27 May - Beachwalk, Visit to Naval Air Station Jacksonville "Jax"

 

Nice day started with a long beach walk with little Miss Liberty and Doreen, while I got caught up on some phone calls and computer work. 

The ships continue in and out of the harbor and are sure fun to watch.  Container ships, cargo ships, Navy ships, fishing boats and leisure boats, and they are relatively quiet.  The Navy ships are almost stealthy!.  This campground simply ROCKS - right here at the inlet we see everything coming and going!

Doreen and Liberty were watching some of the patrol boats and the dolphins were either chasing them, or they were chasing the dolphins.  Pretty exciting for us Iowa folks!

The beach activity will undoubtedly pick up this holiday weekend.  The weather is supposed to be phenomenal.

So, speaking of "us Iowa folks", we had some new neighbors pull in next to us in a Cedar Creek fifth wheel.  The guy saw our Iowa Firefighter plate on my truck and mentioned something to Doreen about Iowa.  Long story short, he grew up in Norwalk, where we lived for 40+ years!!  His father was the Norwalk school superintendent before Mr Don Oviatt, but they moved away in the 60's before we moved there in 1977.  Was interesting talking with him about how Norwalk was back in the day.  Dirt and gravel roads in town, etc.  He is retired Navy and traveling around with their RV like us.  Such a small world!

So there is another Navy base here called Naval Air Station Jacksonville, or "NAS Jax".  They also have a FamCamp in fact we had reservations there last year only because we could not get into this one.  I wanted to go over and visit it for future reference, plus they have a full size commissary (grocery store) and NEX (Navy Exchange) there.  

Today we drove to NAS Jax to visit.  It was about a 45 minute drive but took us a lot longer to get back because there was an accident on I-295 which blocked the bridge, so we took an alternate route.  We did not take any pictures there other than at the gate and the Blue Angels jet, above.  The FamCamp was OK, but overall it was unimpressive.  We are so glad we were able to get a reservation at Pelican Roost here at Mayport.  We found the huge commissary and restocked on groceries and then headed back to Mayport.  

This evening we went on another extended walk with Liberty as we searched for the base post office drop box.  Doreen's step counter hit 9560 today as we try to keep up with the exercise, being absent from the gym at home.  We really have to be proactive as it is so easy to get into the "vacation" routine and the pound-ages pile on.  Ugh.  

Tomorrow we will check out the other FamCamp right here at Mayport NAS called Osprey Cove.  We are also going to check out the Mayport ferry as we plan to use it Saturday when we visit the Amelia Island Lighthouse and the Kingsley Plantation.  Since we will be right over there by the ferry we may just have to stop into the Safe Harbor seafood restaurant again.  Oh, so looking forward to that again!