After a relatively easy day driving down to St. Augustine from Hilton Head (about a four hour drive), we arrived at our first tent trailer experience at the Anastasia State Park, just a couple of miles south of St. Augustine, Florida - the oldest city in the United States:
(In case you have trouble reading the date it is 1565!)
We arrived only ten minutes before the park closed. We are glad we made it before closing time, since that makes it much easier for us to check in. They lock the gates to state parks at night and you need a combination to get in. You can call ahead and they can tell you the site and give you the combination, but that is a tougher way to start our first camping experience of the trip.
The trailer spots were very private and very heavily treed, and about a half a kilometre from the beach. The beach was really nice:
The water here was significantly warmer than at Hilton Head - you could actually stand in the water and still feel your feet after 30 seconds. In fact, I would say the water temperature went from 48 degrees (Fahrenheit) in Hilton Head to 65 degrees in St. Augustine. (Of course, the Keys is our next destination, so you can guess which way the water temperature is heading!) Fortunately, we were very close to the bathroom. This was especially important if you had to get up in the middle of the night, since you had to dodge the local raccoon population, who were quite comfortable roving around with people nearby.
On the Saturday (we were only camping two nights so we really only had one day here) we took our trip into St. Augustine to do the 'tourist thing'. This is definitely a city with an amazing history. Much of the time it was occupied by the Spanish. They appeared to be a very fair and caring people. The first free Negree colony in the south was under Spanish rule in north east Florida. The fort is run by the National Parks. We bought a family National Parks Golden Eagle pass (good for a year) and were able to tour the inside and listen to the very lively presentation on the history of the fort. The fort was used to protect the area from invading British (who occupied the territory north of Florida). One interesting fact about this fort is it never fell in battle (and there were many). It was quite impressive, with a dual moat system - the outer one controlled by the tides. The soldiers who manned the fort lived in very nearby (a block away) St. Augustine. When there were particularly dangerous times (invasions) the townsfolk would move into the centre courtyard of the fort for safety.
We walked down an old street and peeked into a few shops and a lot of the historic places. Unfortunately, many of them have become a source of significant revenue for some people restoring and running them (I guess it's the way it has to be). We did not go into the oldest school house in the country (quite expensive), nor a couple of the other attractions that seemed they would not be worth it. But our ice cream stop was real nice.
We also visited the Castillo de San Marcos fort (a national park):
We bought our US National Parks pass (American Eagle pass) at this site so we could use it throughout our trip.
On our second night at the campsite we rented a DVD at a nearby Blockbuster video store. All but Pam chose to watch the movie (on the Dell laptop computer .. which has a built-in DVD player). We rented Deep Impact (Daniel was the only one who had already seen it). The volume was a bit of a problem, but we were able to watch and hear almost everything successfully. Our first computer DVD experience! Since the Dell has a 14.1" screen, we all had no trouble with the video portion as we lined up along the 'couch' in the trailer and watched. Pam decided to sit out by the fire since she was worried that it might be a scary movie.
Well, it's time to head on down and make the big trip along the Atlantic Florida coast. And how far do we think we can make it since we only have a one night stop-over before we have to be at our next state park in the Florida Keys? Hmm, could be tricky, particularly given that we have to pack up our trailer for the first time. Check out the next chapter to see what happened.