We have Anastasia State Park, which is located on Anastasia Island. It is right across the bridge from downtown St. Augustine and adjacent to the St. Augustine lighthouse. They have extensive camping there, both tent camping and RVs. One of the great attractions about it is that many of the campsites are right on the ocean. They also have a three mile stretch of beach that is the only way you can get in and start walking or riding a bike. You can camp there and you can really get a deserted island kind of experience by walking from your campsite along the deserted beach. It's very beautiful on its own. We also have two other state parks and a federal installation here, the Matanzas National Estuarine Research Preserve. It's great for camping as well and it has sites on the beach as well as on a fresh water lake. It is really unusual to have this close to the ocean. There are numerous private camp grounds with facilities for RVs right on the beaches as well as and some of the more remote areas of county. St. Augustine is a major RV destination. One of the good things about all of these destinations for camping is most of them operate with nature tour operations. Anastasia has numerous tours that go out everyday where you experience that environment. There are concession areas, they will teach you how to wind surf, they have kayaking in the dark and they have listening devices onboard of each kayak where you can hear all the strange flips, plops, squeals and squalls that come out of the swamp at night. There is a tour guide that will explain to you what you're hearing. There are also a number of guided kayak tours that go both into the backwaters as well as the beaches. There are full weeks of excursions that you can take, hiking, camping, kayaking and canoeing each one of them lead by an expert. They have great things for the kids; they have a butterfly release that you can go and see thousands of butterflies released. They have some of the country's leading bird watchers, who come and give lectures and have a major photography contest here that's judged by the editors of an outdoor photography magazine. That takes place in May of each year. Also for people who are interested in nature, there is the alligator park; there is an event that takes place there every April through June. Thousands of all these unusual beautiful and large coastal birds come in and build their nests in April and hatch their eggs and teach the young ones to fly and then leave by the end of June. The birds exhibit little or no fear of humans and there is a bird walk that goes through the rookery and in fact you can go right up and get these wonderful photographs of birds on their nests. The alligators in the park gather together under each tree and anticipate an egg or a young bird or an old bird to fall out of the tree. It will get a little snack there, but the birds don't mind because with the alligator's presence there, it discourages other predators like raccoons or snakes. So the birds are somehow able to communicate to other birds and this is a great place to spend that period of their life. So every year there are more and more birds that come there and it is just a great experience. Young and old people like to walk through the bird walk and see all the things that are going on and watch the birds.
