November 11 - 23, 2019: St. Augustine, Florida
Next in our adventures was to drive through Georgia and into Florida. We found some really cool stuff that we wanted to do along the coast of Georgia, but had a reservation at a campground for that same day, so we may visit Georgia again when we drive out of Florida in April 2020.
As you can see we are staying in the low lands near the coast, encountering a lot of marsh lands, bridges, and....golf carts are now a common occurrence. And...it is warm - 80f! Yippee!
We stayed for 12 nights in St. Augustine and stayed at two different campgrounds because we were unable to get the same campground/spot for tall 12 nights.
We spent 11 nights in Favre-Dykes State Park (site 11) which was South of St. Augustine. When we checked in I asked the Ranger about ticks. I had heard there were some in the campground and wanted to see how he responded. He said "yes, there are a lot of ticks and there are also raccoons." Since there is Pellicer Creek running through the campground, I also asked about gators and he said "people hunt alligators so we do have them. We found a moccasin snake on site #14, and there are cottonmouth snakes in the campground." He said to kayak and canoe was okay, but not paddleboard. I thought...oh my...welcome to Florida and what have we gotten ourselves into : )
However, this turned out to be a great campground! It is about 2 miles tucked off the road and very quiet. I loved the meandering sand road with trees and palms that took you back into the campground. There are 30 campsites, so it is small. We had water and power to each site and a pretty nice bath and shower house. One of the cool things was we had daily sightings of either raccoons around our trailer, wild turkeys on the roads, and even a few deer. I just loved the trees, palms and Spanish Moss hanging from the trees!
We spent 1 night at Anastasia State Park (site 40) which is right in St. Augustine. These sites had water, power and a bath and shower house also. I love the name of our loop, Shark Eye.
Notice the dump station. This is the best dump station we have seen in all of the US or Canada. The reasons are: First, there are 3 separate spots for RV's to dump; and second, notice the square where the septic hose goes? It had edges on 3 sides, is open on the 4th side, and is sloped down towards the drain. Sometimes, a dump station will be elevated and it makes it really difficult to get everything out of the trailer and septic hose.
From Anastasia we then moved back to Favre-Dykes into site 29 for the remainder of our stay.
During our time in St. Augustine, we made sure that we had a lot of down time. We had spent the last 8 days going non stop, so...we needed to get caught up on general items with the trailer and computer work. It worked out good because the temperatures at the beginning of our stay were in the high 50's low 60's and it rained a few days, so that gave us a good excuse to hunker down in the trailer and get caught up.
However, we have two sets of friends in the area, so...we made sure that we visited with them!
Our friends Rob and Janine live in Nocatee, so we met them a few times for dinner and to listen to music. I worked with Rob in the past and we've stopped by a few times over the years to visit with them. One of the evenings Rob's friends William and Dave joined us to listen to music. As you can see we had a silly good time. It was great hanging out with them again and catching up! THANKS ROB AND JANINE!!!
We also got together with our friends Ron and Sandi who live in Palm Coast. Ron was a former neighbor and in the past when have been in the area, we always made sure to stop by and visit with them also.
We had a great time golfing at Grand Haven and enjoyed dinner with them. THANK YOU RON AND SANDI !!!
We hung out in St. Augustine a few times wandering the streets, enjoying a cup of coffee and people watching.
St. Augustine has a fascinating history and was first discovered by Ponce de Leon in 1521. It was then founded in 1565 by Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, and it is the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement within the borders of the continental United States.
Below are random pictures of the main downtown area:
We visited the San Sabastian Winery in downtown St. Augustine because they had a free tour and tasting. So...Craig enjoyed the history and tour and then patiently waited while I did some tasting. They had a buy one case get one free and you know how value oriented we are, so...we ended up with two...yes...2...cases of wine! Holy cow, since Craig does not drink, I have a lot of wine to drink or give as Thank You's to our friends along the way!
These are some random pictures from around the area. Love the old paddle boat that is a car wash!
One day while driving around, we saw a business called Art n' Motion. They had some incredible cars in the window so after checking out their hours, we stopped by another day. We spoke with one of the owners Justin Felker and got some great history on the cars. They buy cars, restore, and sell or consign cars.
Check out the Toyota Land Cruiser...it has 642 miles on it! NICE!
The first real nice day that we had, we went golfing at Cypress Knoll Golf and Country Club. We played 18 and it was a gorgeous day!
A couple of things to note:
- Notice how the houses have screens over the back of their houses? This is for bugs and there is usually a swimming pool and hot tub in the enclosure.
- We had hoped to see some alligators on the golf course, unfortunately, we only saw the resident fake gator ; )
- Loved the cart paths through the forest or palms and trees!
One day we toured Castillo de San Marcos which is in downtown St. Augustine and right on the water. What a great Fort. The Castillo de San Marcos has very distinct and unique architecture and detail. It is made out of Coquina (shells and sand) and is 324 years old and...still in great condition!
We were able to see them fire a cannon and below is more information:
There is a moat around the castillo and to enter the castillo , you had to go through two drawbridges.
Yes, this is a real person lying down on the bed. This is the infinity quarters.
Craig is being silly with the cannons...: )
They also have volunteers come out a couple of times a year to help scrub the moss off the walls, this helps to keep the catsillo in good condition.
We had a really good time in St. Augustine and enjoyed catching up with Rob and Jeanine and Ron and Sandi. St. Augustine is a neat little town with so much history and all of the coastal towns around it are awesome. Again...we needed more time to explore but we enjoyed the down time!