A serendipitous turn down a back road in search of a historic boathouse (in Wilbur-by-the-Sea, a Florida town that no doubt, you’ve never heard of) led us to a very new set of trails on a recently completed land acquisition linking the Atlantic Ocean and the Halifax River: Ponce Preserve. Since we showed up AFTER climbing the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse (whew!) and walked the trails with only a timepiece and pacing to give us an idea of pace, we estimate about 2 miles on the 40 acre tract, many of the trails looking brand-new. On the dune side, we followed the outer loop over steep dunes covered in coastal scrub, passing a massive midden known as the Green Mound.

On the marsh side, the boardwalk appeared to be a good half-mile long (one way), zigzagging through salt marsh and mangrove stands out to the edge of the Halifax River, a perfect place to watch herons wing in at sunset. All in all, an unexpected find just a few minutes south of Daytona Beach: cross the Dunlawton Bridge at Port Orange, drive south on A1A to Wilbur-by-the-Sea, turn right at the brown Boathouse sign, and left at the boathouse itself onto Peninsula Drive to continue another few minutes south to the park, which has a parking area and restroom on the left. Once I verify the lengths and loops, I’ll add this to the main website.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 11th, 2007 at 9:50 pm and is filed under Central. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.