Like a lot of people, I had last Monday off. So did my sister. It's rare that my sister and I have the same days off; she usually works weekends and I work Monday through Friday. One of the things that we enjoy doing is hiking. The great thing is that there are so many places to hike in Florida and they're free and open to the public. We generally try to find places to hike that we haven't been before.
So I told my sister on Sunday that we were going on an adventure. I didn't tell her where we were going, only that she needed to dress comfortably and bring water. Our destination was the Pumpkin Hill Preserve and Yellow Bluff Fort located on the northside of Jacksonville. On our way, we discovered another park just north of Pumpkin Hill Preserve, Betz-Tiger Point Preserve. Pumpkin Hill Preserve was one of the fifty things that I wanted to do for my birthday in September.
Betz-Tiger Point Preserve, http://www.coj.net/Departments/Recreation-and-Community-Services/Waterfront-Management-and-Programming/Preservation-Project/Betz-Tiger-Point-Preserve.aspx, is located at 12100 Pumpkin Hill Road. It's a 548 acre park with 3 miles of hiking trails, surrounded by salt marshes.
Pumpkin Hill Preserve, http://www.floridastateparks.org/pumpkinhill/default.cfm is one of the largest contiguous areas of coastal uplands in Duval County, encompassing 4,000 acres. The park borders tidal marshlands. There are five trails, ranging in length from 0.75 miles to 3.7 miles.
Yellow Bluff Fort, http://www.floridastateparks.org/yellowbluff/default.cfm, is located on New Berlin Road. It was never actually a fort. It was an earthen fortification built by the Confederacy in 1862 to prevent the Union gun boats from attacking Jacksonville. The park is 1.3 acres.
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