitely our prettiest bit of urban walking to date. Words can't do it justice, so I will leave you to enjoy the photos. It's a shame you can't also enjoy the appropriately themed music playing from cleverly hidden speakers all along the trail. It really added that extra special feel to an already spectacular stroll!
The Sweetheart Walk was sadly closed while we were there, so we will need to come back during another trip to complete all of the on-trail walking that's available in Daytona Beach. I know this can be an extremely crowded city at certain times of the year, but January is absolutely ideal. We decided to stay here overnight on our way back north a week later as well so we could walk on the beach, and that side of things was equally as nice.
We took a short-cut along city streets to get back to our car and enjoyed the painted utility boxes, decorated mostly with native wildlife, and (below) this statue of education pioneer Dr. Mary McCloud Bethune. (We had planned on visiting Bethune Beach, which was named for her, a bit south of Daytona the following week, but ran out of time the day we were back over on the coast. )
This ended the on-trail portion of our Florida adventures for this year, although we went on to do a day of birding and wildlife watching at Merritt Island, a truly spectacular swamp tour on Lake Kissimmee, and a day with the manatees at Homassasas Springs State Park on the Gulf coast, in addition to obligatory visits to Disney World Magic Kingdom and Sea World. We did our best to take in as much as we could of all that Florida has to offer!
The grand total for the entire 4-day Northern Florida Leg was 173 miles traversed, 5 of them walked on-trail (but so many more miles walked exploring the areas the trail passes through). Which brings our overall East Coast Greenway total to 331 miles -- we officially are more than 1/10 done with our 3000 mile journey!! That's a pretty cool milestone. 83 of those miles have been on-foot. We have 2669 miles left to explore, but at least for the next year (more likely 2 or 3, although I would dearly love to spend part of every winter in Florida!), our adventures will be a bit closer to home.
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