Days 3: St. Augustine

I learned a lot of things on this trip. On all of our trips I assume I'll learn things each day. Between seeing new places and going to museums and historical sites there is always a lot to take in. But on this trip I felt like I learned things I really should have known before. On our way down to Florida Allyson told me that St. Augustine was the oldest city in the United States. I think my response was "that can't be right". Well, it turns out it was. The Spanish, led by Ponce de Leon, came to Florida back in the early 1500's. St. Augustine was established later in 1565. Hearing this was very surprising. "What about Christopher Columbus?" Didn't he get over to America before that? Nope. Christopher Columbus never once set foot in what is now considered the United States. That blew my mind, and for multiple reasons. First, shouldn't I have known that? Was I not paying attention, or was I subjected to some sort of inferior education? I knew Christopher Columbus initially landed somewhere in the Bahamas when he first came over, but I always assumed he then got over to the mainland. Second, if Christopher Columbus never made it to what is now the United States, then what the hell are we all doing naming cities and holidays for him? None of it makes sense, especially when you consider that Vikings were over in North America centuries earlier. And it all really doesn't make any sense because there were already people living here.

I had to share that background, because since St. Augustine is the oldest city in the USA it is a historical location with all the tourist stuff that comes with that. I was not expecting this. I always thought St. Augustine was just a beach town but it turned out there was much more going on there. So on Tuesday morning we set out to explore the town. The first thing we learned about St. Augustine was that parking there sucks. They have parking options for adults - there's a large parking garage on the edge of downtown you can walk from, and then you can park a little ways further away and take a shuttle over. But with all the little kids, and one of them being in a stroller, we wanted to be parked in downtown. So after circling for a bit we ended up paying $20 to park. I hate paying for parking but it was worth it.

Downtown St. Augustine is very nice. It's historic, it's right along the beach, and my favorite part was that it was very, very clean. The streets are all tight since it was laid out over 400 years ago. As we drove around and then walked around I kept thinking that it was just like the French quarter, except it was clean and didn't smell like urine. They also had public bathrooms all over the place.

After parking we went over to the St. Augustine Shipwreck Museum. They had a small public area and then you could pay to go through the museum. Nolan was being fussy so I opted to walk around with him while Allyson and the girls went through the museum. I assumed it would not meet expectations, but they all seemed to enjoy it. There were things to see and then they had an area for the kids to search for treasure. This was how many of the attractions went in St. Augustine. We would go somewhere that you had to pay to get into, which I assumed would not be worth the money, and then it would turn out to be interesting and fun for the kids. So they did a real nice job with all these attractions.

We then headed over to the Oldest Wooden Schoolhouse in America on St. George St. (Apparently there must have been an older non-wooden schoolhouse elsewhere in the USA).

Next we walked down St. George St. This is a pedestrian only street that is filled with shops. It was very cool. There were shops and restaurants all along the street and then there were a whole bunch more down all these little alleys off the street.

We walked through a couple shops and then decided to stop and get lunch. We almost never eat out in a sit-down restaurant as an entire family. The younger kids don't have the patience to wait too long for service, and Nolan will just be whacking at everything on the table the entire time. However, on this day Nolan passed out pretty hard in his stroller, so we decided to get some pizza which turned out to be a great idea. The food was good and the girls showed off their "epic cheese pulls".

Nolan falling asleep for a while was desperately needed for everyone. Although he did awesome in the motorhome on the trip down to Florida, he was very moody and whiny on Tuesday. While the girls were in the Shipwreck museum I was out walking around with him and as long we were moving he was ok. But when we stopped he was unhappy. He definitely needed the nap.

After lunch we headed back to the campground so we could hit up the pool, since it was 80 degrees out. Our campground had a really nice, big pool. It was a beautiful day out and when we got to the pool there was no one else in it so it looked like we were going to be able to have a lot of fun. Except the water was freezing cold. Sometimes you go to a pool and the water feels cold, but then you get used to it. But there was no getting used to this water, it was damn cold.

After about 30 minutes a woman who was sitting in the sun stopped over and told us that there was another heated pool at the campground. We immediately packed up and walked over. The heated pool was alright. It was much smaller than the first pool, but it was heated to 85 degrees and there was a hot tub (something I never liked as a kid, but our kids love). The warm temperature of the pool felt good at first, but after a while you feel like you're in a bathtub. We played around in there a bit and then eventually headed back for dinner.

The last thing we did on Tuesday was head back downtown for the Night of Lights. Every year St. Augustine's downtown is decked out in lights for a period of something like two months. It's really something to see.

We again had to battle to find parking but we found a spot. We then walked around the main park area and down the main streets. It was amazing to see how many lights were on all the buildings. The only downside was that it was really crowded. You had to battle your way through some of the main areas because it was so popular.

I was really surprised by how many people were in St. Augustine. We assumed that people must have been there on a holiday vacation like we were. I had not expected that at all. We kind of ended up in St. Augustine out of chance. We had no idea there was so much to do, so I'm surprised I hadn't really heard of it as a place to check out. Most of the comparable destinations are pretty well known.

After we had seen enough of the lights we headed back to the campground and got ready for bed. Between all the walking and swimming the kids were pretty warn out. The next day we were planning on going to the beach, so everyone was excited.