A few years ago, I participated in something called the Northeast Florida Regional Leadership Academy, a program sponsored by an organization called the Northeast Florida Regional Council, an artifact of a time when Florida was actually a leader in managed development.

Anyway, once a month the class would attend a seminar hosted in one of the seven counties making up the region. I enjoyed it, I learned a lot. I think there should be more efforts like that, offered to more people, but whatever.

Anyway, the session in Flagler County, the one just south of me here in St Johns County, was held at Princess Place, which I'd never even heard of before. It's basically an Adirondack lodge built in 1887 on Pellicer Creek. Rich people, ya know?

I loved the place and figured Mitzi would enjoy seeing it. When we drove down to Kennedy Space Center earlier this month, I was reminded of it again as we passed it headed south on I-95. We have a friend who lives in St. Augustine Beach who we don't see often enough, and I mentioned we should make plans to pick her up and visit Princess Place.

So that's what we did last Saturday. Picked up Mary, had a nice lunch and headed south. It's not that far from here, it was only 25 minutes from where we had lunch. The lodge is only open for tours on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and there's only one tour at 2:00PM, so we timed everything around that. We got there early enough to walk around the place a bit before the tour started.

Enjoyed the tour, drove a little around the preserve where they now have some cabins you can rent. Headed back up to St. Augustine Beach and had ice cream at some new place. One of those fancy places that doesn't have many flavors you expect, but a lot of weird ones. The chocolate brownie was very good.

It was at the tail end of that weather pattern that delivered severe thunderstorms with alarming regularity, and we managed to get everything done before one started. A very pleasant day, altogether.

Cumberland Island has more of that sort of thing if you're interested in how the rich vacationed or wintered in the southeast in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But Princess Place is a little gem anyway.

Pics are here.