Monday-Wednesday, January 9-11, 2012—Mike Roess Gold Head Branch State Park to Little Talbot State Park

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Monday, January 9, 2012

--MikeRoessGoldHeadBranchState Park to Jacksonville, 53 degrees, clear blue sky, but foggy in morning

Continued up Highway 21. We saw a bald eagle and lots of horse farms on the way and skirted around small communities and lakes as we made our way to Saint Augustine for our appointment at the RV dealer. When they finally came to check on the unit, they categorically stated that they would do no warranty work on a Roadtrek and that we would have to go up to the dealer in Jacksonville. So, really irritated, especially since we had a card from the dealer’s president saying that they fixed Roadtreks, we headed up I-95 to the other side of Jacksonville.

At this branch, they said they could do the work and were surprised about what St. Augustine’s office had said. Sharon met with the service rep and discussed our list of concerns. They did some of the odds and ends that they could do and then said they would have to order some parts and that since it was so late, the order would go in the first thing in the morning and then we would have to wait until they arrived—not part of the master plan! Some of the problems have been noted since we bought the unit, but we could never spend the time hanging out for parts. So, since we were just trying to avoid the cold in Atlanta, we were willing to wait until things were fixed before the warrantees expired.

Once we were done, off we went to see if we could spend the night at a Wal-mart located in a huge shopping center on the opposite side of I-95. As we entered the area, there were signs everywhere that said no overnight parking. So, we finally settled on a Panda express for dinner and then parked in the McD’s lot to look up a place to spend the night using their wifi signal. We couldn’t reserve anything on the state system for that night, but we did manage to find a city park with no hookups on the beach. We also made reservations for 3 nights at the Little Talbot State Park, a few miles north of where we would dry camp.

Out the map came and we followed the beltway to the Atlantic side of Jacksonville. Just as we turned toward the ocean on Heckscher Drive, there was a gas station selling some of the cheapest gas in the area. We put in 19.961 gallons at $3.349 per gallon for a total of $66.85. Then we drove out this major road until it came down to two lanes where you had to stop at various draw bridges to let sail boats pass under.

We arrived at HuguenotMemorialCityPark almost at dusk. It was opposite a Navy base and there were helicopters flying almost non-stop, including during the night. It looked like they were just getting their hours in and we wondered if they cut the flights down by 10%!,(MISSING) how much it would save the US budget. The campsite would probably be really nice in the summer as they had lots of things for families to do, but it was just an OK home for the night.

Tuesday and Wednesday, January 10-11, 2012

--HuguenotMemorialCityPark, Jacksonville to Little Talbot State Park, Florida

We woke this morning to high clouds and finally a temperature of 60 degrees. Since we couldn’t check-in to the state park yet, we decided to drive a little further north and visit FernandinaBeach in search of a grocery store and wifi. Stops at Winn-Dixie and McD’s took care of our immediate needs. It was interesting to see all of the upscale developments in this community sitting right next to the old houses and stores of the mid 1900’s.

On the way back, we stopped at several pull-outs to do some bird watching. There was mostly sea and shore birds, and they were quite abundant. We really liked this part of Florida for birding.

Checked in and hooked up. The prices for state campsites are really high in Florida, but they were relatively nice. After dinner, we discovered we could get CBS over the antenna, which was great since that is the channel we like to watch on Tuesday night. The weather station also told us that temps were going to drop again, and that the cold front would cause it to rain most of Wednesday.

The forecasters were right, so Wednesday was spent mostly as a down day until 3pm. With the clearing, we decided to walk down to the estuary and take a look at what was there. Besides several of the shore birds and ducks, we saw sand crabs about the size of a quarter and their little pellets that were left as they cleared out their burrows. There were also piles of oysters shells fused together and you could readily see how this “tabby” was used in early building construction.

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