St. Augustine, Florida

We are now in St. Augustine, the oldest city in America.  Before I go into our activities here let me give you the back story.  I had been working on various routes to loop us through the south so we end up in Nashville the beginning of November where we are visiting with some friends.  My plan was to take us to the gulf coast but hurricane Isaac made us change those plans and go further east into Savannah.  We had already decided to not go deep into Florida on this trip but rather do that another time, most likely then end of next year.  So, looking at the map I figured we would go to Jacksonville and then go west to Tallahassee and then up into Alabama then to Tennessee.   I did my usual research of parks in the Jacksonville area (Trailer Life directory and RV Park Reviews) and decided on a park called Pecan Place RV Park.  It was a few miles outside Jacksonville, got favorable reviews and was fairly new.  Meanwhile I had contacted a former co-worker of mine who lives in Jacksonville and is retired to see if we could meet up.  I told him where we were staying and he said that it was out by the airport.  I was not aware of this so I went to Google maps satellite view and expanded the aerial map of the park and sure enough, there is the Jacksonville airport 1 mile away.  The RV park is on a direct line with the main runway, so you are either going to get noise from planes landing or taking off.  Based on the map, too close.  My friend recommended going to St. Augustine as it was fairly close.  I had thought it was farther but actually the St. Augustine RV park is only 38 miles from Jacksonville.  So here we are in St. Augustine.  It is a nice RV park amongst the trees and only 6 miles from the historic district.

First outing was a visit to the World Golf Hall of Fame.  Fran was not interested so I did this one on my own.  They have built a beautiful village where the Hall of Fame is located but sadly it appears the economy has affected the project.  Many buildings for offices and/or stores are empty and planned developments have not been built.  The Hall of Fame was informative and enjoyable.  As part of your admission they give you a chance to hit a ball onto an island green 135 yards away.  I had the distance but was a little left, so in the water it went!

Here are some pictures from the Hall of Fame

  Hall of Fame building

The wall of members

I thought this was cool, the Masters Trophy

This is my fourth hall of fame, baseball, football, hockey and now golf.  So far the best is the baseball hall of fame.

On Sunday we took a drive into the historic district.  As it was Fran’s birthday we had reservations for lunch and went early to walk around the shops and sights in the old city.

Neat old streets with lots of bars, restaurants and shops.

The oaks with Spanish moss are just beautiful.

We had lunch at the Columbia Restaurant, Spanish tapas.

It was hot and somewhat humid so after lunch we headed back to the air conditioned comfort of our RV.  We most likely will do another outing or two into the district before we leave.

Today I was able to meet up with my former co-worker and we had a great lunch and had time to catch up.  It had be 6 years since we last saw each other.  Time flies when you are retired!