11/8 Fort Clinch SP, Amelia Island, FL

Fort Clinch State Park is one of my favorite places in Florida.  It is on the Atlantic Ocean side of Florida and only a navigable sound divides it from Georgia.  There is a big submarine base on the St Mary's River in Georgia, and just before exiting, it joins with the Amelia River, so if you are lucky, you will see a parade of Coast Guard and Navy ships escorting one of these big nuclear subs into or out of port.   This state park also has a fantastic beach which is seldom busy because it is about a mile from hotels and the commercial area.

The entrance to this state park is through what is called an oak canopy.  This is a long drive through live oak trees whose natural growth pattern is for limbs to grow sideways and become very large.  In this case, it also results in a lot of low branches that can damage the roofs of tall vehicles, namely motorhomes and some 5th wheel trailers, so you have to drive carefully and move into the opposite lane or stop and wait for traffic coming from the opposite direction. It is beautiful, however, and the park does its best not to trim these magnificent trees.  

This is the entrance to the canopy drive into the park. 

 

 

 

I tried to take a photo of this one tree to show you how it branches, but it was hard to get the whole trees into one photos.  

This is my campsite.  As you can see, the sites are entirely sand, but the base is packed down so you don't sink it, at least.  Following this photo are several photos of the campground and the restroom facility.  There is water and electric at each site, and a dump station nearby. 

 

 

 

  

  

This campground is directly on the ocean, but with a boardwalk through the dunes.  It is against the law to walk on any dune areas in Florida as the dunes help protect against hurricanes. 

 

 

 

A beautiful day!  Plus it is low tide, which makes it easy to walk on the beach. 

 

 

This is looking north, past the entrance to the two rivers and into Georgia.    

 

 

  

 

I'm going to walk south to the remains of the pier which was destroyed by a hurricane several years ago.   

 

While birds of a feather usually stick together, in these large flocks, you can find several types of seabirds getting along with each other. 

 

  

 

The large black bird in the middle with the orange and black beak is a black skimmer.  The lighter grey birds with black beaks are common terns.

 

The grey bird in the middle with the crown on its head and an orange beak is a royal tern.  The brown birds are probably juveniles. Since they have such long beaks, I am guessing they might be royal terns. Most seagulls or terns do not become adult for 4-5 years, at which point they will lose their brown feathers and get their final adult coloring.  One interesting thing is that if you see a brown or partly brown bird that is adult-sized on a beach, you will also see an adult keeping an eye on him or her from nearby.   

 

 I'll let you figure the others out by yourselves!!! 

Another day6 I decided to head to the little town of Fernandina Beach.  Sorry for the bad photos, but my camera's external screen is broken, making it hard for me to take photos.  THis huge tree, by the way, is in the middle of a street. 

It's a little tight getting my big rig through town, but I knew there was a big lot for buses and boat trailers near the port.  

 

 

 

It's a very nice little town with a lot of shops and restaurants. 

There was a tour bus near the lot where I parked so I hopped on to get some history.  Mostly, the information was about some of the old Victorian homes in the town.  A handful are shown below.  Obviously, there was money in this town at one point.  

After the tour, I walked around town and then took some photos of the port.  The first photo below shows a really nice restaurant where I have eaten in the past. 

 

 

These two are tour boats.   

As you leave Amelia Island and are going over the big bridge, if you look far into the distance on your right, you will see the two big submarine hangers at the St. Mary's base.