You can take the GRITS out of Florida, but you can't take Florida out of the GRITS!

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

A weekend at Jonathan Dickinson State Park

Last weekend was Cacheapalooza 3, an annual geocaching event held at Jonathan Dickinson State Park in Jupiter. My BFF (I can't believe I just said that) Lj rented cabins for the weekend. 5 days and 4 nights in the woods with the luxury of a real bathroom, shower, bed, refrigerator...ah...definitely not "roughing it"! We ate the best dinners (kudos to Chef Lj) and the best breakfasts (thanks to the culinary skills of Objets)...campfires every night and caching every day. I loved it.

He never ate the marshmallow...just carried around like a trophy or something.

Lots of food, fun and friends...

Me and my friends on top of the Hobe Mountain Observatory.

Finding a cache!

There are train tracks that go through the park and they are the busiest tracks I have ever seen in my life! Within about an hour time span, we saw three trains go by!

It was too long of a hike for Aidan (me, too!). We turned back and I am so glad we did! The folks we were with were gone for hours!


View from the observatory. Hobe Sound is the lower body of water and the Atlantic is further out. The picture does not do it justice. It's really a beautiful place.





Funky moss. I have no idea what it's called, but it reminds me of snow.
I am already looking forward to next year, but I plan on going back before then. I want to kayak on the Loxahatchee river and do some more hiking while the weather is cool. There are some cool things to see at JDSP...there are old army bunkers (the place used to be a radar training facility during WWII), Trapper Nelson's old place on the river (some interesting history), and geographically diverse areas - from sand dunes with cactus to mangrove and cypress swamps, extensive hiking and bike trails and even a swimming hole. When you're there, you feel like you are out in the middle of nowhere, but in reality, you are only a few miles from a Publix and a strip mall. If you haven't been there, you should. It's definitely a place worth visiting at least once!

8 comments:

marcandeliana said...

So bummed we missed it this year but it sounds like you had a great time! I'm looking forward to getting all those caches when we get back!

Joey B said...

Isn't that deer moss?

Sandcastle Momma said...

That looks like so much fun! I wish I could have made it down there for that. The park sounds like a fun place to spend time exploring and the fact that were caches to find just makes it even better LOL
Glad you had fun!!

Unknown said...

Great pictures of the festivities...It's just a bad time of year for me to get away.

BTW, it's reindeer moss:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reindeer_moss

Anonymous said...

Wow, I haven't been there in years! We have friends that live in Loxahatchee, wayy out there. Used to go visit them a lot in the 80's.
and Jonathan Dickinson, I haven't been there in almost 20 yrs. Thanks to these photos, it's time to CHANGE that! LOL
bet you had a blast!

SophieMae said...

It's been years snce I've been down thataway. What could be better than a cabin in a FL state park?! We used to rent one at Blue Springs every December around DS's birthday. DS would love that park, coz he's a train freak.

Looks like your marshmallow monarch had a marshalous time. LOL!

Unknown said...

It does look like a GREAT day!! :)

Prem said...

I noticed that you link to Chris and Misty's ghost orchid info site. You can find out even more info about this orchid (and many other Florida orchid species) at:

www.flnativeorchids.com

---Prem