Amelia Island, FL

September, 2024

Our family needed some fresh ocean breezes and beach therapy, so we loaded up and traveled to Amelia Island, FL. This had been on our bucket list for quite a while and we were all excited to get there. 🥳

Before we checked into the hotel, we took a bit of a walk on the beach. The waves were pretty intense, so we didn’t get much swimming in just then, but we had a great time looking for shark teeth and shells. 🐚

After we grabbed a quick lunch, we drove over to Fort Clinch State Park. It was so cool! It’s a US sea-coast fortification and construction was started in 1847, but halted during the Civil War when it was only 2/3 complete. In March of 1862 construction began again after the fort changed from Confederate to Union hands. It was abandoned in 1869 and was still not complete. In 1898 it was occupied again due to the Spanish-American War, it was fortified, but again abandoned a year later. In 1935, it became a state park and was restored by the Civilian Conservation Corps under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. We definitely love learning about history and thoroughly enjoyed exploring the fort. 🤩

The kids were really interested in learning about the moat, drawbridge, and fortifications protecting Fort Clinch. Touring the barracks, bakeries, officer’s quarters was very fun and interesting. Don’t ask me why, but both of the kids were pretty fascinated with the privies, lol. 🚽

We loved wandering around, going through the tunnels, and going up on the top of the fort walls. The stairway up was really neat to take. It was definitely on the narrow and steep side! The cannons were pretty cool, but the view was absolutely amazing! 😍

After we finished with our history lesson, we went to do some serious shark tooth hunting. The water was brackish near the fort because of the St. Mary’s River going into the Cumberland Sound and it was also pretty rough. We didn’t let that deter us, though. We were on a mission! 😉 All of us found some treasures. Shells, shark teeth, and stingray teeth, oh my! 😅

We made our way back to our hotel. We stayed at Amelia on the Beach. I definitely recommend! It was clean, comfy, and just across the road from the beach and a really good seafood restaurant. Sliders Bar & Grill was a great choice for dinner! 🤤

We started the morning with a sunrise on the beach. It was absolutely gorgeous and worth getting up verrrrry early to see. 🌅

After breakfast & checkout, we spent the day on the beach and found more shark-teeth and shells. It was a beautiful day–warm and sunny. Perfect to soak our feet and have some salt-water therapy. 🌊

We topped off the trip with a visit to the Amelia Island Lighthouse. We love Amelia Island. There’s really something for everyone. It’s a nice place with good restaurants, a beautiful beach, and lots of activities for families to enjoy. 😎

We hope you are enjoying our travels! We’d love to welcome you to subscribe to our email list, Facebook, & YouTube channel. You can also share it with your friends, if you’d like. We added some videos on our YouTube channel to go along with the post: https://www.youtube.com/@TravelingwiththeTrapps

Thanks so much and stay tuned for more Traveling with the Trapps! 😀

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