St. Augustine, FL

 Hey Guys! We spent one week in the St. Augustine area of Florida.

Our first stop was the state sign! Bring on the warm weather!

We had a ton of things on our to do list, but for some reason we had an off week. We only made it to two of the things on our list and both of them were National Park Forts. The first one we made it to was Fort Matanzas National Monument. You can see it in the top photo above. That’s about as close as we got to it. The Visitor Center was open and we were able to go through some of the Ranger Talks, but the dock over at the actual fort was damaged during Hurricane Mathew. So, that part of the Monument was closed.

Luckily, the boys were still able to work on the Junior Ranger badge and learned some handy knot tying skills. There was also a musket demonstration we were able to catch. The boys loved the hands-on experiences! I think they get more out of it when there are hands-on stations.

The other Fort we went to was Castillo de San Marcos. This is probably in the second spot on our list of best forts.

Several of the rooms were decorated with things that would have been in them during the time the fort was being used. We really enjoy it when the NPS sets up spaces like this. All of the day-to-day items and nick-knacks intrigue the boys and they end up asking more questions.

There were secret rooms and some pretty cool doorways. The doorway in the photo on the right has an interesting shape, right? Makes you wonder what they were bringing in and out of that room to require a door in that shape.

Fort Castillo de San Marcos was a free roaming fort. We were allowed to look in all the nooks and crannies and really take our time. It was wonderful! We got there later in the afternoon and it was early evening by the time we were leaving. We could have stayed longer, but they were closing for a special ticketed event that night. We’re always getting kicked out of these places because we tend to nerd out and want to see everything in depth. One day, we’ll learn to get there earlier in the day so we can spend more time nerding out.

We stayed in a cute little RV Park while we were there. They did a wonderful job of decorating for Christmas. I loved the lights at night!

The RV Park also had wonderful view. This wasn’t too far from our front door for the week. We kept an eye out for gators and snakes. We were a little disappointed we didn’t see any.

We were so bummed that we didn’t get to experience any more that St. Augustine had to offer. I’m sure we will go back sometime and hit all the neat things we missed.

See y’all down the road!

#easternloop2016