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Great Heron LbNA #20005 (ARCHIVED)

Owner:Jeff McFarland
Plant date:Jan 14, 2006
Location:
City:Jacksonville/St. Augustine
County:St. Johns
State:Florida
Boxes:1
Found by: Krazy Kiwis
Last found:Jul 13, 2008
Status:FFFFFOFFFFFFFm
Last edited:Jan 14, 2006
UPDATE JULY 2010: The letterbox has gone missing. The stump in which it was hidden is no longer a good hiding place, so I'm assuming the box was exposed and someone threw it out. If you found the box and removed it, please let me know because I would like to retrieve the hand-carved heron stamp and the logbook.

*****

This letterbox is at Guana River State Park, a portion of which has been renamed to something so long it is nearly impossible to remember (Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve).

If you haven’t been to GTMNERR, head south on A1A from Jacksonville, or north on A1A from St. Augustine. There are four entrances to the park (North Beach, Middle Beach, South Beach and the GTMNERR). You seek GTMNERR. If you are driving south, it is the fourth entrance, not counting the Six Mile boat landing. You’ll see signs saying Guana is 8 or so miles from JTB. That’s 8 miles to the North Beach entrance. It is probably twice that long to get to the southernmost entrance to the GTMNERR. If you are driving north from St. Augustine, it is the first entrance, just after the Gate station on the left.

There is a small charge to enter the park. If you would like to park your car close to the trailhead, the entry fee is $3.00 via an automatic changer machine that hasn’t worked very well when I’ve tried it. If you want to park outside the gate and enter as a pedestrian or on your bike, you can do so for $1.00. It will add about half a mile to your search for the letterbox. (Careful where you park your car outside the gate...there are unmarked(!) no-parking zones that will get you ticketed...trust me on this).

From the trailhead (bathrooms and trail maps), this trip is about 0.8 miles. You will be following the yellow trail through a collection of hardwoods and Florida shrubs. The trail begins rather sandy, but changes to packed dirt and fallen leaves.

On the way to the letterbox you will pass a little observation platform giving a view of a wet prairie area, where birds often feed, particularly in the morning and evening. You are likely to see White Ibises, Wood Storks, Great Egrets, Great Blue Herons, and Great White Herons, among other species. You can distinguish a Great White Heron from a Great Egret by looking at the legs. The Great White Heron has greenish or dull yellow legs. The Great Egret has jet black legs.

Follow the yellow trail until you see a green bench on the left side of the trail. This is also an intersection marked as #7. Be careful to continue on the yellow trail at this point, which involves taking a right. If you stay straight, you’ll be switching to the blue trail…it doesn’t make much sense, but that’s the way it is.

After your turn (but not immediately after your turn), keep your eyes on the left side of the trail. You are looking for a small tree that has a hollowed-out trunk no more than a semicircle at this point. It really is just a husk of a tree. Shortly after finding that mark, you’ll see a very large Live Oak tree on the right side, very near the trail.

Across the trail from the big Live Oak is a downed large pine tree, with its root system now perpendicular to the ground. Behind this downed pine is a sizeable stump. Behind the stump is another downed tree – this one smaller than the downed pine, and it was not a pine (I have not been able to identify it but another LBer suggests it is a sweetgum). From the upturned root system of the downed non-pine, there is another stump about 15 paces away, roughly in the direction of the trunk of the downed non-pine. That’s where you want to look. The area you are searching is not really what you’d call a clearing, but the undergrowth is not dense.

I placed the Great Heron letterbox during January, and until I have the chance to get out and see it in the summer, I won’t know whether to warn you about whether it gets swampy. It has some potential to be a little mushy, but not so much as to make the letterbox inaccessible.

Please stamp my book (or write a note) and place the contents back where you found them. Please make sure it remains out of sight by covering it with leaves or something appropriate (and non-destructive to the surroundings). If anything is missing (book, heron stamp or pen/pencil), please e-mail me at jeffmcfarland66@yahoo.com. Good luck, and I hope to find your letterboxes too.