Days at Hanna Park

More of the usual for this week. Riding bikes along the beach, stand up paddling and the perennial hunt for shark teeth. The weather whips around from hot, sunny days to cool rainy conditions on a daily whim. An occasional visit to Planet Fitness keeps us on our toes and every few days we hit a meeting at Beaches Unity. Spring comes early to Florida and lots of the trees and plants are starting to bud and pollen fills the air.

PJ is getting really good at the stand up thing. We can both go down the coast and back without getting wet. She was jetting down towards Neptune Beach when a large cow nosed ray floated up next to her giving her a thrill. We take turns and if it seems like something we can really get into, we’ll start looking at picking up another board.

Campers come and go. We make a few friends here and there but mostly do our own thing. PJ has been stringing shells together on a stretch of fishing net to make a hanging mobile. We do our daily meditations and work with some online videos and some guided themes from the Chopra Center. The quiet of the woods here makes for a great place for introspection. Cali is doing well for an over the hill pooch although she remains a finicky eater.

Today there was a morning low tide, so we took the bikes down to the beach and pumped the pedals for forty five minutes through Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach then past the center of Jax Beach. Lots of people were out by the pier as today started out beautiful, sunny and warm. We turned around and rode back as far as the One Ocean Resort where PJ had stayed a few years ago. We had a look around then took all the side streets to stay along the oceanfront where we checked out the beautiful homes lining the coast. When we could go no further, we got back out onto the sand and fought the wind and rising tide to get back to Hanna Park. All in, we rode two hours.

Back on our home beach, we locked up the bikes and spent an hour or so gathering teeth. The family from a few sites down with the small energetic dogs were at the beach. The kids were riding their bikes following their granddad, David, as he was beach combing. I had found a couple of small teeth and when the little girl expressed an interest, I gave her a tooth. She was stoked and set about the beach hunting for teeth. That lasted about the ten minutes her attention span was good for, then she and her brothers were riding one of their bikes into the surf. David and his wife are full timers and the grandkids have flown in from Ohio to spend the week with them. We went home with another five teeth to add to the collection and a couple of new friends from Ohio.

Even monks like to find a shark tooth

A big rain is due tonight, so we covered up the bikes and put away all of our patio gear. The storm is here right on time and it has been raining steadily since five in the afternoon. A good night to hang inside working on projects and reading.