Leaving Florida

Monday, July 11 - We had a busy day today and fortunately got off to an early start.  We were on the road by 9:00, continuing our scenic drive along the beach on A1A.  We went through the historic town of St. Augustine.  We drove past the remains of an old fort but didn't stop.

We drove on through Jacksonville and opted to take the St. John's Ferry to stay with A1A.

  Parked along the bank here was a good-sized boat that I was told is the one that discovered the Titanic.  This one is named Atlantis II, and I have not verified that story.

This route took us along marshland, rivers and bays.

We even saw a turtle on the highway along here -- it was in the outside of the white line so we declared it non-suicidal.  Along one beach where they had a turtle nesting site roped off, three women were fiercely digging right in the site.  They didn't look official but they were hard at it, so we assumed they knew what they were doing and that it was legal.  This was a pretty drive, with trees making a canopy over the road, and little traffic.

We got to Fernandina about lunch time and Joe found a parking spot right at the city park on the beach (with an ice cream snack bar), so we enjoyed our lunch with a great view, then walked down to the beach, where we spotted a pod of about 6 dolphins.

I, of course, had to sample the ice cream.  Then we were on our way.  We crossed into the State of Georgia about 1:30.

We stopped at the Visitor's Center and picked up some information on Georgia State Campgrounds, Savannah and Augusta, then continued on our way.  We drove up Highway 17, marked as a scenic highway, and it continued through swamp and marshlands, with big live oak trees lining the road.  We crossed one really big bridge just south of Savannah, with a great view.

We chose Skidaway Island State Park to spend the next two nights, which was about 12 miles off the highway.  It is a barrier island billed as having Spanish-moss draped live oak trees, and I would have to say it lives up to its billing.  It's a beautiful park, with very large campsites, and in addition to water and electricity, it even has cable TV -- a first for a state park we have stayed in.  We got here about 5:00 p.m., so that was a long day for us, and Joe drove 245 miles. 

We are planning on "doing" Savannah tomorrow, but the heat index here is predicted to be 111, and the tour we think we want is an open trolley, so we are not sure about all that.  We plan to go directly to the visitor center in Savannah and check out all the options before we commit to that hot ride.  We've sadly left the beaches now, although Tybee Island is only 20 minutes from Savannah, and it is on the ocean.  We may have to seek that out if we do the trolley tomorrow.

Daytona Beach

Sunday, July 10 - I forgot to include in yesterday's blog that we finished our marathon day on Friday,after the shuttle launch and our naps, by going to the movies.  We saw Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts) and we liked it.

Today we debated about staying here at this state park another day or moving on, and didn't seem to be motivated either way, so we stayed here.  We drove back down to Daytona Beach this morning and did the shops and the boardwalk and the beach.

 This wasn't quite how we remembered it from 1974 -- apparently a lot has changed since then.  But you can drive on the beach here, so of course Joe had to do that.  We drove a 6-mile stretch right at the boardwalk, and another small section later.  They have sections of the beach marked off for traffic and no traffic, so you can just drive between the sections.  Joe did mentioned that by driving the beach we weren't getting much exercise, but we were seeing more beach.

It looked like a storm was brewing so we didn't get in the water here.  And sure enough, we heard the beach patrol gal blowing her whistle and clearing the beach, and then the patrol jeep came through.

Because there was lightning, they made everyone get beyond the traffic lane.  So here's the empty beach and the clouds.  It did rain for a while, but not very hard.

As we drove along the beach, we saw a couple of pretty good sand sculptures -- a turtle and a mermaid.

We stopped for lunch and then the grocery store, and then headed back to camp.  We actually did some housekeeping, I vacuumed and Joe shook out rugs and checked the batteries.  Finally, we decided we should go walk the beach since it was only 80 degrees outside, so we put our swimsuits on just in case we braved the water.  The tide report said the water temperature here  at Flagler Beach is in the mid 70s.  We finally decided to get wet, although Joe whined the whole time he waded out, then a wave took him down so he got completely wet.  It was a little brisk out there. 

We are heading out of Florida tomorrow.  We've been in this state for 6 weeks and we have really seen a lot of it, done a lot of things, and had a great visit with John and Bridgette.  And we got to see our nephew Mike and his family, so we'll leave Florida with very fond memories of our time here.

Daytona

Saturday, July 9 - We headed up I-95 this morning about 20 miles, then cut back over to Hwy 1, which is also known as the Dixie Freeway, so we've been with Dixie for several days not.  (I've been trying to take a picture of this highway sign for days and just today finally got one.)
We worked our way over to A1A again and followed this scenic highway, but most of our view was blocked by condos with just an occasional glimpse of the ocean.  As we crossed the causeway, we went over Bird Island, which was literally exploding with birds.

When we got to the entrance to Daytona Beach, we turned to go over to the Daytona International Speedway so we didn't actually go down to the beach here.  You can actually drive on this beach, which we may come back and do.

We found the racetrack and took the "All Access Tour," which lasted about 2 hours.  This place was really busy today with lots of people from the shuttle launch stopping by to tour.  Joe called Jeff just as we were walking in to see if he wanted to give us his credit card number so we could buy tickets for all of us for next year's race, but Jeff didn't seem willing to do that.  This monument is Mr. and Mrs. William France, who designed and owns this track as well as Talladega (and maybe some others). 

We took a tram ride that took us to the garages, pit road, the lake, drivers meeting room, broadcast booth -- we saw the entire track and all of their facilities.

This track has 31% banking in the corners, and there was an "exhibit" that demonstrated how steep that really is.  The Petty Ride or Drive-Along was taking place here today, and we saw some of those cars driving on the track.  Joe got to do this Ride-Along in Phoenix a couple of years ago.

Here's the driver's meeting room, and us in Victory Lane.

They also have motorcycle and motocross races here, and an entire Bike Week.  Ricky Carmichael, the winningest motocross rider ever who is now driving in the NASCAR truck and Nationwide series, designs the track for the Supercross Race here.  Bridgette and John are big fans of Carmichael.

The view from the broadcast booth was pretty awesome -- you could actually see the whole  2 1/2 mile track, the same as the Brickyard in Indianapolis.

The tour concluded with a video presentation of all of the Daytona winners crossing the finish line, then we got to walk past Trevor Baines' car that he won this year's Daytona 500 in. 

We spent about 3 hours here, but got on the road again shortly after 3:00.  We headed up to Gamble Rogers State Park at Flagler Beach right on the beach, where they had one campsite left that would fit us, and we could not reserve it.  Fortunately, it was still available when we got there, which only took about 30 minutes but we drove through some heavy rain for a few minutes.  We got set up and walked over to the beach, and the water was surprisingly chilly -- much colder than it was just 100+ miles south at the last beach we were at, on Hutchinson Island.  But it is very pretty here.

We were still tired from our early morning yesterday, so we had an early night.  But I got up about 7:00 this morning, and when I opened the front curtain and saw the sun over the ocean, I, of course, had to go take some more pictures.

This is a pretty nice campground, and it's the closest to the ocean that we've got to camp, so we're feeling pretty lucky.