Last week was our first week of summer vacation so we packed up the car and headed for an afternoon at Huguenot Park.
Now in the nine years I’ve lived here, for some reason I’ve never gone to Huguenot Park. I’ve driven by it plenty of times. But because this summer is the summer of staycation (or do you like daycation better?!) we decided to kick things off right and get going somewhere different right away.
Huguenot Park is part of the Duval County Parks and Recreation and is the only beach that allows cars to drive right out onto the sand! This was totally weird and thrilling, driving the car to surf’s edge. It felt wrong and forbidden and just…off, being out there on the sand with the waves lapping at my tires! I couldn’t stop laughing at the absurdity of it!
The friend I was with is from Daytona Beach which is, of course, the iconic place for cars on the beach. In fact, on a years-ago vacation to Florida, my husband and I did the requisite ‘beach drive’ ourselves, as all the tourists do. She remembers hanging out with friends in cars, on the beach. She remembers when they banned ‘night driving’ on the beach, which to me seems completely insane that it would have ever been allowed in the first place.
When we first moved to Florida we stayed on Anastasia Island, where driving on the beach is permitted. My kids were babies, running aimlessly around the sand and I was very nervous about them getting hit by a car. I’ve heard of accidents, so I’m not really for the whole idea of cars on the beach in general.
But for something different to do on a summer afternoon, it was fun.
We made a picnic, loaded the cooler, threw in the beach chairs, went over the Mayport Ferry, and drove the remaining couple of miles to the park. There’s camping in the Park, with sites along the St. John’s River. While it would be kind of cool to camp along the river (I’m not really the camping sort of person), the sites weren’t compelling enough to get me excited about trying it. I like some ambiance: trees, a nice spot for campfire, something. These sites were just plain, open spaces along the river. No thanks. I suppose if I had a Minnie Winnie it would be a more attractive notion, but we don’t, so I prefer the whole daycation thing where I can come home and shower off the salt and sand and be done with it. It’s fun to visit but I don’t necessarily want to live in it.
In northern Michigan, I have camped in a tent, on a site, next to my favorite Great Lake, the great Lake Michigan. But those sites are truly lovely; private, shielded by leafy trees, and picturesque. I actually camped in a beachfront site which was memorable and something I’d consider doing again. (Though I’d prefer to rent a lovely oceanfront condo on Sanibel Island, or in the Keys, or, hey, how about in Destin, Florida where I hear the water is a lovely shade of aqua?)
Let me just say that Huguenot Park is no Fisherman’s Island State Forest Campground (now a State Park) in Charlevoix, Michigan.
But what fun it was to pull out onto the beach, hop out of the car and let the kids bolt into the ocean. It’s really just a few miles north of us “as the crow flies” but everything felt different. Even the water was colder there! The kids climbed out onto the rocks of the jetty, where the St. John’s River meets the Atlantic Ocean.
The Park is very close to Mayport Naval Station so we waved to several helicopters doing their daily runs to and from the base. There was a smaller, “mucky-bottomed” lake area that was behind the ocean; I think it was part of the intracoastal waterway. It was very still and there were a couple of egrets stepping gingerly into the water’s edge. The kids enjoyed the stillness of this lake and played there, despite the “mucky bottom” for about a half hour.
The sand was white and there were small sand dunes the kids ran up and rolled down several times.
Back at the car on the beach, we opened the trunk of the van and had a tailgate picnic while the tide crept in. All that was different, and fun.
One thing that made me sad was the amount of trash left on the beach. Who does that? I mean, really, who just drops their juice bags, cigarettes, padding from their bathing suit bras, picnic trash, a flip flop, straws, …anything and everything…and just drives away from it? Apparently, a lot of people have the nerve to do just that. I’m guessing that the crew at Huguenot Park must drive a truck with some sort of rake attached to clean up the beach every night.
In Atlantic Beach, the beaches are very clean. Occasionally I see some trash but it’s generally isolated and often I’ll pick it up if I can. It looks like more of a mistake rather than a trend. I wonder if people somehow feel entitled to leave their flotsam and jetsam because they paid to get in to the park and think that someone else should pick up after them? And in Atlantic Beach, it’s home, it’s the neighborhood, and when visitors come, it’s free, and people therefore feel more responsible?
I wish I knew, but the difference in the cleanliness of the two beaches is striking.
The trip to Huguenot was fun and a wonderful diversion for all of us; who doesn’t love a change of venue every now and then? We laughed, had fun with friends, and enjoyed the freedom
from school and schedules, and admired this handsome fellow:
Still, the home beach of Atlantic Beach rules in my book.
