Hannah Park, Jacksonville Beach, Florida

We left for another long drive of 130 miles south to Jacksonville Beach, Florida on Oct 25. We had booked reservations at Hannah Park (a city run park on the beach) when we were in Florida in August. We knew the University of Florida and University of Georgia football game was being played on Oct 28 so we made sure that we were in town for the big event. It’s billed as “the biggest outdoor cocktail party” and we knew rooms and campsites would be in great demand.

Hannah Park is located on the ocean and includes a lake, biking and hiking trails and our campground. The campground is beautiful with very large palm trees, magnolias and tropical plants as underbrush. The campground has full hookups (water, electricity and sewer) and we are finding that many of the state campgrounds have hookups as well.

We pulled into our site and immediately made a beeline for the harbor of Mayport just a 5 minute drive from us. We think that their fresh locally caught shrimp is the best. The fish market has a wide selection of fish, clams, oysters, crab, etc. and they also will cook the seafood for you. So we enjoyed our shrimp while sitting on the patio overlooking the water.

We decided to drive around the lake in Hannah Park on the way back to our campsite. Yup, it had an alligator in it. It was about 8 feet long. The campground host told us that they had removed 14 alligators from the lake but this one was overlooked. (A rather major overlook.) The lake use to be a swimming hole for the campers but it’s now posted- “no swimming”. Don’t think that’s a problem for us. The instructions given to us upon arrival say to be aware of snakes and alligators and don’t feed them. That’s a no brainer.

One of us has enjoyed the wildlife here. We have lots of armadillos, raccoons, and birds around our campsite. We even had a wayward Osprey with a 3-4 foot wingspan adopt us.

We made it to the Florida/Georgia game along with 84,000 of our closest friends. We had a great time cheering on “our team”, doing the Gator chomp, and the Gators even won for us.

Sunday, part of the family (Emily and Terry M, Terry and Jane W, and Jennifer and Jonathan F) came out from the city to enjoy barbeque and see our lovely campsite in the trees. We enjoyed a walk to the beach and collected some seashells. There were many fairly large (1 to 1 ½ foot) horseshoe crabs that had washed up onto the beach. The locals said that they don’t usually see horseshoe crabs on the beach.

The weather has been beautiful. It has been in the 70’s to 80’s and down as low as the 50’s at night. It’s been great for being on the beach. This is the best time of the year in Florida because of the low humidity and the lack of bugs.

We have spent many days visiting family in Jacksonville in the past. Jacksonville is located in the NE corner of Florida, about 40 miles from the Georgia border. Northern Florida is not as tropical as southern Florida and they have cooler temperatures in the winter. It has an early history since it was founded in 1562 by French Protestants known as Huguenots. It had also been under the control of Spain and Britain. Jacksonville’s other claim to fame is that it is the largest U.S. city in land area-841 square miles. There are many scenic drives that go through nature preserves and islands that are close to Jacksonville where you can observe lots of wildlife. It’s also just a 30-40 minute drive south to historic St Augustine.