Ancient Dunes Trail

As we slowly moved up the Atlantic coast of Florida, we stopped near St. Augustine.  Just outside of that city, there’s a lovely state park, called Anastasia State Park.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t camp there (campground was full), but there was a nice trail that we could wander down with Max.

At first, I thought we might see a number of wildflowers on this trail, because I was teased with this pretty little bloom!  Still, it was worth highlighting this little gem!

The trail was called the Ancient Dunes Trail and led through a number of old sand dunes that were formed by wind and wave action.  This happened many, many years ago, when the ocean extended much further inland than it does today.  Right now, this trail is nowhere close to the ocean!  Due to the process of vegetation dying, decomposing and enriching the soil, there’s now a forest here, and not sandy dunes.

There are a number of oak trees here and their twisting branches creates quite the interesting image!  It was such a dense forest, we couldn’t see what we were next to.  At one point, we think we heard the campers going about making camp, sitting outside chatting, etc.  However, we couldn’t quite catch a real look at them – so close, yet so far away!

Long ago, the only plants that would have been here were beach plants that served to stabilize the dunes so that they didn’t wash away into the sea.  This area was along the Atlantic coast.  After a time, different varieties of plants, such as this palm, began to establish themselves.

As the ocean receded, shrubs and then trees like this one, were able to be established.  Today, this is considered a maritime forest.  And, now, we have resurrection ferns growing on the trees.  Right now, the ferns are very vibrant, and interestingly, is not a parasite and doesn’t hurt the tree.  During dry times, this fern will dry up to a brown mass and looks to be dead.  But, just add rain, and they will be green again!

Although this wasn’t a long walk (about 30 minutes), I took longer than that, as I kept stopping to check out potential photo ops.  Max got quite tired of my lollygagging, and ended up just laying down to wait for me!

It only seems appropriate to end this post as I began it, with a lovely woodland bloom.  I found this quote and it seemed to really fit for our time in these woods and for this image.

Enjoy!