Today’s itinerary was to spend the day traveling 9 miles north to the Fernandino Beach/Amelia Island area via A1A. We needed to run errands for medications and hardware to restore the bike rack to connect properly to Ken’s car. Plus we needed a few more items like a small bucket, large sponge, small wet/dry vac, etc. There were lots of shopping options here. Everything was really close together between the CVS and the Turner Ace hardware store. The hardware store was a real gem for us. The gentleman that helped us figure out the hardware that we needed to adapt the hooks for the wire ends of the rack was most helpful and engaged. His name is Randy. He relished the challenge! He and Ken came up with the solution, and he helped us with the rest of our list. This is a very large super sized store!

Next stop was Walmart for a few items, although they didn’t have everything we wanted. A lookup in Yelp gave us our choice for lunch: Loop Pizza Grill, which was an excellent choice. Ken had a spicy pesto chicken, jalapeno arugula pizza and I had one of the juiciest burgers ever. Yummy!

Fort Clinch was a few miles to the north of the commercial center. The fort was built during the Civil War. Our friend and former employee, Sean Ellis, recommended us not to miss visiting here, and we’re glad we did. The fort stands guard where Amelia Island is to the south and Cumberland Island is to the north. It protects the passage westward to Fernandino.

Florida State Parks photo

Ken will write more about this in his blog entry when he gets a chance! I found one fact particularly interesting that not a single gun was ever fired from the fort.

All in all, this was a great day because we mixed “business” with pleasure. Tomorrow, we’ll explore the area around our campground itself before leaving for St. Augustine.