Here we are, on the road: We’re in St. Augustine, Florida

Mother’s Day 2010 Lorraine’s report

I would like to wish a very Happy Mother’s Day to all our families and friends who are mothers. I think being a mother is probably the most important job in the entire world, bar none.

Last Sunday, we were still in Mexico Beach, Florida. The day was dark, humid, hot, gray and windy. We decided to take a drive south; we ended up going to St. George’s Island.

St. George’s Island was hit by hurricane Kate in 1985; therefore we saw many gorgeous newly rebuilt homes. A few of the homes were occupied, but most of the homes were empty or had for sale signs out front in the yard. We enjoyed our drive over to the island.

Monday morning we loaded up the rig and headed east. We spent the night in Lake City, Florida at the Inn & Out RV Park.

Tuesday we came to St. Augustine, FL the oldest city here in the USA, founded in 1565. Ponce de Leon claimed Florida for Spain in 1513, while he was looking for the Fountain of Youth.

Other Spanish explorers found gold and silver in Mexico and Peru that was sent back to Spain along the Gulf Stream. Spain needed to protect their fleets from pirates. King Phillip II sent Pedro Menendez to settle Florida and drive the French garrisons out. In 1565 Menendez came with 700 men and founded St. Augustine.

We came to the Ocean Grove RV Park. We set up; I did laundry, and Chuck washed the bugs off the windshield. We spent a quiet evening home, reading all the brochures I picked up at the RV office about what to see and do here in St. Augustine.

I have to say the thermometer took a big jump as well as the humidity. The low for the night was 78 degrees/high was in the mid 90’s with about 90 % humidity, really hot for us after so long in the colder, wet weather.

Wednesday, we needed to go resupply, so off we went to Walmart. Coming home, the black clouds rolled in, there was thunder and lightening and the sky opened up, dumping a lot of rain. We planned to go look for the ocean, but stayed in due to the weather.

Our son, Rick and his girlfriend, Donna were headed up from Big Pine Key to visit so I started fixing dinner. They arrived and we enjoyed a nice dinner, we played 10,000 and then taught them how to play Pass the Love. They both liked the games and we had a lot of fun playing and visiting. I really liked Donna, and having Rick come and visit made for a special Mother’s Day present. Thank you both for coming to visit us from so far.

Thursday, Rick/Donna, Chuck and I caught the shuttle for the Red Train that picked us up at the front office of the RV Park and took us into St. Augustine. The Shuttle took us to where their tours start. We rode the entire route, over an hour and a half, all the time the driver talked about the history of St. Augustine as he drove the route. There is so much history for this city that it would take hours to write all of it.

The second time through town on the train, we stopped at the Castillo de San Marcos. It is a national park, so Chuck’s golden pass got us through the gate, (every attraction cost money to get in, and there are many attractions.)

This fort was built in 1672 by the Spanish to repel attacks by the British, French and pirates. It is made of Coquina (ko KEE na) which is a natural shell stone found along the Florida coast and can repel cannon balls. After an attack, soldiers from the fort would go outside the gates at night and pick up the cannon balls for re use, first recycling. Many attempts were made on the fort by various nations, but it withstood them all.

Later on the Fort was also used as a prison to incarcerate Geronimo and his band of Indian as well as the Comanche, Kiowa, the Arapaho, the Cheyenne and the Chiricahua Apaches from 1875 until 1887 when the last were sent to Oklahoma Reservations.

From there we went to the Fountain of Youth where we saw many Peacocks and heard more history. We got on the shuttle and rode over to Old Town for looking/shopping after that.

Rick/Donna wanted to head over to Walmart, so we headed home to take Misty out, then on to Walmart. Dinner was at the Longhorn Steak House, then home again for Pass the Love. Rick was suppose to leave Friday morning, but decided to stay another day--yes!

Friday, Rick/Donna, Chuck and I headed out to the coast to find the Atlantic beaches. We needed to put our feet in those waters. We found the water cool. Friday was a beautiful day, hot by 11 am, in the 90’s already.

We went back to town and got on the Red Train; (you pay their price and get to ride the rain for three days). Off we go again.

We went into the Memorial Presbyterian Church built by Standard Oil Tycoon Henry Flagler in memory of his daughter, Jeannie Louise Benedict, who died in child birth in 1889. What a Great Church, it was so beautiful, elegant and so lovingly kept up. Henry Flagler had a big impact on St. Augustine, as well as all of Florida; his name is everywhere since he built so much here in Florida.

