On the road

From St. Augustine, FL

To Spartanburg SC...where I finally saw mountains of home again!

Back to Florida

My Homes, Chapter 5: (an archive for my descendants)
Jacksonville, St. Augustine and Tampa Florida

Beach Blvd, Jacksonville, FL - After a vacation (from Tennessee to Florida) which included going to a beach on the Atlantic Ocean, I wanted to be back in sunny Florida. So I again typed my way into various temp jobs. We moved into a medium size mobile home in 1994. I kept doing Administrative Assistant work, and turned down a few offers for permanent jobs typing on computers.

Below shows the location of our home in Jacksonville, FL. I spent a lot of weekends going to the beach!

Countryside Village Mobile Home park on left, Atlantic Ocean on right

Still living in Jacksonville, eventually I got a job doing counseling with elderly people in nursing homes. Several were in St. Augustine, where I commuted every day driving down highway A1A along the beaches! And I was just 4 hours away from my oldest son in Tampa FL who we visited every other month or so.

15th St., St. Augustine Beach, FL - I found a lovely apartment just 5 buildings back from the beach of the Atlantic Ocean, and I could drive to work in 15 minutes. My youngest son moved off to college after graduating from high school here.

Tampa condominium

Hanging Moss, Tampa, FL - a condo near the U of South Florida.  I moved to be near my oldest son and his family, while my youngest son was at college in St. Petersburg FL. Middle son had married and was beginning his family in Atlanta. I worked at a new position which fit me like a glove...an Activity Director in an Assisted Living facility, starting in 2000.

Lotus St, Tampa, FL - I rented a medium size home in a slightly questionable neighborhood (thus it was affordable.) I was now working with elders in a 200 unit independent living building...as an Activity Director still. My youngest son was living out in Colorado, while middle son remained in Atlanta. My oldest son and his family were still in Tampa, but I only saw them a couple of times a month. It was good, but changes were to come when I considered retiring!

Quote for today:

Although we have been made to believe that if we let go we will end up with nothing, life reveals just the opposite: that letting go is the real path to freedom.

Sogyal Rinpoche
Glimpse After Glimpse

Relax and live by the ocean

When I commuted to St. Augustine, FL daily from Jacksonville, FL, I would drive the A1A highway along Ponte Vedre beaches and see the few beautiful views of empty beach.  This was in 1995 when I began counseling at nursing homre.  There probably aren't any naked beaches without a house or condo on that stretch any more.

Then I was fortunate to find a ground floor apartment just 4 houses from the ocean in St. Augustine Beach, which used to have its own post office, a shell shop, which no longer exists. St. Augustine Beach, not the apartment!

This was the view which changed several times in the 4 years while I lived there.  The pile of dirt behind the power pole indicated where a small 2 story house would be built.  And the grass and prickly pears would be stripped and a Hampton Inn hotel (4 stories) would be built facing A1A.

At the time we moved however, I took these shots.

There was a ruined foundation with a fireplace closer to the water than the house on the far right.  Within a couple of years it had been rebuilt by the family which owned it, and they put in a garage apartment as well.  That meant pile driving 8 utility poles to stabilize the apartment. I met the young family who moved in, and they adopted one of my cat's kittens later on. 

My son moved to St. Augustine his senior year of high school.  A difficult transition I'm sure, but he got his first car along with the situation.

The fishing pier was concrete. I think the building by the pier with boarded up windows was part of  St. Augustine Beach Town Hall.  A couple of blocks further north from there is the Anastasia State Park with lots of empty beach, sand dunes, and camping.  The entrance to the park was quite a bit further away however, so we would walk into the beach area from the sidewalks along A1A.

The rocks formed a sea wall.  Every few years someone would dredge the sand below the rocks and create a beach which could be used mainly at low tide.  The hotel must have contributed to that.  They also built a stairway going down to the water level.

We only evacuated for one hurricane, and that stairway was demolished during it.  The apartment stayed dry however, but waves did deposit sand in our driveway.

I loved watching the pelicans fly by.  I went swimming by myself a few times, but my upstairs neighbors were worried about me.  I stopped doing it eventually.  And most of my enjoyment was standing or sitting by the rocks looking out to sea.  After all, the end of the road was nobody's property.

I'll share this post with Sepia Saturday this week...and maybe find a connection to their suggested meme....or not.  THey let me list my blog posting along with many others down at the bottom of this page HERE>



Today's Quote:

Hope is the deep orientation of the human soul that can be held at the darkest times.  Vaclav Havel