Amelia Island & Fernandina Beach

We left Charleston on Saturday afternoon and drove south. Next destination: Amelia Island, Florida, a tiny spot mentioned in 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, and the first stop on the TRUE cross-country road trip. We spent the night right off of I-95 at the Florida/Georgia border. The next morning, the air outside smelled like smoke, and there was ash on our car. Apparently there were fires raging in northern Florida, but we weren't close enough to be majorly affected. The smoke and ash carried more than 50 miles from the fire, though.

We got into Amelia Island's downtown, Fernandina Beach, around 11am and walked around on Centre Street (the main drag).

This is a pretty quiet town, but they do love their shrimp and pirates here. We apparently missed the annual shrimp festival by a week.

There's a pier/marina at the end of Centre St., so we walked over and looked out at the water for a bit, too.


Aside from window shopping and strolling the 1/2 mile main street, there wasn't a whole lot to see here, so we had lunch, split a delicious cookies 'n' cream ice cream cone, and drove to the neighboring beach.

With the fires still raging, the sky was a dark and erie color (notice the contrast from the marina photo above - two miles west). Everything looked as if you were viewing it through a yellow sunglasses lens. We couldn't smell the fire anymore, but we could certainly see its effects.  This picture does a pretty good job of capturing the sight - there's a thin line of blue sky at the bottom right edge.  It was quite ominous, but the beach was sparse and peaceful.

We hung out on the beach for a bit, called our mothers to wish them Happy Mother's Day, and decided to head to our next destination.  Unfortunately, our car had other plans.  We'd parked right off the road where other cars were also parked... but we hadn't noticed that where WE parked, the sand was softer... and our car is not built for sand driving.  We were stuck, and if I'd been watching this from the third person, I would've had quite a laugh.  Tom stood outside of the car directing me on how to rock out of the ditch I'd dug us into from previous attempts at backing up.  We were getting nowhere, so Tom told me to turn off traction control.  Having never done this before and not knowing what would happen, I stepped on the gas again and ended up spraying dirt and sand all over our car (AND into it since the windows were open) and almost backing into oncoming traffic.  I panicked and, yes, drove right back into the sand.  If it weren't for a couple of nice guys in trucks (sometimes I really do love the south), we would've been stuck for quite some time.  They stopped and helped Tom push our car out of the sand.  About a half hour and a gallon of gas later, we were free.  And we drove straight to a carwash.  While in the carwash, Tom realized he left his expensive new flip flops back at the beach.  We just couldn't get out of there!!

All in all, we had a nice day on Amelia Island wrapped up by a rather comical ending (in hindsight, anyway), and headed south for St. Augustine.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone