Respite in Florida

It has been an unusually cold winter in Highlands, as this blog has pointed out, and last week we decided it was time for a respite.  So we decided to escape for a few days to Fernandina Beach, Florida, on Amelia Island.  We had never been there before so it was fun exploring the historic district, eating fresh seafood, and enjoying some more temperate running.  While we were gone, the latest winter storm, Leon, extended its cold and icy grip far into the south, snarling traffic in Atlanta to the extent that I-285 became a parking lot.  We saw horror stories on Facebook of friends forced to spend the night in a Home Depot, and there were several local fender-benders.  We were fortunate to have missed the snow and ice by one day - our house during our absence looked like this (photo taken by our neighbor Dori):

Dori reported that they were enjoying sledding on our road, which would have made transportation a little difficult and would have brought my running program to a stand-still (or its opposite, a fall-down).  Still, I have to confess that we were a little envious missing the Clear Creek Winter Wonderland and putting the sled into operation again.

Fernandina Beach was chiller than expected (and the locals said it was unusually cold, even for January), but I had not realized how much I had become acclimated to the colder temperatures this winter.  My first morning found me doing a three-miler along the beach road in 36-degree temperatures, and it felt absolutely balmy!  My warmest day was Friday - temperatures well into the 50s - through a lovely, long and curving road to Fort Clinch, on the northern end of the island:

The three-mile road was intersected by cycling and hiking trails, and in addition to the snowy egrets I had seen the previous day I saw this great egret (not my photo, but exactly like this) during my run.

But during the summer months I would have been a little nervous departing from the main road.  This sign was prominently displayed all along the road and along the nearby Egans Creek Greenway:

No worries.  I'd sooner encounter a Highlands bear than a gator of any size.  And what about those Burmese pythons that are overrunning the state, I asked our desk clerk?  I'm not from around here.

"Oh, I killed one of those in my back yard last week."