The city park that has it all!

We spent a week and a half at Kathryn Abbey Hanna Park, a city park in Jacksonville, FL.  It's a beachside park that surrounds a lake as well, so there's water for whatever you're looking for!  We stayed here briefly back when we first got on the road, but only for one night during a cold snap.  At that time we determined that it would be a lovely place to stay in warmer weather, and also that next time we visited we needed to stay longer to make the windy roads worth it!  Jacksonville is close to my sister's new home in St. Augustine, and once we decided to do a joint camping trip for my nephew's birthday, Kathryn Abbey Hanna Park quickly came back to mind.  

Our campsite at Kathryn Abbey Hanna Park

We didn't remember anything about the campsite layout in the campground, and we really lucked out that we picked an amazing site that was plenty big for our RV and my brother-in-law's tent (where he slept with the kids...my sister stayed in the cool and dry with us in the RV), while also offering a ton of privacy as we parked the RV parallel to the road.  We had a great time exploring the lake, beach, campground, playground, and splash pad with my sister's kids.  We stayed a week after they left and went mountain biking and actually swimming in the ocean (when the kids were there we were on keep-the-kids-from-drowning duty).

Breakfast outside

Playing games on the picnic table

A modern day see-saw?  I think the
weight was a little unbalanced...

Aaron playing football with the kids

Our oldest nephew went mountain biking with his dad and got 
quite muddy...Aaron helped hose him down

After the kids left we saw a lot more
wildlife!  This guy is drying out after
catching and eating a fish.

At the beach

During the week we went to see nearby Fort Caroline and Kingsley Plantation, both National Park Service sites (more stamps for my passport!).  I'm ashamed to say that until we visited the fort, I didn't know that the French ever had a presence in Florida!  While we were at the fort, we witnessed the Coast Guard practicing chasing boats down in St. John's River, which was pretty cool!  Kingsley Plantation was pretty well preserved and I learned about the 'task' system of slavery, which I don't think I'd heard of before, wherein the slaves had tasks for the day and, once they were completed, the slaves were able to do whatever they wanted with the rest of the day (as opposed to the 'gang' system, which required an excessive number of hours of work each day).  

A reconstructed Fort Caroline.  Nothing remains of the original fort,
which would be in a location now underwater, and they didn't have
any architectural diagrams, but this is their best guess based on
some artists' renderings of the fort.

Kingsley Plantation

Remains of the slave cabins at Kingsley Plantation

So we had a great week and a half, and we're making plans with my sister to do another combined camping trip when we head north again at the end of winter.