Feb 23, 2010 - Anastasia State Park

Anastasia SP Beach

When Beth would come down to Florida as a kid, she and her brother would always set the alarm and get up early enough to go watch the sunrise over the ocean. This morning she though she might try that again, but when she got to the beach it was too foggy, plus she was about 20 minutes late. It’s a little tougher to get up early now compared to when she was eight years old.



Anastasia SP Beach

 The fog went away pretty quickly though, and it promises to be a sunny day today, so we walked the beach for a while. They rent fat tired bikes at the park for you to ride on the beach, because down closer to the surf the sand is pretty firm. You hardly make a footprint at all. It looked like fun, so we decided we’d give it a try with our own bikes. I managed to get a photo, but it wasn’t easy, let me tell you. I was trying to hold and aim the camera with one hand, and keep the front wheel of the bike headed perfectly straight using the other hand. That’s pushing my athletic abilities to the limit right there, but of course, as soon as I started to take the photo, we hit a softer stretch of sand. So any lapse of concentration that allows the front wheel to turn just the tiniest bit off from dead ahead has exactly the same effect as jamming on the front brakes. And even though the bike comes to an instantaneous stop, since you’ve only got one hand on the handlebars, you yourself keep going and slide right off the saddle. And since there’s barely any clearance between the bike frame and my body when I’m standing flat-footed on the ground, I was sweatin’ it there for a bit.

By the time we got partway down the length of the beach and back on our bikes, we were good and warmed up, so we decided to ride out to the St. Augustine lighthouse while we were at it. Then we rode to the closest store so I could get another memory card for my camera. Then we went back and spent the afternoon walking up and down the beach looking for weird stuff. The beach is actually made up of several smaller islands and sandbars that have joined together over the years, and it’s now called Conch Island. The beach runs about four miles from the pier at one end, to the St. Augustine Inlet on the other. We thought it might be fun to walk the length of it and back. But about halfway down we chickened out and turned around. So back to our chairs for a bit before we headed back to camp. Stress, stress, and more stress.

My buddy Dennis and wife Carol showed up later that afternoon, and after they got camp set up, we had a great evening around the campfire. Dennis builds violins and had brought his newest one to play, but we didn’t stop talking long enough for him to take it out of the case. Tomorrow.