I decided to take the family on a little outdoors adventure this morning and took them to the Cradle Creek Preserve in Jacksonville Beach for a nice little hike. This is just a hop, skip, and a jump from our house, so it was easy to get to on a beautiful Sunday morning. The temperature was a cool, comfortable sixty degrees and sunny. Luckily, it's still a bit too cool for mosquitoes.

Cradle Creek Preserve is a preserve of land approximately 44 acres in size with a canopy of old-growth upland forests, saltwater marshes, bottomland swamp, and panoramic views of the creeks that feed the Intracoastal Waterway. The trail from the parking lot mixes boardwalks and crushed-shell trails. The trail includes one out-and-back trail to a scenic overlook and another that includes a loop and a canoe launch. The canoe launch follows feeder creeks that take you to Cradle Creek, which in turn takes you to the Intracoastal Waterway. At one point in the land's history, it was used to harvest red cedar timber and just prior to being preserved, it was nearly developed into a residential subdivision.

The trails are not especially long, but enough to get some good exercise and fantastic views. Today, we saw an eagle on one of the many bare tree trunks in the Intracoastal marsh. The kids enjoyed picking up some of the many leaves strewn across the trail to take home for tracing and coloring.

Various endangered species can be seen in and around the preserve, including American alligators, manatee, least tern, wood storks, and Eastern indigo snakes. Additionally, the trails include a variety of historical information signs that discuss the history of the preserve and the surrounding North Florida region. You can see a photo essay that takes you from the parking lot to the scenic overlook a picture at a time at the Jacksonville Beach Parks and Recreation page.