NE Corner of Florida
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![[watch your step]](under_construction.gif)
NE Corner of Florida
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Jacksonville, like Miami, is one of those cities I drive around. I admit I don't much care for the home of the Jaguars and the Lizard Kings. It always seems to me that the city can't decide if it belongs in Florida or Georgia. This particular gateway to our fairs state has too many people, too many faceless buildings and too much traffic. You only have to stall a loaded VW van on the steep incline of the bridge to the beach once to dislike the city. I managed to do it twice. On the plus side, several science fiction fans live in the area and they put on small, enjoyable conventions at irregular intervals.
In fairness, I should mention that Jacksonville has a nice zoo, and the area along the river has been recently rebuilt. I saw the play "Children of a Lesser God" at the Florida Theater and enjoyed it very much. They have an infra-red sound system with free headsets. I'm hard of hearing, but even sitting in the balcony I was able to hear as well as if I had been onstage. I enjoy live theatre and wish more places were set up like that.
I lived in the area for a brief period, and it wasn't a very happy time in my life, so that may have something to do with my overall negative feelings for Jacksonville. Actually, I lived over on the ocean, in a condo in Atlantic Beach. The condo was as cold and impersonal as my life there, but the beach was nice. It was one of the few communities that allowed dogs on the beach, and Jackie, my rescued dog, just loved to romp. I took long walks along the beach, collected shark's teeth and odd shells, wrote short stories and did revisions on a novel (THE FALL OF WINTER). One saving grace of the short time I lived up there was Mayport, a Naval Station and shipping area that had, buried among some tacky upscale restaurants, a few good authentic seafood places. One in particular was built on a dock, its front was a fishing tackle and bait shop, but walking through the back you passed freshly caught fish on ice in cases next to the bait. You selected what you wanted, told them how you wanted it prepared, then grabbed a beer out of the ice, and sat out on the dock while they cooked it.
A drive down A1A along the ocean from Atlantic Beach has a good view of the Intercoastal marshes, but most of the ocean side is blocked by cheek-to-jowl expensive houses waiting patiently to blown away by a hurricane. Eventually, the road curves over to St. Augustine, a town I like a lot. One night as I was driving down from Jacksonville, I rounded this curve and scores of boats festooned with Christmas lights lit up the water. A pleasant and unexpected surprise.
I WARNED YOU THIS WAS UNDER CONSTRUCTION -- Here are some of the St. Augustine links I will use in this section:
There are a lot of great places to eat in St. Augustine. In Old Town there is the Columbia, a Spanish restaurant with great food and atmosphere (there are two, the other one is in Tampa). Also in Old Town is Santa Maria, which sits out on a pier. The food is ordinary, but each table along the outside windows has trapdoors where you can drop stale bread (provided) to the fish below or the birds that hang around waiting for handouts. It's a great place to watch river traffic while you eat, and I often see dolphins swimming there. On the road to the beach is the Conch House, which sits back on a lagoon. Besides the main dining area, the Conch House features little cabanas that seat four to six scattered around on walkways over the water. My favorite ones are crow's nest affairs, reached by walking up a ramp. The view over to the ocean is great and the food is fine. Over in St. Augustine Beach, my favorite restaurant is Salt Water Cowboy's, a funky cracker-style house literally in the middle of a salt marsh on the Intercoastal. The food is fairly ordinary, but the view is spectacular and the restaurant has quite a collection of old Florida memorabilia.
Another place in St. Augustine Beach I used to frequent was an ordinary-looking roadside bar from the outside. It's no longer there, but it was run by a retired New York City editorial cartoonist. The walls were covered with decades of his work. The place had been adopted by bikers, and there was always a line of Harleys outside. He said they caused less trouble than most folks.
Florida is filled with places like this, little pockets where people come to live out their dreams. They come, and they're special for a while, then they're gone. It's an eternal cycle, like the tides, and one of the things I like about this place.
Down A1A from St. Augustine Beach is Matanzas Inlet, a beautiful place with fine fishing. The beach side is undeveloped and, due to the currents, one of the best places on the east coast to find shells. The Intercoastal side spreads out to a tidal lagoon with a lot of oyster bars. At low tide, it's a birdwatcher's paradise. Just before you reach the bridge over the inlet, there's a small turnoff to Fort Matanzas. It was constructed to protect St. Augustine from attack from the south. The fort sits out in the river and is reachable by a free ferry. It's small and lonely. I can only image what it would be like to be there during storms.
TALK OF FLAGLER BEACH WILL GO HERE. Barbara and I had our wedding bands made by friends on the edge of the ocean here. It's a small, sleepy beach town that will not stay that way much longer. Just south of Flagler Beach is the Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area, an isolated and windswept stretch of beach and scrub. I've camped here many times over the years.
Inland to Palatka, best known for the stench of a nearby pulp mill and a beautiful stretch of the St. Johns River. My daughter graduated from high school at the Florida School of the Arts at St. Johns River Community college there.
No tour of this area would be complete without mentioning Spuds and the annual Cabbage and Potato Festival, so I'll put some stuff here when I get to it.
This is the southern end of what I consider to be NE Florida. In the next section, I travel south through Ormond Beach, Daytona, New Symerna and the Cape.