Lamb's Yacht Center
There were all kinds of
festivals going on in Jacksonville this weekend...celebrating the beginning
of summer and honoring our veterans. Saturday we drove down to Paltaka to check
out the Blue Crab Festival. We spent several days in Palatka when we went up
the St. John's River and again on our way north three weeks ago. They have a
nice waterfront park and historic downtown area. Palatka is a small town, but
this festival brings out thousands of people. There were arts and craft booths,
educational booths, carnival rides and games, entertainment and tons of
seafood. It was the warmest day of the weekend, but we still enjoyed the
festival and having lunch in the shade by the river.
On Sunday we went downtown to
the Jacksonville Jazz Festival. It started on Friday night and consisted of
three stages with entertainment. We found a shady spot and enjoyed the music
for a couple of hours. It was the last day of the festival and the crowd seemed
a little small, but I'm sure it was packed Friday and Saturday night.
Our last weekend festival was
the best, it was the Memorial Day RiverFest in Green Cove Springs. We also
stopped at this beautiful little town while we were exploring the St. John's
River. It's a quaint community with an amazing riverfront park with a gigantic
playground, a spring feed pool, huge shade trees and lots of green grassy
spots to spread out and have a picnic. It looked like we had stepped back in
time when we arrived at this festival…red, white and blue banners flying
everywhere, a huge American flag greeting people to the park, kids running
around playing chase, swimming and splashing in the spring and adults listening
to the music and visiting with each other. It looked like a scene from a Norman
Rockwell painting. There were lots of booths selling crafts, food and sweets,
plus tons of things for the kids to do, and
continuous entertainment under the gazebo. An all American Memorial Day
celebration. We found a great spot along the spring run to set up our chairs
and relax. From there we could hear the music and people watch. We were having
a wonderful afternoon until a thunderstorm rolled in with tornado warnings and
sent everyone home. It didn’t look like it was going to last long, but we
decided to come home. I hope they were able to enjoy the fireworks that were
planned later in the evening.
We had a great weekend and it
was nice to have a break from boat projects. The thing that amazed us the most
about these festivals was the fact they were all free. No charge to come out
and enjoy the day with your family and friends.
Scenes from the Blue Crab Festival
No comments:
Post a Comment