We Break from the Hustle and Bustle of Life

Planning for some end of summer get away time, hubby and I picked out a sleepy historic beach town in the northeast corner of Florida to spend our week. We've been here before but not for this many days.

It's a place where charming old houses line red brick streets.

Because the weather has been so wonderfully mild we are doing one of my favorite things which is eating where outdoor patios are offered for dining ...

... and poking around in quaint shops in the downtown district turned trendy merchant stops and too many good restaurants to hit them all.

But my absolute most excitement comes when hubby joins me on a back roads tour of this northern-most barrier island ...



... stopping to explore what is to be found beside the roads and into the trails of woodsy haunts...

... filled with native flowers and overgrown shrubs for the butterflies (how many butterflies can you see in this photo?), bees, and birds to feast among...



... There were literally dozens of our winged friends hovering in and about the acres of land preserved at the northern tip on the Atlantic Coast of Amelia Island.

It became a common sight to see the large spiders with webs from large, high limbs to ground... just hanging around... with not a bother seemingly to be aware of...

... poke weed was abundant...

and these beautiful cat tails sitting in the pools of water along the estuaries on the bay side. The sight of which evoke lots of memories from childhood days. We used to cut them down and pull off the soft cottony outsides... before it was illegal.

A masonry fort built in 1847 by Army engineers is the main attraction within the 1427 acres of a state park on the tip of the island. Fort Clinch is located at the mouth of the St. Mary's River and served as a military post during the Civil War, Spanish- American War and WWII.





The area is an unique blend of maritime hammocks, with large Spanish moss draped live oaks prevalent throughout. Coastal grasslands meet the hammocks and stretch along the shore behind dunes on the Atlantic Ocean and Cumberland Sound. It is a wonderful place for a wide range of wildlife (we saw deer tracks on the beach), marine life, wading birds, and shorebirds.

The Atlantic coastline beyond the fort was almost completely deserted. Just the way we like it.

Other than nature that thrives along miles of untouched shoreline, we had the beach to ourselves.




Tomorrow we plan to cross over the Florida-Georgia line to St. Mary's. From there we will take a ferry to Cumberland Island where there are no cell phone towers, no satellite, no cars ...

more of nature's finest awaits...

update: I was incorrect about cell phones. There is no Internet service but we were able to use our cell phones (we left ours off however). There were national park vehicles on the island, too. There aren't any paved roads.