St. Augustine to Amelia Island

Laura Domela — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 21:34:38 +0000

Here are a couple shots of the campground where we stayed in St. Augustine (North Beach). This is the drive to our campsite:

And this is from our campsite:

We left around 11am this morning and headed north to Amelia Island. We found a place to park down near the historic district…actually IN the historic district, and Kevin parallel parked the Airstream less than a block from the main street. Score! He had a conference call and I did some more work while he was on the phone, and then we walked around and explored a bit.

Here's our parking spot:

Walking around the neighborhood:

We had some lunch at The Happy Tomato (salads, sandwiches, and barbecue). It was REALLY GOOD. Kevin had a chicken/ribs plate, and they made me a pulled pork salad (not on the menu, but she heard me say I wanted pulled pork, but I wanted a salad).

After lunch we walked down to the waterfront, then back up and around to the cemetery over on Broome and 8th. Mark Tucker suggested we check it out (and that it had good moss). It most definitely had good moss.

We headed back to the Airstream and then drove the rest of the way to Savannah. Some snaps from the road:

I love this billboard. They had a couple before this that didn't mention the 13 FOOT GATOR. This one got my attention though…I almost wanted to stop.

We're at Skidaway State Park now in Savannah, Georgia. By the time we got in and parked, it was dark, so I'll post photos tomorrow because now, it's time to make dinner.

St. Augustine, Florida

Laura Domela — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 21:55:35 +0000

We worked this morning until checkout time at Fort Wilderness/Disney and headed for St. Augustine.

St. Augustine is the oldest city in the continental United States (founded in 1565). There's a TON of good information about St. Augustine here on its Wikipedia page if you want to dive in and learn some stuff.

We got here in the afternoon, worked some more, and then headed into town to explore a little while it was still light out. We went to the Castillo de San Marcos first and walked around the grounds a bit.

The grassy area is where the moat goes:

The walls are all made of a stone called coquina, Spanish for "small shells". It's basically ancient shells that have bonded together to form a type of stone similar to limestone. It looks like this, and after walking around town a bit we noticed that it's pretty much everywhere:

They've also got a hotshot furnace used to heat cannonballs to fire at wooden enemy ships. Sneaky!

It was a gorgeous evening out. We walked over to St. George Street, which is mostly a pedestrian (tourist) area but it wasn't too crowded and had a pretty mellow vibe. Here's a little of what it looks like:

We walked past Flagler College, the Lightner Museum, and a bunch of cool old buildings. We ate dinner at a cafe called The Floridian. We had cornflake-encrusted flouder with a cilantro lime compound butter, shrimp over stone-ground polenta cakes and veggies, and it was all good.

Now we're back at our campground…oh yeah, we're staying here:

It's a little on the expensive side, but full hookups, near the water… It feels a little rustic (dirt roads, dirt spots) but our spot is huge and level and we have great AT&T and Verizon service.

Tomorrow we head for Savannah. The motor in the Airstream bathroom's vent fan died today (it was kind of a slow death, but today was the last gasp) so I ordered another one and it'll be shipped to the UPS Store in Savannah by Friday so we'll replace as soon as we get it. Doesn't seem like it'll be too hard (especially since we've already taken it apart now).

I still need to do some more research and make some plans for Savannah things to see and do. Okay. I'm gonna get on that. Later.

St. Augustine – Riveted

St. Augustine to Amelia Island

St. Augustine, Florida