East Coast Spring Vacation 1.5 - St Augustine

One of the primary reasons for this trip was to visit St. Augustine, FL.  The main attraction there being the fort and the old town.  Admittedly, going to the fort and the old town wasn't high on my personal list, but I am glad I went.  The fort was really cool.  The old town, well, not so much.  Having lived and travelled extensively in Europe, we've seen OLD towns; and they are usually really neat.  The St. Augustine old town might be on the site of what once was the old town, but I cannot believe that much is left that's original.  Really, it felt more like a cruise ship stop that anything else.  But the fort and the hole-in-the-wall restaurant that we found for lunch (no pics, sorry!) made it worthwhile.

The boys have to "read" every sign.  With Parker now being able to read, this is a much longer event than it used to be.  He usually gets bored after one sentence on a sign like this.

Ahh, sailboats.  Anywhere there's sailboats is a wonderful place.

Crossing the drawbridge!

I forget what this was, but obviously Mason feels it's very important.

Now I know why the Spaniards stopped and built a fort here.  What a view.

Entry to the fort is quite an ordeal, but pretty neat nonetheless.

The telescopes are out again.

Parker's spying, Mason's "bamming" the mortar.

Cannons and the Spanish flag (of the period that Spain held the fort).  Who knew Spain loved St Andrew's cross so much that they put it on their flag?

Supposedly the oldest wooden schoolhouse in the USA.  I think not or at least not original.  It was done-up for paid tours.  Anytime there's a mannequin sticking it's head out of the window and they want to charge me money for a guided tour, I walk away.

OK cruise ship go-ers, look familair?  Oh yeah, not as many people, no cheap liquor stores, and no "Tanzanite" stores.

The original city door.  This is the one thing that I think that was original to the old town.

East Coast Spring Vacation 1

It's been nearly a month since we embarked upon the vacation that will be detailed in the next few posts.  We had planned this time for some time, as we do with most of our trips.  We knew it would be early in the season due to Parker's spring break being so early this year.  We weren't sure if we would be able to de-winterize the Airstream or not before going.  As it turned out, the weather didn't cooperate and we embarked upon our trip with the red stuff still in the plumbing and jugs of water for drinking until we got to warmer climates.  Not to be totally outdone, my job had one up it's sleeve, too.  We were supposed to leave home on Tuesday night.  It turned out I had to work very late that day, so the trip leaving time was moved to Wed morning.  In the end, it probably wasn't bad.  I was dreading boondocking in a parking lot (again) in freezing temps.

As sometimes happens, this trip got combined with a business trip.  It allowed us to add one of our favorite stops to the trip: Williamsburg, VA.  This time, we didn't even buy Williamsburg passes.  But, we stayed in our favorite campground at Newport News, VA.  Not a whole lot new here other than the kids riding bikes as usual.  Oh, and I managed to hit a deer while staying there; not in the park, though.  Luckily, the damage was not trip-ending and it was a company truck, so no worries about paying for damage!

Riding bikes at Newport News City Campground

One day the kids will understand the ramifications of what this device once was.  For now though, they find it a must-have photo op.

This seems cool to do, too.

A colleague of mine suggested this place in Wilson, NC.  It's called Parker's so we had to stop.  Definitely not your chain restaurant and not too far out of the way.  Plenty of camper parking.

Yes, shorts in March.  We were in FL.

One of just many forts (National Parks) that we visited on this trip along the east coast.

We took the scenic way back to the truck.

Sometimes they are cute.  Sometimes.

The boardwalk over the swamp to another fort.

Ahoy, matey!  Actually, these telescopes are pretty cool.  We gave in to them both spending $25 of their collected birthday money on these.  Amazingly, they work quite well.

The fort that we went to see.  I forget the name now, it's on the FL coast just south of St. Augustine.  This was apparently a torture point.  There was a lot of stuff about prisoners and killing.  There was a free ferry to the fort, but we could not visit due to a storm in the area.

This was the parking lot at the fort.  Awesome trees.

What would a trip with the kids be without a zoo visit?

Actually, this was a zoo and alligator park in St. Augustine.  I was wary of it at first especially because of the price of admission but in the end it was well worth it.

Parker doing the "Parker slump" because he's tired of waiting for  us.

It was mating season or something for a lot of big white birds in the zoo.  Lots of people with really high powered cameras.  It sounded like an explosion when a bird would take flight from the rapid fire shutters of all the cameras.