Friday, Saturday, Sunday

We got a good start from Georgia and into Florida on Friday arriving at the Little Talbot Island State Park in the afternoon. After getting set-up we headed off on our bikes to the ocean to Big Talbot Island State Park which has no camping just beaches! We went to the furtherest beach area where we saw many birds all standing at the water's edge facing into the wind.

Facing into the wind!

Since many of the birds we are seeing are new to us it is taking some resarch to discover what we are seeing. Some of the birds here are just “wintering” and others are migrating while some are residents and then there are those who are molting which makes them look different too. So far of the little beach running variety we have identified the Sanderling which only winters here and migrates up through the center of the US and also along the coasts and it summers on the islands in the Arctic Sea! Another bird we think we've identified is the Willett.

The niftist of the birds we saw was the Black Skimmer! We saw three of them flying on Sunday and they are even more impressive in flight than standing.

Black Skimmer is the one with the black and orange bill.

We woke to some sunshine, but have quickly lost it after having had some pretty good rain over night. We pumped up our kayakers and went for a very short paddle as the tide was going out and we kept running up onto the sand bars. We did see some wonderful birds including the Great Egret and the Snowy Egret. Since the tide was outgoing we decided to return to the campground.

Afternoon found us riding our bikes on the sand! WOW, what a treat. We saw so many birds and it was such good fun to ride on the beach.

Having way too much fun!

Saturday night we did manage a campfire but there was the threat of strong thunderstorms and a tornado warning was in effect. It was dropped before we went to bed and we ended up with no rain to speak of over night.

Sunday we made the decision to ride our bikes to the ferry and cross the river to Mayport and explore a little. Our bike ride wasn't the 2 miles we thought the ranger had told us it would be, it was more like 5.5 miles into a pretty brisk wind. The ferry charged us only $1 for pedestrians with bikes (same price for without bikes). The ride was a mere 10 minutes with the jockying done to get into the slip with strong currents. The pier was loaded with pelicans, mostly the Brown variety. We found a place selling shrimp so we purchased three pounds for dinner and managed to get them back to the campground before the ice melted!

Brown Pelican skimming over the water

Dee and Paul's new pet by their camper! 

Sand-riders united!

Afternoon we headed back to the beach where we experienced such amazing strong winds. The wind was blowing so hard it appeared more like blowing snow.

Birds and blowing sand on Sunday afternoon.

Monday we head for Faver-Dykes State Park!