We went to the Elks Lodge for Steak dinner; it was delicious; from there home for another game of Pass the Love.

Rick/Donna left at 9:30 to start driving back to the Keys. It is so much cooler to drive a convertible at night with the top down, and less traffic. Again, Thank You Both for coming, I loved meeting Donna and seeing you again Rick. We don’t know when or where we will see each other again for a while. Rick will head back north to Alaska for the fishing season on the Kenai River.

Saturday we decided to check out the Swap Meet. What a disappointment for me after being at the ones in Palm Springs and Yuma.

We went back to the Elks for a benefit for a man who has cancer and needs help with his chemo treatment payments. They roasted a whole pig and had a great turnout, and it was excellent food.

I love the history of this area and am enjoying our time here. We’ve already seen and heard a lot and there is still so much to see and do. Until next time….Lorraine

5/9/10 Chuck’s report

Last week was a dry run, this time I really mean it when I say HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY! It’s not real surprising that I didn’t know it wasn’t Mother’s Day, since I retired I don’t wear a watch and sometimes don’t even know what day of the week it is. But like Linda said when she corrected me last week, maybe we should celebrate it all week long vs. just one day.

Hey, we can put add one more state to our travels. We have a map of the US with all of the states outlined. We fill in the state when we’ve spent at least two nights in that state, Florida now qualifies for that distinction. We’ve only added two states in the past year, Alaska and now Florida, we now have 24 states filled in on our map. We’ve been at this for 31 months and have only hit 24 states and not one of them completely, what a big country we live in.

Last Sunday we were still in Mexico Beach, Florida, on the Gulf Coast side. We decided to take a “Sunday Drive”, sort of just headed South to see what we could see. We ended up finding a jewel of a place, St. George Island. The island is about 30 miles long, a couple of miles wide and mostly just residential houses to be found. The first thing we noticed was all the houses appear to be fairly new and built on pilings and very well supported. A quick check on the computer when we got home showed it got damaged when Hurricane Kate hit there in 1985, wiping out most of the structures. That accounted for all the new looking homes, all of them were built since Kate. There are lots of sand dunes, some of the roads were almost covered in sand from the mild winds we experienced while we were there. There are lots of For Rent and For Sale signs on the houses, appears to be 2nd homes that are rented when the owners aren’t there. We really liked the island and were glad we “found” it. Next time we are in the area, we will have to explore it a bit more.

Monday found us back on the road, this time we were heading towards the East Coast of Florida. As we don’t like to travel too far in one day, we planned a stop along the way for one night. This time we stopped in Lake City but didn’t do any exploring. In fact, we went to dinner at Cracker Barrel and called it a night. When we are only stopping for one night, Lorraine doesn’t unpack and put up all the things she normally would so it makes it easier to get on the road the next morning.

On Tuesday, we had a short 2+ drive over here to St. Augustine. We found a nice Passport America campground, their information stated they were 300 yards from the beach so we picked it over a couple of others in the area. Their information was wrong, they have a canal at back end of the property (where we are staying) but the beach is at least 1/2 mile away from their front desk. Oh well, we have a car and go exploring anyway, no problem for us.

One problem getting here is our GPS wanted us to go through downtown. Now not knowing much about this park other than it was 300 yards from the beach, we followed our instructions from the GPS, BAD IDEA. It took us down a couple of small streets and had us turn onto a smaller one. Not a huge problem as we’ve been in tight spots before but this time, there was a garbage truck parked in the street we had to turn onto. It was there to receive debris from some construction going on in a nearby building so it couldn’t be moved for our benefit. We can’t back up our rig when we are towing (the tow bar will not allow that) and we were blocking traffic in the middle of town. We had some folks come walk over to witness our s-l-o-w turn onto this small street, we made it but with only inches to spare. Don’t need to do that everyday, that’s for sure. But, not harm, no foul.

We spent most of the rest of day reading up about St. Augustine in the brochures we got at the main desk. Our son, Rich and his girlfriend, Donna, were planning on driving up from the Keys to visit with us on Wednesday so we decided to hold off exploring the area until they arrived. In the mean time, we learned lots about the town and it’s history from the brochures and on the net. There is lots of history to be found here and we decided to take a tram tour through the city with Rich/Donna on Thursday instead of driving/walking on our own.

