How long does it take to get to the Talbot Islands? GPS calculation predicts 2 hours and 40 minutes, though accounting for traffic and unpredictable conditions, you could arrive in 977 days. 

Part 1 – Big Talbot Island and the Ozzy Boomerang Effect

April 27, 2018 

As if by the cycle of the sun, the end of April brought the wanderlust bug. It happens yearly. Last year, as Google reminded me, we went to Saint Augustine after reading “Drummer Hoff” in search of canons at Fort Matanzas. This year, on the same day, we set off for barrier islands a couple of hours north of where we live. It was a spur of the moment trip and, due to a chaotic work schedule, there was very little time to plan. A multitude of previous experiences told us that during late-night traveling on the interstate we could always find a hotel room at the last minute. We had done this numerous times in the past – always successfully. 

On this particular day, we headed north towards Jacksonville, Florida to a couple of barrier islands called the Little and Big Talbot Island State Parks. We packed more efficiently than we ever had before – each of us packed everything we needed for the weekend into a backpack for each person. We packed books, fresh bread as a snack because that was the only edible thing in the house, and car activities for the kids, and we set off. 

Our destination was two and a half hours away. The plan was to drive on Friday evening to a Jacksonville hotel after Dan came home from work and on Saturday morning we would go to Big Talbot State Park – a nature preserve featuring a large preserve where one can hike, bird watch, and see an assortment of native plants. The biggest attraction at Big Talbot Island is the scenic shoreline called Boneyard Beach which features a multitude of giant fallen trees on the beach that I wanted to photograph. I was already prepared to watch the perilous playground that my children would make out of this scenery. 

On the road, I began searching for hotel rooms. The Google hotel search was coming up very sparse for our location. Oddly sparse. The feature that usually allows awkward introverts everywhere to book hotel rooms online without needing to talk to humans was utterly useless. Reluctantly, I started calling hotels, and the same conversation ensued over and over again – “Do you have any rooms available for tonight?” was answered with a brusque “No.” After the ninth such call, we stopped at a rest area to use the bathroom. By this point, we had been driving for two hours. The ten o’clock darkness was in full force and the area where we stopped wasn’t the most comforting, but I took both pajamaed kids to the bathroom with me regardless as there was no choice; Dan stayed in the car to call more hotels – by this point, we were well on our way on to the dodgy ones. 

The kids and I quickly walked into the bathroom and occupied the largest of the available stalls so that we could maneuver in the tiny room and take turns going to the bathroom, thinking and hoping that no one else would be here at this hour. As I tried to get everyone to pee, I heard footsteps coming into the bathroom and someone walked into the stall adjacent to us. I listened for every possible detail and could make out that this person walked into the stall, shut the door, but didn’t lock it.  I try not to sound panicked, as I hurry everyone along with their business and remind them to touch nothing. In reality, I am terrified.

At this point, I just know that the person on the other side of the flimsy wall is waiting to tear the metal handrail off of their stall, kick in our door with a fierce blow of their giant black combat boot emblazoned with razor blades, bludgeon me, kidnap my children, and drive far, far away. Internally, I am frantic as I try to hurry my people and not sound completely freaked out. We rush out of the stall. And on the way out, I look quickly to the stall enclosing this murderous perpetrator and see a little lady’s orthopedic sneakers turned sideways near the closed stall door, just waiting for us to leave so that she could use the larger stall. 

We get back into the car to the news that Dan called seven more hotels with no vacancies while we 

were (I was) being petrified by a little, old lady. We decide that we have to drive right back home. We laughed for at least thirty minutes about the absurdity of this situation. We turned on a Tumtum and Nutmeg audiobook and ate fresh bread at ten o’clock at night on our grand adventure to our own cozy beds. On the way home, we found out that we were going to Jacksonville the same night as Ozzy Osbourne was headlining the Welcome to Rockville music festival in Jacksonville. Chances are, the black combat boots that I was imagining weren’t that far away, they were just occupying themselves in an entirely different way…and likely without the razorblades.    

This day would become one of our favorite tales from our Family Adventures Compendium. 

Part 2 – Big Talbot Island at Long Last 

December 29, 2020

We finally made it to Big Talbot Island. It only took two years, eight months, and 2 days. Once again, it was very short notice (but this time with a hotel waiting for us). Thanks to a generous nudge from siblings who wanted us to celebrate the end of some major trickiness, we finally made it. It was worth the wait. 

After a short walk under a canopy of giant oaks, a path brought us to a deserted beach with a graveyard of gigantic sand-wind-water-swept toppled trees on the banks of the Nassau Sound. Archaeologists have found fossilized mammoth bones in this very location, so looking like a burial ground isn’t farfetched. These trees, which toppled from the coast a couple hundred years ago, now protect the current coastline from erosion by blocking the elements. The wood is bleached and smoothed by years of battering. They are solid beyond measure. It’s as if the earth lifted them out of the ground and stripped them to their most necessary elements, removed any superfluous matter, and placed them exactly where they needed to be. 

I was in awe. As if a part of a dystopian landscape in a time and place unknown, these giants created a different world for each of us. Someone was in search of an elfin throne. Another climbed to the highest peaks and stripped anything that was a hindrance to their efforts – shoes be damned. I balanced on the trunks with an appreciation for every little step, stumble, and instability of being here in this surrealist dream, knowing full-well that had we made it here on our first attempt, I would have been impressed, but I would never have been quite so grateful. 

A walk further down the beach brought us to Black Rock Beach. As we walked, the driftwood became more and more sparse and the frequency and size of black rocks beneath our feet grew. The rocks appeared to be black lava rocks, but are actually soil formations that formed during the last ice age. Only four percent of the world boasts such an unusual topographical feature. The rocks are partially soft and slippery in some areas as if walking atop mud and then when you least expect it, hard and stable in others. The terrain is seemingly unpredictable. Slowly and semi-surely we climbed to the top of soil formations.

To the right of us, down the tottering black rocks, was the graveyard of fallen giants protecting their kin, to the left, where we were headed, an expanse of erect oak remnants still standing in the center of the beach like an ancient village with its own tumultuous past. Every part of this was beautifully strengthened by weathering unpredictable circumstances, both the trees and the people climbing them. 

I hope that the little lady in the adjacent stall, with her own weathered past, arrived safely at her destination. I hope she saw something amazing in the process. Perhaps we even crossed paths on this beach that is devoid of time; I did see a pair of orthopedic sneakers in the distance.