Camping in the Woods by Another Beautiful Beach

Monday December 3 2018 to Thursday December 13, 2018                                        Most Recent Posts
Anastasia State Park                                                                                 Spectacular Skies and Hullivator Troubles
St. Augstine, Florida                                                                                             Wonderful Day at the Beach

On Sunday we move only about 40 miles up A1A to  Anastasia State Park in St. Augustine Florida.  We’ve been here several times before and prefer the older of the two campgrounds.  You can find previous posts about St.  Augustine and the park by
using the search box to the left just above the title of the blog.

We settle into our site which like many in this wooded area is shaded by live oak trees.  That’s a huge benefit when it’s hot and when it’s windy but not when it’s acorn dropping season.  I guess the oaks think it’s still fall and the acorns sound like bullets on the roof – BANG. . . BANG  . . . BANG.

The campground is about a half mile easy walk/bike ride from the park’s huge ocean front beach.  That’s good exercise to get there but it also  means that I can’t just look out my window to see if the sunrise has gotten clouded out.

I walk over every day but the walk is too long for David so the few times that he goes, we drive over.  There are two entrances to the beach both in the day use area which has a very large parking lot.  I’d say the park has perhaps the nicest beach in the St.  Augustine area but not having looked around at other nearby beach access, I don’t kmow that for sure.  It sure is a BIG beach to have any local competition.

One entrance has a short flat boardwalk and a long black fabric sidewalk sort of thing through the sand.   This is the easiest way for any one with a bicycle, a fishing cart, a wheel chair or handicapped in any way to get out to the beach.  But even from the end of the “sidewalk” it is a long way to the water.  This is a very wide and very long beach.

It’s so long that I don’t think you can see to the end even with binoculars. 

The second entrance is on a much longer boardwalk from the middle of the parking  lot up and over the dunes.  The dunes here are happily very well protected and people do not walk on them thankfully.

I give the dawn/sunrise walk a try early in our stay.  As I said, I have no real way of knowing what it will be like.  I don’t even dare hope it will be as spectacular as a few I’ve seen at Gamble Rogers recently but who knows.

This one was subtle and had a gentle rather than a powerful feel about it.

Dawn at Anastasia Beach

In the West, a sliver of a moon.  Anyone, other than Carrie and I, remember the book Wait Til’ The Moon is Full?  

Fly by in the dawn skies.

Here comes the sun.  He has to get through that  layer of clouds at the horizon.

Fliers now skimming the water’s edge

Back at home, I climb up on the roof to make sure the bombardments aren’t doing any damage.
Notice my size compared to Winnona and her compared to the trees.

No damage that I can see so I just sweep them all off including the ones that try to hit me while  I’m up there.

Friday of our first week at Anastasia is my birthday.  We’re pretty limited in what we can do to celebrate these days so I won’t be able to go to St. Augustine after dark and walk all through the town during Nights of Lights as we did a few years ago.  But we can still go out to breakfast.

I choose the Blue Hen completely because they have a blue crab quiche on the menu.

It’s a cute little place with church pews along the entry way.  Not sure why it’s called the Blue Hen since all the decor seems to be roosters.

The food is good and of course eating out is at the top of David’s list of things he enjoys. He chose some sort of corned beef hash thing.  The biscuits were obviously homemade and could be split with a fork.

Back home I picked up a package from Carrie.   I laugh when I find a box within the box.  We used to do this at holiday time.  Either we would wrap a small gift in ever increasing sized boxes or we would wrap a clue in a package and then that clue would lead to another box with another clue and on and on.  Great fun!   That’s one reason our celebrations lasted all day rather than the often rapid gift opening in most families.

I find inside a giant blue mug.  The perfect shade!  My favorite color.

Mama Bear.  Too cute!  Carrie, who has always called me Mama, says it is in honor of all the bears I’ve seen in Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains National Parks.   It will for sure remind me of my long and wonderful stays in both parks.

Last on the day’s activities is setting up our tree and decorations.

While we’re doing that, I get an email from a friend with a picture from Charlottesville.  This is why we are no longer there.  It’s pretty though isn’t it?

Decorating is finished in no time. 

Writing this post I realize that the gold wreath is not hanging in the front window when I took this picture.  Darn!

Early the following week, David’s older brother Roger flies in from Texas for a visit.  He brings some old family pictures.  He’s printed them out so they could look at them together and he also has them on a USB stick so David can have them in jpg format.  Boy do we look young.  Where DOES the time go?

Of all the meals we ate together, this is the only one I took a picture of and this is after the dinner was over.  Oh well.  Too busy enjoying his company.

The next day the boys set out for a short walk on the beach.  David is able to walk out the short flat entrance and come back the boardwalk.  I’m amazed.  That’s the farthest he’s walked in quite some time.

Here they are in their Santa Hats before setting off.

Everyone says they look like brothers. While I think that’s true,  I also think they each favor a different side of the family.  David is a Boyd and Roger is a Johnston it seems to me.  What do you think Carol?

Roger takes this great selfie of the brothers on the beach.

Nearly every time they have been together in the past, wherever they are, they are working to create or fix something.  Last Thanksgiving in Terlingua at Roger’s daughter Amy’s home, often at the farm, at their sister Robin’s home.  I didn’t want this time to be different so I got out the broken electric cable from the Blue Ox and set them to it.

They got most of it fixed but there are two unspecified wires that we’ll have to call Blue Ox about.

We’re sad to see Roger go but so glad that he was able to make the trip.  It’s wonderful for David to spend time with him.  Thank you Roger and Carol for everythig.

Later we walk down to the boat launch and find an array of wading birds not wading but in the grasses and trees.  First the Great Blue Heron.

The Great Blue blends in much better than the Great Egret standing on the top of the bush.  Wonder what he’s looking for?

A group of  Wood Storks have staked out an area around the fish cleaning station at the boat lanch.

Notice, gray legs, pink feet.

I have to say they are really beautiful in flight.  Not so much on the ground.

The juvenile is “almost” cute.

All grown up.

A stork seems to be moving in on the fisherman standing in the water at one of the two boat launch sites here.  The fish cleaning station is further left out of the picture.

The other launch site has an egret on patrol.  The sand dunes in the distance separate this little inland body of water from the ocean.

Heading back home, we take a short cut across a little creek.  From the bridge I spot this Little Blue Heron.

As I watch, he goes on alert.  Look at the neck stretch and the feathers ruffled. Almost looks like a different bird.

Feathers smooth, his subtle colors make him look  like a tri-color but I don’t see the white stripe up the under side of his neck.

Here’s the habitat in which I spotted him.  Do you see him?

Time to leave Anastasia, pack up and head on down the road.

We wish you a Merry Christmas, a Joyous Yuletide, a Happy Hanakkah, a Wonderful Winter Solstice.

Seems every spiritual belief has a winter holiday this time of year.
We hope yours is joyful no matter what you are celebrating.