April 14 - Heading to Jacksonville Beach
We started our morning with a very good breakfast at the Residence Inn Charleston Summerville. The food was fresh and hot with lots of options. I had eggs with chicken sausage and andouille. DH had hot oatmeal. We decided we wanted to get to Florida as soon as possible so we skipped our plans to check out Charleston and hit the road.
Around lunch time I started to look for a place to stop for a picnic lunch. I discovered the Harris Neck Wildlife Refuge in Savannah. This is a former airforce base from WWII that was allowed to "return to nature". It was so cool to see how quickly nature has taken back the landing strip, etc.
What was the most cool though was the wildlife we saw. There was a large slimy pond with many alligators swimming around.
A Momma gator was on the edge surrounded by many of her babies. We could see them learning how to swim and hear them chirping. It was tough to get a good picture, but here is my edited one with momma circled in red and some of her babies in blue.
We ate our sandwiches in a picnic area and then drove through the rest of the wildlife refuge admiring the flora and fauna before we continued our drive to Florida.
We arrived in Florida, checked into the Towneplace Suites Jacksonville East, and then went to check out Jacksonville Beach. It was another perfect weather day.
We walked the beach for a bit and then headed to Salt Life Food Shack Jacksonville Beach for dinner, another place I chose through TripAdvisor. We decided to share the Shrimp & Chorizo nachos: Grilled shrimp and chorizo topped with corn, black beans, jack and cheddar cheese, pico and finished with a cilantro lime cream drizzle.
This was a huge portion and absolutely delicious! It had a lot of baby shrimp and plenty of chorizo and other toppings.
Since we knew this appetizer was pretty large, we decided to share the Tropical Yardbird (Wood-grilled chicken topped with grilled pineapple and provolone. Drizzled with maple-soy glaze and honey mustard and served with lettuce and tomato) as our main entrée.
This was also excellent. The chicken was juicy and very flavorful especially with the pineapple and maple-soy glaze. The french fries were also crisp and nicely seasoned. Not only was the food exceptional, the service was also excellent. We will definitely eat here again.
We decided to walk the Jacksonville Beach area after our meal to get our steps and then went on a search for dessert. One of the cost saving measures I did before our trip was download the Upside app. This is a cash back app that mostly gives cash back on gas but also has some restaurants included as well. Sometimes during the trip when we couldn't decide where to eat we'd check the app and go somewhere that offered cash back. We checked the app for a dessert suggestion and found Cookies & Creme Jax Beach. This was a little window area off the side of a Circle-K. They served ice cream sandwiches made with your choice of cookie, ice cream, and topping. We asked if we could get two different cookies in each of our sandwiches.
My DH got the James Brown: triple chocolate brownie ice cream between a Brownie Batter cookie and a Reeses PB cookie with peanut butter sauce.
I got the Bobby Brown: chocolate peanut butter oreo with the same two cookies and peanut butter sauce.
These were very tasty and a fun way to have dessert. After dessert we headed back to the Towneplace Suites Jacksonville East for our one night stay.
Up next: Off to St. Augustine for our first non-Marriott stay.
