A few hours at the Beach

After enjoying a drive to Fernandina Beach to browse around the shops & eat lunch at the Salty Pelican, we decided to take a brief stroll on the beach before heading home. Rather than walk the beach in Fernandina, we decided to head south back towards Jacksonville. You see, Little Talbot Island is located on A1A between Jacksonville & Fernandina Beach. On the drive up, it was high tide with plenty of water surrounding us and, frankly we were hungry. I had my heart set on fish tacos at the Salty Pelican, so we headed north. I will be writing about Downtown Fernandina on another day.

As I reported in my first blog about Little Talbot Island, if you go north up the beach a ways, you can have the beach all to yourselves. This is the case in the photo above. After walking about a mile north, I took this photo on the way back. If you notice, all the people in the background are hovering around the entrance to the beach from the main boardwalk. We had our beach to ourselves with just a few passerbys during our walk in both directions.

eling the wind, listening to the waves as the tide is going out & the sun is beginning its decent, I took special notice of the Sea Turtle Nests that were roped off near the edge of the dunes. Several of them within eye shot were staring me down. Sea Turtles are on the endangered species list and as the photo above shows, you can go to jail if you mess with the nest. I simply walked up close enough to take this picture and enlarged it to share with everyone. There were footprints all around & I’m hoping those were from the park rangers as they put up the fencing. As Ellen Degeneres would say, be kind to one another…that includes endangered sea turtles getting ready to hatch & make their trecherous walk to the sea below.

We continued on our journey, watching flocks of Pelicans ride the waves, observing seagulls with fish in their beaks, rather than begging from the humans for a potato chip. The storm was approaching, thunder in the distance & the chance of one of the most spectacular sunsets ever. OK, that’s reaching as there have been many exceptional sunsets since I’ve lived in Florida. The clouds were moving in fast. Frank & I had picked up the pace a bit heading to the main entrance. I managed to get the photo below before the clouds completely overtook the sky.

All in all our few hours at the beach helped rejuvenate the mind, body & spirit. Please find your happy place for a healthy life! Hope you enjoy all of this from our perspectives & through Our Eyes Open!