America's Oldest Tourist Trap!

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The weather didn't look too unbearably hot this past weekend, and the girls were having some vacation withdrawals and wanted to explore, so for Sunday we decided to take a little day trip up towards St. Augustine. It's only 90 minutes or so away, but we haven't spent much time there for some reason. And we kinda realized why on this trip, but I'll get to that.


On the way, we stopped at a little stretch of beach in Palm Coast called Jungle Hut Park. I'd read that it tended to not be crowded because there are rocks offshore that make it not great for swimming. The tide was in, so I never did see any rocks, but it was a pretty nice spot for playing in the surf and looking for mole crabs (which I've always called sand fleas).








Mole crab!

A little up the road, we stopped at a spot I've long had on my list: Fort Matanzas National Monument. We were a bit early for the boat ride to the fort, so we killed some time playing in the great old live oaks and taking a short walk.










Then it was time to head over to the fort.

This was a fortification built by the Spanish between 1740-1742 to defend the southern approach to St. Augustine. The closest it came to battle was in 1742, when it fired its cannons to drive off the approaching ships of British Gov. Oglethorpe. The fort fell into ruin until 1916, when the US War Dept. started patching it up. It became a National Monument in 1924 and came under the National Park Service in 1933.


We went up to the top first, because there was a thunderstorm in the distance getting closer. It was breezy up there!


The Cross of Burgundy, the Spanish military flag the fort would have flown in its day.


Like many old structures of the area, construction is of coquina rock--essentially millions of fossilized seashells bound together. The cement was made from ground-up oyster shells.


Soldier's quarters. This was not a big place. Soldiers would come down for month-long rotations here from St. Augustine, which is 14 miles north.


This cannon was original to the 1740s fort.



St. Augustine, if you're not familiar, is the oldest European settlement in the United States, established by the Spanish in 1565. The big attraction is the old Spanish fort, Castillo de San Marcos, constructed in the late 1600s. But we knew that would be too crowded, so our destination was instead a museum Heather had discovered on the Internet, which features an interesting collection of weirdness. But parking proved to be difficult, to say the least. Most city lots are free on Sundays, but the city was packed with humans and the lots were all full. We quickly remembered why we go there so infrequently. There's a city parking garage, but it's $12 regardless of how long you stay, and we didn't plan to stay long enough for that to be worth it. So we ended up finding some on-street parking about a 10-minute walk from the Old Town area (which is where all the touristy stuff is). We could have done better, but at least the walk was fairly pleasant.


Memorial Presbyterian Church, built in 1889 by Henry Flagler, a big name in Florida history. He's buried in a mausoleum here.





Along the way, I joked that the museum had better be open. Aaaaand of course it wasn't. We picked this weekend because next weekend they have a new exhibit opening and we figured it would be crowded. But this weekend they were closed to prepare for the new exhibit, of course! Ah well. So we got ice cream instead, checked out a store or two, and headed home. It was a nice visit anyway, and certainly educational: we learned that the next time we go to St. Augustine, it will be a weekday when most people are at work or school!



St. Augustine is a strange place anyway. All these historic buildings and structures, and it's all been long converted to touristy crap: restaurants, ice cream shops, t-shirt and tchotchke shops, etc., and the worst sorts of tourists flock there to stroll around oblivious to the history now hidden underneath it all. It's kinda sad, really. One of those places that would be simply awesome if not for all the people.

Anyway, it was a fun day. Next time we'll have to do the big fort, the girls have yet to go in there!