I would never have known about Ponce Inlet

Ponce Inlet, FL

As many of you know, I have spent a bit of my personal time over the past, oh, 43 years or so, volunteering in various roles as a political activist. One of the absolute best things about being engaged in politics is the connection with people you meet through politics. The political friendships are some of the most intense ones that I have because they are often forged working together on one campaign or another usually under tense, sleep deprived conditions. And then sometimes you end up working against each other on a campaign for leadership or during a candidate nomination meeting. Sometimes the friendships cross party lines or ideology, and those are most interesting.

Through my political roles I was able to travel the country and get to know people from every region in Canada, and I have spent time visiting with many of them as I’ve travelled on my NFANA Tour. Today, was one of those days. And today I got to Ponce Inlet as a result of meeting up with these friends.

I could have headed to Ponce Inlet via Interstate 95 but I decided to leave in lots of time and take Highway A1A and wind my way through the beach communities all the way down. It’s amazing how many there are, and how many condos and motels and huge houses, and little cottages, and restaurants and shops there are all along the coast.

Ponce Inlet (named after Ponce de Leon of course) is a community about an hour south of St. Augustine, on the southern tip of one of the sandbar islands that are connected by Highway A1A which runs along the coast. One neat thing about this community though, is that A1A doesn’t connect with the next island down the chain and so the road dead ends in Ponce Inlet. So the traffic and craziness of some of the other islands (i.e. Daytona Beach, just to the north) has left Ponce Inlet a much quieter and serene place.

And the other neat thing about Ponce Inlet is that there is a lighthouse there! I know you’re not surprised to learn I’ve discovered another one. This is a really pretty one, and the not-for-profit organization who looked after restoring and opening this lighthouse to the public had done a great job or preserving more out building that others. The Ponce Inlet Lighthouse is the tallest lighthouse in Florida and second only to Cape Hatteras in North Carolina as the tallest marsonry lighthouse in the country. Given that I had climbed the St. Augustine lighthouse yesterday I took a pass on doing the 203 steps to the top of this 175 foot tower.

After taking a few pictures at the lighthouse, I headed back up the highway to meet up with my friends. I got to know Janelle in an incredibly tense time, working in Ottawa on the 2000 campaign. We were both directors in the war room and we spent many late nights and early mornings there sometimes crying on each others shoulders and sometimes laughing so hard we couldn’t catch our breath.

During that election and subsequently on various other projects I also got to know former Senator (and former Speaker of the Senate) Noel Kinsella from New Brunswick. Janelle and I see each other when we can in Ottawa, but I hadn’t seen Noel for a very long time and I was thrilled that with Janelle’s help we were able to reconnect today. And I got to meet Noel’s lovely wife Ann today as well. It seems most of the residents of the condo complex in which they have a place are also from New Brunswick and I was lucky enough to meet a few of them today as we chatted at the pool for a while.

We then headed out to one of Janelle’s favourite restaurants, called DJ’s Deck for a lunch of seafood served on the dock where the fishing fleet comes in to unload their catch. Can’t get a lot fresher than that. Their cocoanut shrimp were excellent and although we were glad of the umbrella over our table because it rained off and on a bit, it was also sunny for the most part. As you can imagine, we never ran out of things to talk about. We’re all watching the U.S. Election with interest as well as what’s going on politically in Canada.

We saved room for some ice cream back at Ann and Noel’s condo and then I was on my way back home. Such a lovely day, and I’m so thankful to Janelle for getting us all together.