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Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Jax, St. Augustine Road Trip

26-27 January 2018

After mostly paperwork on Friday I had a good plan so we went out to dinner at Bennie's Red Barn. They opened in 1954 on St. Simons Island and I'm pretty sure they haven't redecorated or changed their menu since. Think of literally a big barn with kind of a Dirty Dancing era vibe. We had ribeyes (Pittsburgh style) that were good. The huge fireplace was nice on such a cool evening.

On Saturday we headed down to Jacksonville to check out the local boat show and some marinas. We'd like to start moving south from Brunswick, but we may need to park the boat somewhere for at least a couple weeks for a quick trip back to Arizona. The boat show was kind of a bust for us. It was completely powerboats, which was not a surprise, but at least it had a few of the common equipment vendors and potential marinas.

The first marina we hit was our second choice for hiding out during hurricane season. Ortega Landing  was pretty new and very nice. They are just off the St. Johns upriver from downtown Jax. They did surprisingly well during Hurricane Irma.

We still had most of the day left so we decided to head down to St. Augustine. We had heard they were hit pretty hard during Irma. On the way up to Brunswick on the boat last year we had scooted thru the Bridge of Lions after filling up at the fuel dock.


The docks in the foreground were beat pretty bad (or missing) but the other one was okay. The mooring field was open and had room. These big white birds are all over the place.


We had gone to a boating seminar in StA a few years ago. It was a very rainy day so we didn't stray far or stay after. Unbeknownst to us we missed the show. There is a touristy area down by the marina and the fort. Kind of like New Orleans if they dumped a whole lot of money on it combined it with a renaissance festival (or rather on this weekend, a pirate festival).


The narrow, pedestrian friendly streets make it convenient and fun. We could definitely spend a little time here. We had dinner in Jax at a place called Gilberts Social, then coffeed up and headed back to Brunswick.

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