St. Augustine Beach

Today I went to St. Augustine Beach. I'd been to St. Augustine before, but never to the beach. It was really nice. It took a couple hours to get there from Gainesville. The drive didn't seem that long because I enjoy driving through little towns. I had never heard of most of the places we drove through. For example, Spuds, Francis, Rochelle, and Elkton. There was a Blue Crab Festival in Palatka that seemed interesting, but I was really itching to get to the beach, so we didn't stop.

It was really windy when we arrived at the beach, and the waves looked pretty big. I was wondering if there were any rip current warnings as there had been at home this weekend. We found a spot on the sand to put our stuff down and I went to dip my toes in the ocean to test it out. It was cold. I don't deal well with cold. I wasn't sure how much I was actually going to go in the water. After a few minutes we decided to go all the way in. The lifeguard stand had a red and yellow flag on it, so I decided to go ask the lifeguard what it meant in case there were rip currents. He said it just meant a lifeguard was on duty. That made me feel more comfortable about the waves.

The waves were big and great for bodysurfing. There was one wave that carried me all the way to the shore and then pushed me under the water. That was pretty intense. I would've been really scared if I didn't know I was in shallow water. As it started getting windier, I got colder and decided to go back on the sand. Laying out there was exceedingly relaxing. There's a pier at the beach, so we decided to walk over and check it out. Next to the pier are warning flags and explanations for what they mean. It turns out that there was actually a rip current warning. Granted, the flag wasn't the same as the one at the lifeguard stand, but as a lifeguard he could've told us about the warnings.

All in all it was a fun time, and I'd highly recommend St. Augustine Beach.