After a couple of weeks at home in Virginia, we drove the 800 miles back to St. Augustine, Florida, and settled in to explore America's oldest city. The area was discovered by Ponce de Leon in 1513. The city was founded by the Spanish in 1565, over 40 years before Jamestown.
St. Augustine is small but lively, and very walkable.
Right downtown, we visited the Castillo de San Marco, a fort built in the 1600s to protect the city. It's now a National Historical Site operated by the Park Service.
The Castillo is built from coquina, a local stone made from cemented sea shells. If you look at the picture of Jeannette below, you can see that the St; Augustine beaches are covered with small shells. Over time, these get buried and cemented together - see the closeup photo of a coquina block at the Castillo.
We spent our first day in the area at Anastacia State Park (on the same island as St. Augustine Beach) and climbed the 212 steps to the top of the lighthouse, which has a commanding view of the whole area.
In St. Augustine's Old City (near the Castillo), there many narrow pedestrian streets with quaint shops. The "oldest wooden schoolhouse in St. Augustine" is held in place with an anchor and giant chains - protection against storms, but not enough to prevent the building leaning to the left.
On another day, we visited Ponce de Leon's Fountain of Youth Archeological Park. Privately owned, it's one of the oldest tourist attractions in Florida (predating Disney by decades). The ruins of the original Spanish settlement is on the grounds. They also have a 24-foot tall rotating globe illustrating Spanish colonization of the Americas (pretty advanced technology when it was built in the 1960s), and a number of activities for school groups including cannon firing on the hour.
While at the park, we did take a drink from the Fountain of Youth spring. We can't speak to the scientific validity of the spring's legend, but here is a picture of us taken later that day.
St. Augustine also has beautiful Spanish-style architecture. One very impressive building is the former Ponce de Leon Hotel, built by Henry Flagler (a railroad baron). It's now the home of Flagler College.
Henry Flagler built another hotel, the Alcazar, across the street. It's since been converted into the city hall and the Lightner Museum, a beautiful collection of mostly decorative arts. There are also some paintings, as well as a toaster collection. The ballroom used to be an indoor swimming pool (the largest in the U.S. when it was built).
Leaving St. Augustine, we began traveling west across the Florida Panhandle. Before leaving the state, we stopped for a couple of days near Pensacola. If you look at a map of Florida, you can see that it is almost as wide (361 miles) as it is long (447 miles). Pensacola is at the extreme western edge, and is even in a different time zone!
We'd hoped to visit the Naval Air Station and museum in Pensacola, but the base was still off-limits after the Saudi shootings there in December. Instead, we spent our time camping in and visiting the nearby Gulf Islands National Seashore. The weather was bright and sunny, but still pretty cool (50s and 60s) since it's early March, and very windy. We enjoyed some brisk walks along the beach, which were mostly deserted. The beaches are covered with beautiful white sand, and are among the prettiest we've seen.
We continued west toward Louisiana, our next major stop. Passing through that small bit of Alabama that reaches down to the Gulf, we moved into Mississippi for a stay at Buccaneer State Park on the Gulf. The park and its facilities were wiped out by Hurricane Katrina, and have been completely rebuilt.
We visited the small but moving Ground Zero Hurricane Museum in the nearby town of Waveland. It turns out that this area, not New Orleans, was where the eye crossed over. 80% of the town was destroyed, and more than 20 people died. The storm surge was 32 feet high, and went 12 miles inland. Much of the downtown has not been rebuilt, and many long time residents have left the area. For those who've stayed, post-Katrina building codes require all buildings be elevated at least 21 feet above sea level, as you can see by the height of new houses. We even saw an entire church up on stilts!
Finally, it was on to New Orleans, where our son Tory joined us for our visit there. More about that in our next blog post!
Our nephew Ben attended Flagler. We visited there while he was in school. Great pictures.