First Day of Liberty

And I spent it in Saint Augustine. Because I didn't have a rental car reservation, it took me an extra hour getting here; other than that, it was a perfect day. Took a taxi from Mayport, where we were dropped, to a rental car place on the coastal blvd. And that happened to be right next to a wonderful, local diner, where I promptly ate breakfast at 11:30 for my first meal of the day.

Realized I didn't need GPS, since that was the same coastal road (FL-A1A) that went straight to St. Augustine. Beautiful drive, with lots of views of the ocean. It was hard to stop for the pedestrians though... just a little triangle sign for crosswalks across a 55mph highway. Didn't even come close to hurting anyone... it weirded me out though.

Like Ponce de Leon in 1513, the first thing I did was visit the Fountain of Youth. They had little plastic cups filled with water from the spring to drink. It was a very little spring, and at this late date it is pumped 200 feet to the surface. At the same center, they had a very neat planetarium show, pointing out the constellations and which the Spanish would have used as they sailed across the Atlantic. It was the best planetarium show I've ever seen... maybe because they were talking about a specific point and not just spouting random astronomical facts. There were a few things about sixteenth-century navigation that I didn't know... like they measured the movement of the big dipper from the north star sort of like a giant sundial in the sky. They also had a cannon firing demonstration and a globe that outlined the voyage they made... but I heard the gun from a distance, and only saw the globe on a postcard because the planetarium show went a little long. I avoided buying bottled fountain water in the gift shop. :)

From there I drove across the Matanzas River and visited the St. Augustine Lighthouse (1874), climbing 219 stairs 140 ft. up for a fantastic view of the city, rivers, countryside and ocean. They had a cool little museum in the light-keeper's house.

At this point it was getting to be later in the afternoon and I was getting hungry again. But first I decided to go back across the river to the downtown and visit the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, a fort built out of stone and coquina (a hard mixture of shells and sand) from 1672-1695. The fort was impregnable, and was never over-run. It passed from the Spanish to the British to the United States, always by treaty.

After satisfying myself with a few neat things from the gift shop (patches, a picture booklet of all the Civil War battlefields, and books about the Underground Railroad and the Signers of the Declaration), I walked along the waterfront and across the bridge to the seafood restaurant I had spotted earlier for a fantastic lobster dinner (they had a special).

Did a little more exploring after that... drove a bit north, scouting for motels, and ended up stopping at the Fort Mose Historic State Park. It was really just a wetlands, since the 1738 fort site is now under water. But I did see lots of birds and took pictures of the beautiful sunset.

It's been a wonderful mini-vacation so far!
Jw