Blogs from St Augustine, Florida, United States, North America

Friday, December 20th, 2019 Day 1 So it all started with an episode of Expedition Unknown. Josh Gates introduced his viewers to a little book called The Secret-A Treasure hunt. The book was written by Byron Preiss and was a treasure map of sorts. He buried 12 casques, in 12 North American cities, each containing a key that could be traded in for a gem worth $1000. All these casques were buried almost 40 years ago and only 3 have ever been found. I was intrigued, so I joined the community of people who were searching for the treasures (most, like me, only just learned of them from EU.). There is a painting and a poem associated with each city that give clues to where the treasures are buried. I began pouring over the clues and ... read more

Dimanche six Août, on se lève à neuf heures, aujourd'hui, on descend encore vers le sud, vers la Floride. On va visiter la ville historique de Sainte-Augustine, qui est considérée comme la première ville des États-Unis, fondée par les espagnols en 1565. On arrive vers midi, il fait près de 37 degrés, c'est un choc en sortant de la voiture si bien climatisée. On se dirige vers les portes de la ville historique. On voit juste à coté le Castillo de San Marco, un fort militaire construit par les espagnols du temps où ils possédaient la Floride, c'est à dire jusqu'en 1763 quand ils doivent la céder aux anglais à l'issue de la guerre de sept ans, en même temps que la France perdait ses colonies du Québec. La ville historique est traversée par la rue ... read more

Faver Dykes State Park, St. Augustine, Florida This traveling stuff does get to be a lot of work. We thought we were adjusting for our old age and the exhaustion that comes with all of this having-fun-work by dropping in a down-day every now and then. But we are finding that even the down days aren't altogether restful. Yes, we do sleep in, and almost always get a nap, but we also have maintenance work to do like grocery shopping, laundry, and trailer cleaning. Those things not only take time, but they take energy and add a bit of stress to the day - where, for example, do we find a laundromat? Or a grocery store? We are thinking that maybe we need to throw in maintenance days to take care of the chores and errands, ... read more

Each time we walked over the bridge today we looked eagerly for the dolphins, but they did not reappear. It was great to see them yesterday though. Today, we caught the shuttle bus from stop 16 to the Alligator Farm. Neither of us knew what to expect, but we were both pleasantly surprised. The park has many huge open spaces full of alligators and crocodiles etc. Dotted around were machines where you could buy food for them for 25 cents and the animals seemed to know where these machines where. They did look to be very well looked after and fed, as they were not really that interested if you threw feed towards them. There were also a couple of areas exhibiting other animals and mammals from around the world which were very interesting. Up in ... read more

Jeff and I went to St. Augustine, Florida in early November to celebrate the wedding of one of his former divers. I initially wasn't terribly excited about going to Florida as I thought anything outside Miami would be flat, humid, and full of boring planned communities. My interest was piqued, however, when I cursorily googled St. Augustine and I discovered that it is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the United States and that there was a lot of history there dating back to the 16th century. Everything I read about St. Augustine made the trip more appealing and so I researched things to do and sights to see with more enthusiasm. This entry first records some of our non-touristy experiences over the weekend and then some more touristy things we did. Experiences The Tourist Dollar ... read more