Atlantic Beach, Florida, Walk - Tuesday, November 9, 2021

Well, well, well, five days in Florida and I'm finally walking on the beach. Susan Medlin has been doing as much beach walking as possible, so I'm a little behind in that department.

Here's our tale of the Atlantic Beach 10k walk. For parking, we found a spot on 2nd St. just west of Beach Ave. We parked next to what appeared to be an empty lot with many trees. It's a residential neighborhood. There were none of the prevalent, "No Parking, Tow Away Zone" signs, and no pay parking stations here so we felt confident leaving the Jeep for a couple of hours.

We went to the closest Beach Access to the car (which was actually on 2nd St.), headed for the sand, and turned north. We needed to go approximately 1-3/4 miles on the beach and exit at 19th St. public access. Thankfully, a lot of the streets had signs on the beach by the trash cans so we could keep track of our progress. 

The ocean was flirty today, coming at us and then backing off. It seemed that the tide was coming in because the waves really wanted to kiss our feet. 

Yes, we're going to walk all the way 
down there!

Nice oceanfront homes and condos.

I think these are condos.

Birds playing tag with the water.

This bird only had one leg to stand on.

You can see how the water line is
creeping toward the shore!

Today was a gorgeous day to walk on the beach. There was a cool breeze and all the negative ions you could possibly want. Waves boomed as they crashed against the sand. 

Foam on the beach took on a life of its own. The wind caught the foam and rolled it, like tumbleweeds across the desert. It fascinated us and we watched for a few minutes.

We kept walking on the sand, getting right up next to the dunes as the waves got decidedly closer. A lot of the access points to get off the beach had sand piled up on the steps so that it was difficult to get up them. The dunes had a two-foot "cliff" because they have been eroded by all the recent storms. We'd have to throw ourselves up there if a rogue wave came too close.

Eighteenth St. was our bail-out point as the waves made advances again. There was a long boardwalk across a swale that protected the beachfront homes from high surf.

A photo of the swale (a low piece of land)
between the ocean and the homes.

We took Beach Ave. up to 19th St. and resumed our walk route there. I enjoyed looking at the beachfront homes. One of them had an underground walkway to get into the house!

Little Free Library.

We saw some more of the whimsical art installations on trees. Carolyn Ranieri informed me that the creator of these little works of art is Scotie Cousin. He sells his work at the Atlantic Beach Arts Market. If I knew that then, I would have bought a couple of these for our trees outside our front door!

Here is the underground entryway to a beach house.

How to make an entrance.

This underground entryway goes into
the wood house.

A very modern beach house.

At this point, we turned away from the ocean and headed west to visit a number of parks. The neighborhoods were beautiful.

Abundant white ibis plucking 
delicacies from people's yards.

Someone REALLY likes spider 
decorations. Eww!

A mermaid wind vane.

This oak tree is gorgeous and
provides a lot of shade!

Johansen Park.

Sculpture of a sea turtle
and mermaid.

At this point, I made a boo-boo and turned left instead of right. We walked a few extra blocks out of the way and had to turn around and come back. Mea culpa. 

Back on track now, we made our way to and through Jack Russell Park, Howell Park, and Bull Memorial Park. Jack Russell Park is a huge, developed park with a big playground, baseball fields, skateboard park, racquetball courts, restrooms, and tennis courts.

Across the street, is Howell Park which is more attuned to nature with lots of paths through it. Thankfully, the directions were spot-on and we didn't get lost in the park. 

Turtles sunning on a log in 
Howell Park.

Howell Park bridge over a waterway.

A sign about invasive "air potato" plants.
It's the vine with heart-shaped leaves (left).

We finished our walk in Atlantic Beach neighborhoods. There's some new single-family-dwelling construction going on.

A modern home overlooking the ocean.

Our walk route took us past the Jeep and we took off our hats and dropped off the water bottles. Susan Medlin put her walking sticks in the car. 

Now, we are going to eat! We didn't want to go to the same places we went to yesterday. I suggested that One Resort and Spa right on the beach might have a restaurant with a view. It looked pretty snazzy. Here we were in our walking clothes with wind-tossed hair, and looking a little rough around the edges. My mom always told me that our money is good as everyone else's. 

Susan asked the doorman if we could eat in the restaurant if we weren't staying there. He said, "Yes," and directed us to it. 

Wow! The entrance was entrancing! 

Azurea entrance.

We thought we should look at the menu, so we did. It looked pretty darned good. We asked the hostess for a table by the window. No problem because it wasn't very busy.

 

We can both attest to the fact that the Butternut Squash Soup is terrific! I also ordered the Avocado Toast which was yummy. Susan Medlin had the Pear and Prosciutto Flatbread. All the food was wonderful. The setting was pretty awesome and we had good service. It was a definite win as far as the choice of restaurants went!

Butternut Squash Soup.

Avocado Toast.

Pear and Prosciutto Flatbread.

Azurea Restaurant.

Azurea Restaurant in Atlantic Beach, FL.

We stopped at Costco on the way back to her son Kyle's house and picked up snacks for the road trip tomorrow. Then we watched a sci-fi movie, and I headed back to my hotel. 

We saw this van in the 
Costco parking lot.

We had a good day. Tomorrow, we're off to Biloxi, Mississippi.