Tucked in at Jupiter Florida…

Our last day at Flagler Beach had us eyeing a mountain bike ride at Bulow Creek State Park. This was a 6.8 mile trail (one way) and wasn’t a loop so to get back you had to ride another 6.8 miles. This trail is called the Bulow Woods trail and it is known for its large elegant live oaks with a palmetto understory giving one a sense of Jurassic Park at times. With the drought here in Florida the trail was pretty dry, however, we did see a flock of about 20 wild turkeys with many youngsters in their midst and I spotted 3 wild pigs running as fast as they could through the woods.

      

This is a great mountain bike trail but it provided several challenges. The trail was pretty decent except for two lengthy stretches that included some deep sands that swallowed our tires and another stretch had some large protruding roots that about shook the bejesus out of us. At the end of the trail is the 150 acres of the Bulow Plantation Ruins. This historic site houses the ruins of a large sugar plantation and mill that were destroyed by the Seminole Indians.

We did find one small short cut that knocked off about a mile, so our total trip was around 12-13 miles long and when we got back we were beat!!! So back to the motorhome we went and took a shower and had dinner and then headed to Flagler Beach to watch the sunset by the ocean at a place called Finz. This place caught our eye with its elevated second story deck looking out over the ocean. Not quite a Road Treat but real close.

We didn’t eat dinner there but the menu looked okay but what we did order was  their $3.00 glasses of cabernet wine. We gallivanted over to the upstairs outdoor deck that overlooks the ocean and sat there at the bar enjoying a few glasses of wine. Met a another Texas A&M University grad and had a great time chatting and soaking it all in…

The next morning we packed up the camp and headed south down highway 95. A couple of hundred miles later I pulled into Jonathan Dickinson State Park about 3 miles north of Jupiter Florida just outside of Palm Beach. The park is very large with campsites near the road we came in on and another campground four miles in by a river. The river campground is older and has more shade and the newer campground has little to no shade but large and very level sites. We are staying in site 73 and after a light evening shower we are settled in. We plan to hit the beach tomorrow after visiting Juno Beach on our way to a grocery run. One look at the blue water and we had to make plans to return. We will stay here 2 or 3 days and then make our final run to the Keys…

Enjoying Flagler Beach, Florida…

After relaxing in the morning we left Hardeeville RV campground and headed South towards Georgia. We were not planning on traveling too far since we are not in a real rush.We don’t plan on arriving in the Keys until the 16th of June.

We passed through Savannah, Ga and rolled into Florida. Just after we got past Jacksonville we filled up with diesel and I finally calculated our gas mileage – we are getting right at 9 mpg in the motorhome which is about what I had expected after reading others report their gas mileage in their FRED motorhomes. We rolled on down the highway until we entered Bulow RV Resort in Flagler Beach, Florida.

Bulow RV Resort is less than 10 minutes from the beach at Flagler Beach and just north of Daytona Beach. Also a state park is adjacent to the resort which is nice for hiking in. The towering old live oak trees draped in spanish moss tend to cause the mind to drift back in time when this park was an active sugar cane plantation. The park is spacious but the sites are fairly close to each other. However, there aren’t a lot of people in the park so we had four empty sites to one side of us.

There are a lot of resident campers here as well but they are in a different part of the park. This means a few more kids in the pool but all in all this is a quiet park. Passport America rate with taxes included was $25.20 per night with good walking and biking close by. The channel right behind the motorhome has several small alligators in it. We have also seen a lot of pileated woodpeckers and osprey in the area. The only real negative to this park is the rather tight entry into the park itself.

I just booked us here for one more day since we are enjoying our stay here. We will head on towards the south tomorrow and stay near Pampano Beach, Florida before we start our final push to get to the keys.