2017 Feb 08-09 - Last Day at Fort Clinch, First Day at Blue Spring State Park

Not much happened on Tuesday, the 7th, in Ft. Clinch State Park, so I left that out of this posting. Wednesday, however, was a different story. This was our day to leave Ft. Clinch and it started out as any other, that is until we noticed an ATV with POLICE plastered all over it with a driver wearing a bulletproof vest making rounds thru the campground. We hadn't seen it before, but we just blew it off and went about the business of packing up.

We had booked a cruise with Amelia River Cruises and had to get out of the campground and down to the waterfront by our 10:30 cruise time. It was supposed to be a two hour cruise, so we figured we'd grab lunch with Larry & Kris and be be on the road by 2:00, easy. Well, the cruise lasted about an hour longer than planned and we got way more than we bargained for! The cruise, narrated by "Pajama Dave," was really interesting. Dave was a very knowledgeable and funny guy. Then we saw the reason for the police in the campground, something neither Dave nor we expected. An Ohio Class nuclear submarine was being escorted into the St. Marys river on its way to the submarine base in Kingsland, GA. Wow!

A few days ago when we camped at Crooked River State Park outside St. Marys, GA, we passed the front gate of the Kingsland base every time we left the park. It was quite a thrill to watch the sub pass by and to see all of the security associated with it. Hope you enjoy the pics.

We didn't get on the road from Amelia Island until about 3:00, so we squeaked into Blue Spring State Park outside Orange City, FL at 5:55, about five minutes before the gates closed. We had called ahead to get the gate code because we knew it was going to be close.

Thursday morning, we took a walking tour of Blue Spring State Park. We walked around the campground and then down to the spring to look for manatees. There weren't many manatees when we got there, but later, as the air temp started to cool down, they started to come into the spring run because the water temperature is 73 degrees, year round. The cooler the water gets in the St. John's River, the more manatees there are in the spring run.

Enjoy!