This is our last night in Hanna State Park n Jacksonville.  I will miss this jungle and all the bird song. Tomorrow, we move to St. Augustine and the North Shore Campground (not a state park), located on Route A1A.

Another lazy day for me, while Paul took a bike ride around the park trails for a bit. I fought with a new knitting pattern that I wanted to start. I think I got it going at last.

We decided to check out the Riverside area of Jacksonville that we had drive through last night.  We had a great falafel plate and vegetarian wrap at a place called Havon Gourmet Mediterranean.

Was very yummy, then explored a bit more and found a great shop called Midnight Sun. Beautiful imported fabrics, cloths, and lots and lots of semiprecious stones, in and out of jewelry. Colorful glass hanging lamps and the most beautiful colored and embellished fabrics and pillows.  Plus scents and different teas that you can have specially blended.  It was a colorful feast for the eyes as well as your wallet because you would like to buy just about everything on offer in the store.

Then we drove through the Avondale area with all of the great craftsman/prairie buildings. They were even more impressive in the daytime. 

We stopped at a little place called Le Macaron where we got some amazingly good gelato. They also had a display case of colorful and exotic flavored French Macaroons. So we had to get some of those while we were there.  It was really hard to choose a flavor.

So very hard to choose.

After returning to our RV home in the jungle, we settled for a bit until just about sunset when we headed for the beach. While we did realize that the sun sets in the west and Jacksonville is on Florida’s east coast, we thought it would be nice to see what kind of colors would appears and life would appear at sunset.

We were not disappointed one little bit. While the photos really can not show it so well, the sun reflecting on the wet sand created by the incoming ties were subtle and very pretty.  People were out surf fishing, sitting and reading, walking and jogging in the shoreline. 

Paul taking a photo wearing his special color-blind correcting sunglasses. Those dots in the sky are pelicans diving for fish.

 

This is the photo Paul was taking, when I took the photo of him.

The person most enjoying the beach was not a person at all, but a black lab sort of dog, whose person had a device that flung a ball far off into the distance. The dog would run after it catching it in mid-air or running into the surf to get it.  That dog had the biggest smile every time he brought it back for another go.

As we were leaving the beach we saw an amazing sight. Out of the highest grassy and wooded dunes came a massive horde of dragonflies. More dragonflies than we have ever seen in one place at one time. They rose up from their hiding place for as far as we could see. There were probably many hundreds of them.  All looking very large and healthy.

Tried to get a photo of them, but it was impossible to get. Unfortunately none of the shots we did happen to capture were really bad, just blurry specks. They all moved to fast darting, hovering and even flying sideways.  Really hypnotic to watch.

And for our parting Jacksonville shot, here is our last sunset in Jacksonville.