St. Augustine, FL

Brr!  Our last two stops in Florida were cold, with the exception of a few days.  The first week, we went north to St. Augustine.  St. Augustine is the oldest city in the U.S., and was a city that we were all looking forward to.  I really like St. Augustine.  It's just a cozy and laid back community, which I really appreciated on the heels of Orlando.

In the last post, I mentioned that our week in St. Augustine was really, very, truly cold.  Everyone is saying that this is the worst winter in a long time, so I guess I'll just have to take their word for it on that point.  As for us, we huddled in the RV for most of the week, only venturing out to explore twice.  It was a big bummer, but thankfully, they were two wonderful days.  The first day, we drove out to Anastasia State Park, for a frigid visit to the beach.

The wind made neat formations in the sand.

Meg, trying not to blow away.  This was a very beautiful beach.

This sand was amazing!  I have never seen sand that is so light and fine, almost like baby powder.

We all got a little silly, fighting against the wind and trying to hear one another over the noise.  It was fun.

The finest sand I've ever touched.

After the beach, we had lunch at The Mellow Mushroom.  Very good pizza, and a neat atmosphere.

The kids scored some unique shells from Anastasia State Park.  And of course, I got my little sandwich baggie of sand.

We went downtown on Jeff's day off, to the historic portion of the city.  Actually, we drove down there one other day, but after circling the perimeter for twenty minutes in search of a parking spot, we determined it best to come back earlier on another day.  On the weekend, we decided to make things easier on ourselves and pay the $15 to park in a lot.  Then we walked into the main area.  Downtown St. Augustine is Spanish-colonial everything.  It's exceedingly beautiful, though crowded with tour trolleys and traffic.

Before checking things out, we followed the Yelp reviews to The Kookaburra, where we enjoyed amazing Australian meat pies.  We got one of each and passed them around for everyone to try.  So good!  My favorite was the Ned Kelly.  I want to learn to make them at home.

After that, we walked through the historic district, headed toward Castillo de San Marcos, the oldest masonry fort in the continental U.S.

As we approached the fort, we were surprised by the number of people milling around outside.  Then, as we got closer, we found out why they were there.  The fort was closed due to the government shutdown!  Yay for being locked out and paying $15 to park near a closed attraction!  I hadn't even considered that until we saw the signs.  We laughed about it because it was so in line with how our whole stay in Florida has been.

When we drove through this area during the week, we saw dolphins in the water!  They were swimming over by the bridge.

We walked around the outside of the fort, which was interesting.  The Spanish word for the material used in making the fort is coquina, which means "small shells."

Jackson made a friend.

And those were the things we did in St. Augustine!  It was only a week stop, but I'm glad we got to see a little bit of this beautiful city.