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the fort in St Augustine May 14, 2019 – St. Augustine to Ft. Lauderdale, FL – 368 miles
Even from the earliest of hours of the day, it was off to a “great” start (yeah, right) . . . each of us had woken up all night long from the window treatment at the hotel not covering the bright lights at the pool outside our window. We kept thinking it was after sunrise, even at 2 and 3 am. Little did we know that it was just a sampling of the crazy things we’d face as the day progressed.
Last year, Pam had found an old hotel certificate at our Mom’s house, so Claire put on her hotel charm to use it to pay for our hotel. The hotel clerk discovered it was issued in Nov. 2000. Believe it or not, they still honored it – Score! That left us with a $16 hotel bill!
We headed out to the historical area of St. Augustine, the oldest settlement in the U.S., hoping to see some of the famous places. Our good luck at the hotel didn’t last. We couldn’t see the Fountain of Youth without buying expensive all day passes at
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part of the old town the park. Well, we’ll just have to age gracefully like everybody else. After finally finding a place that was just $2.50/hr to park (not $15 like we kept seeing), we walked around and saw the fortress, the Old Spanish Trail Zero Mile Marker, the Oldest Wooden School House, and the City Gate. We even took a stroll down the main street of the Old Town and Pam stopped at the Old Drugstore to get a selfie with a man sitting on the bench. After that, we drove to the St. Augustine Lighthouse. We were going to go look at it, but they wanted to charge us more than $50 just to walk up to it. We passed on that and made pictures from the road. Boy, you could drop a lot of $$ in St. Augustine if you’re not careful. Susan received and email from her friend, Becky Crawford, who told us the name of the castle that we saw last night at dinner. It’s called the Otttis Castle and, yes, it does have 3 “t”s. (here’s the
link ). Thanks, Becky!!
In Daytona, we drove on the beach for a short bit.
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mile marker 0 for the Old Spanish trail. we took that trail for part of the cross country trip We headed down the coast to see the Ponce de Leon lighthouse (the 2
nd tallest lighthouse in the U.S.). No sooner did we get out of the van to make pictures and we were overcome by hoards of black bugs all over us, all in the air, all over the van, EVERYWHERE!!!!! We couldn’t even get back in the van without letting a bunch of them in with us!!!! Yuck!!! From the moment we left the lighthouse, bugs pelted our windshield and the farther we went the worse it got. We couldn’t see out the windshield anymore and we wanted to stop, but we didn’t want to get out with the bugs. Although we wanted to pee, we didn’t dare stop with all those bugs. Soon, it was nearly impossible to see . . . not only from the bug guts on the windshield, but the sheer number of bugs in the air in front of us. It was getting impossible to see, but that just meant there were even more BUGS!!!!! At some points, it was just like driving through a snow blizzard only it black bugs hitting the windshield instead of snow. Yes, thousands of bugs hitting
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gate to the city the windshield per second sounding just like sleet and it was quite like being in a Biblical plague, a “bug”agedden Then it started to rain, but we were afraid to turn on the windshield wipers. What miniscule amount of vision we could be all lost with one swipe of the wiper but we finally had to buckle under the pressure of heavy rain and use the wiper fluid non-stop with the wipers on high to get some semblance of sight through the mess. (Oh, and by the way, we need more wiper fluid . . . ) After driving about 45 mins in the rain, our windshield was mostly clean, but as soon as the rain stopped . . . guess what? The bugs returned, and with a vengeance. Because of the bugs, we couldn’t stop at the Kennedy Space Center; they were still everywhere. Claire decided to google, “Why are there so many stupid bugs in Florida right now?” and found out that these are actually called “Love Bugs” (it’s a funny story as to how they get their
name ) Way down the road, when the bug population was beginning to dwindle, but still there, mind you, we took
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Pam and an old man taking a selfie our chances and got out to see a large conch shell in Port St. Lucie.
Florida’s toll roads won’t let you use cash or credit cards, only their own Sun Passes, so we went on a mission to find a Sun Pass. Did you know that Florida has more toll roads that any other state in the U.S.? Once we finally found a place, Claire had a time getting it set up . . . do they really want tourists in Florida????
We had to wait for the draw bridge to let us into Palm Beach, but then we visited the Breakers, several fancy homes, and Mar-a-Lago. $$ Money, money, money $$ There we were with our bug-plastered van, driving through opulent neighborhoods of mansions. The Beverly Hillbillies have returned.
From Palm Beach, we drove on to Del Rey, where we ate supper, and drove through more enormous mansions (no more like palaces), in our Beverly Hillbilly get up. Yes, this place has $$, as well, we even saw a Rolls Royce.
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