My daughter who was my inspiration to start and continue blogging has been blogging for several years and has found herself way behind because their life has been so crazy busy, has recently started catching up again and you can almost sense the relief in something as simple as a text that says, "just did a new post". Two things that make it possible for her to do such a nice job catching up are organization and good pictures that serve as reminders of the great memories that she wants to share. As I said at the start of this blog, that is my whole purpose for blogging, to share memories from the past as well as share things as they happen. With that said, here is the final entry for my trip with Clarence (JR) from Georgia to Florida and back.
After a last night trek on the beach we set out the next morning for Georgia. First I had to make my traditional stop at Dunkin' Donuts for coffee and two double chocolates for the road. The plan was to get off the interstate at New Smyrna and follow A1A all the way to Pensacola. I wanted to check out Daytona Beach because I'm planning a future trip there to watch my grand daughters compete. We weren't in a rush because instead of going straight to Athens, JR had suggested we stop in St. Simons Island for the night. He had lived there in '68 when he was stationed nearby.
At New Smyrna we missed a turn for A1A and found ourselves at the entrance kiosk for Canaveral National Seashore. Since I am the happy holder of a "America the Beautiful" senior pass that provided free entrance we decided to stop and look around. I'm glad that we did because not only was it beautiful but a new adventure was born.
We both decided to buy the Passport and our day changed again because we immediately decided to see what official cancellation stamps we might get on the way to Athens. Surprisingly we four different locations and documented them in our Passport. The first of course was Canaveral National Seashore where the spiders were big!
The pictures were taken at Turtle Mound. Saw a dolphin but still no manatee! From the park we found our way back to A1A and headed to Daytona Beach where we made a quick stop just to look around and see where I might try to stay in January. It was a typical touristy beach town. That's not a negative just an observation.
Continuing along A1A we stopped at two additional places in that were highlighted in our National Parks Passport. Fort Manzanares National Monument where we couldn't take the ferry to the fort because there was a long time before the next one went but we did get to walk around the grounds including a short nature trail and JR watched a video about the history of the fort which in English is "Fort Massacre".
Our final stop before heading to St. Simons Island was in Pensacola, Florida at the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument where we got to tour the fort. It reminded me of a fort that my family visited many years ago in main, Fort Knox, that might be another story for another time.
I thought that this would be the final post about this trip but I decided that St. Simons Island deserves a post of it's own so there will be a part 5 before I move on to something else.
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