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What's Up In Our Family!
- January 3, 2002 - St. Augustine Trip.
Well, we made it back home from St. Augustine. It was a fun trip. Even though I live in Florida, I have not had a vacation in Florida in a long time. It was really nice to see something different from what I see everyday. St. Augustine was gorgeous and relatively inexpensive. We left Thursday morning, 27 December. It took about 5-1/2 to 6 hours to get there. We stayed in a motel the first night on Anastasia Island, across the street from the Atlantic ocean. We were probably only 10 - 15 minutes from everything.
The first thing we did was go on a walking "ghost tour" of old downtown St. Augustine that evening. Before I tell you about the tour, I have to say that the few minutes we drove from our motel to the location of the ghost tour was beautiful. The lighthouse looks awesome at night and from November - January, St. Augustine has the "Night of Lights". One of the ways to get from Anastasia Island to the mainland is a short bridge called "The Bridge of Lions". The architecture is really amazing. Starting from the bridge, including all the ships in the harbour, through the whole town are millions of lights.
On to the ghost tour! It wasn't real scary or anything, basically it was someone dressed in periodic dress, carrying a lantern, and showing us the local places, cemetaries, bed and breakfast's, houses, etc., and telling some of the old legends and stories, but it was very interesting and the anticipation of maybe seeing a flash of light in the cemetary made it exciting. Bobby (my son) had his camera ever ready just in case a ghost popped out:-) Our tour guide had a hook for one arm, which he used to carry the lantern, but I forgot to get a picture. The tour was normally $8.00 per person but I had coupons. That was the most expensive thing we did. The tour took about an hour and a half. It started on St. George street which is a narrow, no vehicle/walking only, cobblestone street that is several blocks long. There were several old buildings and houses. One is a wood building, which is the oldest schoolhouse in Florida. Maybe even the US. There are a lot of little shops and restaurants, and an old two story ale shop with a water wheel. A couple of ghost tours start there. It's all very neat.
The next day we went to the Castillo de San Marcos which used to be Fort Marion. It is only about a block or so away from where we were the previous night. It is very impressive. Tickets were $4.00 for me and Bill, children 16 and under got in free, but I believe that is changing this year. We took a lot of pictures.
Then we went on a free tour of a chocolate factory (Whetstone Chocolates). We saw a short film, then went through the production area, but unfortunately, production was down until after the first of the year. Although, after seeing the film, you could imagine everything running. Got a free sample and bought a few samples:-) Yummy!
We then went on a free tour of a local winery (San Sebastian Winery) and had a mini wine tasting. I learned a lot and know that I do not like Cream Sherry and that Port wine is too strong for me. Also, swirling definitely gives the wine a smoother taste:-) From the 5 or 6 we tasted, the Vintage Red was the one I liked best.. Had to buy one bottle to bring home. It was made from the local Florida muscadines and tasted almost like Sangria. I can add some of the fruit that we stopped and picked fresh off the trees at a state park near Orlando on the way home. We don't have that in North Florida unfortunately.
That night we camped at Anastasia Island State Park. It has a very nice camping area. We built a fire and cooked hotdogs and hamburgers. We had been warned not to keep food in the tent because the racoons were not shy about foraging. Sure enough, they smelled our food and we had 3 big fat racoons come up out of the brush right beside our site. They were probably not 10 feet from the picnic table I was sitting at. They left when we ran to get cameras:-) Even though it was a little chilly, we did not freeze. Although I slept fully dressed including my jacket to make sure:-)
The next day we went to the the lighthouse. Can't remember how much it was to get in there. There are 219 spiralled steps to get to the top. The lighthouse is 165 feet tall. Yes, I stopped a couple of times for about a minute to rest my legs and catch my breath. Took some neat pictures from the top also. If there was a way to capture that lighthouse through lens, I got it. Just kidding!
Then we headed to Davenport (near Orlando) via Daytona Beach. When we got to Daytona, we took the scenic route down the beach. You can actually drive down the beach about 10 miles per hour. We drove down it for about an hour. After we drove for a little bit, since it wasn't very congested, we put the tailgate down and let the boys sit on the tailgate. They loved it. I think they were practicing for spring break in the future or something:-) To me, it was very relaxing and interesting. Driving on the beach, watching the water and the people and checking out the different vendors. It's completely different from the panhandle.
We finally arrived at Bill's brother's house. His mom and dad drove over from around Clearwater/Tampa area and we all visited for a couple of days then headed home. I've already mentioned that we stopped for fruit on the side of the road. Talk about huge lemons!! And, they are better fresh from the tree!
We definitely would like to go back to St. Agustine again. There was so much to do that we could not do it in one short trip. Some of the things we DID NOT do were: 3-D museum, wax museum, Ripley's Believe it or Not, The Alligator Farm (it looks pretty neat, I believe it has an albino gator), the oldest house in Florida, an old village, the Old Jail (which I understand is really neat), trolley tours through the city, horse and buggy tours, Marineland, a couple of outlet malls, several state parks, etc.
You know how it is. You only have so much money and so much time:-) Hope to have pictures later!
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Last revised: January 09, 2002.
