Things to Do in Jacksonville in December

The St. Johns is one of the few rivers in North America that flows north, a fact locals mention with obvious satisfaction, and in December the river is at its most photogenic: the light sits low over the water from mid-afternoon, the egrets and herons work the shallows without the summer's haze, and manatees drift into the warmer spring runs off the main channel. A kayak or stand-up paddleboard puts you at water level where you can hear the mullet jump and smell the salt-and-mud tidal edge, while a guided boat tour from the downtown docks covers more ground, the old riverside estates, the bridges, the working port, without requiring you to paddle back into a headwind. The water temperature in December hovers around 17°C (62°F), cool enough to respect but not cold enough to be dangerous if you dress sensibly.

These are the two neighborhoods that make Jacksonville residents defensive when outsiders dismiss the city as sprawl-and-highway. Riverside and Avondale sit just west of downtown: the streets canopy over in Spanish moss, the 1920s bungalows have deep porches, and Five Points, the commercial node at the center, smells of coffee and old brick on a cool morning. In December the light through the bare oaks hits the facades at a low angle all day, which is good for photography. Springfield, a few kilometres northeast, is older and rawer, the Victorian homes are larger and grander but many are still mid-restoration, which gives the neighbourhood a before-and-after quality that Riverside no longer has. A bike covers the distance between them in about 20 minutes on mostly flat roads. Temperatures in December mean you can stop and look at things without sweating through your shirt.

The Timucuan Preserve covers roughly 18,000 hectares (46,000 acres) of salt marsh, maritime forest, and tidal creek on Jacksonville's northeast edge, and December is the one month when all of it becomes accessible without suffering. The no-see-ums and mosquitoes that make summer hiking here a kind of penance are gone. The temperature in the forest trails stays around 12°C (54°F) in the morning, rising to a comfortable 18°C (64°F) by afternoon. Birding is exceptional, painted buntings, warblers, and wintering ducks crowd the creek edges. The Fort Caroline National Memorial, tucked into the preserve, marks the site of a French Huguenot colony from 1564, one of the earliest European settlements in North America, predating the English colonies by decades. The actual location of the original fort is still disputed by historians, which somehow makes it more honest. Kingsley Plantation on Fort George Island, reached by ferry from the Mayport area, is the oldest standing plantation house in Florida. In December the interpretive exhibits are sobering and the grounds are largely empty.

The Beaches, Jacksonville Beach, Neptune Beach, and Atlantic Beach, sit roughly 40 km (25 miles) east of downtown on the Atlantic coast, and in December they are as close to deserted as a Florida beach ever gets. The sand is pale and wide, the Atlantic wind has a real bite to it, and the light on an overcast December morning turns the water the colour of pewter. This is not swimming weather for most people, the water temperature is around 16°C (61°F) and the wind chill can make the exposed strand feel considerably colder. But for walking, beachcombing, and watching brown pelicans work the surf line, it is excellent. Continuing south to Ponte Vedra Beach, the coastline shifts: the development thins, the dunes rise, and the sense of isolation increases even though the TPC Sawgrass golf complex is just behind them.

TPC Sawgrass is home to THE PLAYERS Championship in March, which means December is when serious golfers fly in to play it without the tournament's noise and pricing pressure. The Stadium Course's island green at the 17th is exactly as nerve-wracking in person as it looks on television, the carry over water is only about 100 metres (110 yards) but the wind off the Intracoastal Waterway makes club selection feel like a gamble every single time. The Ponte Vedra corridor has multiple championship-calibre courses clustered within a short drive of each other, and the December weather, clear skies, temperatures around 15, 19°C (59, 66°F) in the afternoon, low humidity, is close to good for a full round. The snowbird population that dominates January and February tee sheets hasn't fully arrived yet in early December, which matters.

EverBank Stadium, still called TIAA Bank Field by a certain generation of Jacksonville residents, sits on the north bank of the St. Johns River, and on game days it transforms the normally quiet downtown into something almost unrecognizable. The tailgating culture starts hours before kickoff: the smell of grilled meat drifts across the parking lots and the roar of the crowd arriving on the Northbank Riverwalk has its own texture, something between a festival and an argument. The Jaguars have a complicated relationship with winning, and the December standings tend to determine whether the atmosphere in the stadium is charged with playoff hope or the particular gallows humour of a fanbase that has seen things. Either way, the noise, the river visible beyond the open end of the stands, the crowd's colour and volume, it is a genuine Jacksonville cultural event. December typically offers two or three home games.