Oz's Big Adventure: Little Talbot State Park

My big, 11-day camping adventure started at Little Talbot State Park.  Little Talbot State Park encompasses Little Talbot Island, one of the few undeveloped barrier islands in Northeast Florida.  The park boasts almost five miles of beautiful, white sand beaches as well as maritime forests, desert-like dunes and undisturbed salt marshes.

There are a lot of activities to participate in at Little Talbot State Park including fishing, surfing, beachcombing, hiking and kayaking.  There is also a really nice bike trail that goes in and out of the park.  I rode in my Solvit Products HoundAbout II trailer most of the time but Ma and Daddy-dog let me out to see the sights including the beach.  (Note:  Beaches in all Florida State Parks are protected so dogs are not allowed on the beach.  I viewed the beach from a portion of the bike trail.)

The campground, where we were set to stay three nights, is located along the eastern salt marshes of Myrtle Creek.  Our campsite was a couple hundred yards from the Myrtle Creek salt marsh; every day we could see people fishing off the small dock or heading off for a kayaking adventure.

Little did we know it would be a full moon when we made our reservations to stay at Little Talbot State Park nor did we realize that the moon would bring in what The Weather Channel considered "an astronomical high tide".  On Monday morning, the high tide came in so much that our campsite would have been considered "waterfront property".  We felt bad for the RV campers whose sites were flooded with about a foot of water.

However, Tuesday morning brought two surprises to us.  The first was once again the "astronomical high tide" which on this day invaded our campsite.  The water stopped coming in right before it met up with our campfire ring.  We couldn't get out of our campsite for about an hour as the campground road was flooded as well.

Once the tide ebbed, I got a second surprise.  We headed over to the hiking trail and met up with blog friends Reilly and Denny, the CowSpotDogs.  We hiked for about two miles; I lead the pack with Daddy-dog for most of the trail though Reilly and I did stop together to sniff some interesting spots.  Reilly and Denny are such cool dogs and we had a great time together.

We really liked Little Talbot State Park, despite the fact that it rained at some point every day we were there.  It is one of the smaller parks in the Florida State Parks system but it is definitely worth a trip the next time you are in the Jacksonville, FL area.  If you go, maybe you can meet up with Reilly and Denny too!