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May 27 - Memorial Day Weekend

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
Enjoying the Jazz Festival 
Scenes from the Memorial Day RiverFest  
The views from our chairs by the spring 
One activity they had was the rubber duck race in the spring run. We bought four ducks, but ours didn't win! 

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