FORT CLINCH: Fort Clinch State Park

Fort Clinch State Park offers spectacular north Florida ocean views and a Civil War era fort. Page 3.

This would be a great beach, even if it didn't have the jetty, pier and birds.

It's a wide flat hard beach that is good for walking and jogging. A wide area of dunes shelters the beach from the rest of the park and adds additional vistas to the view. Although we haven't yet visited Fort Clinch in the summer, my guess that this beach is rarely crowded, even in the warmer months.

There is an entrance fee for the park of course, and the locals have access to many miles of wide open free access beach south of the park. On the cold winter day of our visit we saw only a dozen or so people over the entire afternoon.

As mentioned above, Fort Clinch overlooks an inlet. The beach circles from the Atlantic side, along the Cumberland Sound inlet, around to the estuaries on the western side of the fort. This provides a nice variety of scenes for beach walkers and offers different settings for your beach chair.

On our next trip to Fort Clinch State Park we'll explore the estuary end of the park along the trails provided that purpose.