Wednesday, before Rich/Donna arrived, we headed out to the local Wal-Mart for some supplies. Before they arrived, we had a good storm move through the area, lots of rain. They arrived and we visited for a short while before we ate, Lorraine had fixed fried chicken, mac and cheese, one of Rich’s favorite. After dinner, we played dice and cards for awhile then they left to their hotel for the night.

Next morning found us catching a shuttle at the main gate to drive us to town to catch the tram for our sightseeing tour of the city. The trams have a set tour with 22 stops where you can get off and catch a later tram if you want. We decided to stay on the tram for the whole 1 1/2 hour tour first, then ride around, get off and explore where we wanted. They have it set up so you can ride the tram for three consecutive days for one price so we didn’t try to do everything the first day, not that we could have anyway, there’s simply too much to see and do.

But we did get to see and learn a lot the first day, like I said, there is lots of history here. We toured the Fort, the Fountain of Youth, oldest house, oldest school house and downtown shopping district the first day. The tram also drove us by to see the oldest resident of St. Augustine, The Old Senator, in a parking lot at Howard Johnson. This is a huge oak tree said to be over 600 years old, an old live oak tree is considered to be ~ 300 years old. The reason they called it The Old Senator is because like most Senators, it’s shady, crooked and makes a mess of things every year.

So after a full day of exploring, we had a good dinner and returned to the rig for more games. This was when I learned that Donna cheats, must be because she won most of the games and on the last one, beat us all badly, ha. Rick/Donna were planning on leaving the next day but decided to stay for one more day to spend more time with us.

Next day we took off in the car to explore some of the beaches in the area. They are nice and Lorraine liked getting her feet in the surf and sand. Later we headed back to town and got on the trams again for more exploring. This time we went into the Presbyterian Church and a local museum.

We also learned about a couple of the founders of Standard Oil. One of them, Henry Flagler came to St. Augustine and decided this would be a good spot for his rich friends up North to come down for the winter. So he spent some of his money developing the area for his rich friends. He built hotels, churches, hospitals. bought and rebuilt the local railroad and tied it to the main line up North. The accommodations for his rich friends were top of the line for that day and age and still today are pretty nice. One thing they told us was the fanciest hotel he built had this newfangled stuff called electricity. This was so new that some of his guest were afraid to use it so he hired some people who’s only job was to turn the electric lights on/off for the guest. Must be nice to have that much money, huh?

Flagler has his name on lots of things around town, including a college. They told us he also developed areas South of here, down to and including the Keys. They said he had a big part in building Florida up as a tourist area. Huh, build up one area with all the hotels and stuff then head South and do the same thing in a different area. Must be nice to have that much money, huh? (Oh, I already said that, didn’t I?)

Rich/Donna decided to head back home Friday night. They drove a Miata convertible and got a little sunburned on the way up plus they wanted to break the drive up into two parts on the way back . So we played a few games and said our goodbyes to them. Thanks Rich and Donna for making the long drive up and back to spend some time with us, we really enjoyed it.

Saturday Lorraine wanted to visit some of the stores in the area. We also went to a flea market but it was disappointing to us after going to the ones in Yuma and Palm Springs.

I wanted to let Beau know that we were able to get into the fort using our Golden Access Passport. We’ve used it a few time with no problems, hope your key is working for you.

The weather has been unseasonably hot, getting into the mid 90s each day with high humidity. We’ve had to keep the air conditioners on 24/7, they cycle as needed and help keep the humidity down as well. I don’t think this would be a good place for us to land when we quit this lifestyle, don’t care for the weather and it’s only early May. It’s supposed to return to normal temperatures starting today, into the high 80s and cooling off to the 60s at night. We’ll see how we like it with when it’s cooler.

We have made reservations at a 1000 Trails park in Gloucester VA. over Memorial Day week. We had planned on slowly working our way up the coast until then. However, yesterday I found reference to a Shuttle Launch on May 14th, one of the last ones planned. We are still doing research on this but we are working on a trip down the coast to witness the launch. If we are able to work this out, it would mean a quicker trip between there and Virginia but that’s ok. If we could get a feel for the area on this trip, we could plan on stopping and seeing what we want next time we are through the area.

Whew, what a long post this time. Guess I should just quit and get the pictures posted. So here they are.

Pictures from our Tram ride though town.