After four years of planning, our first week on the road came together remarkably smoothly. Destinations were decided years ago, and campground reservations made up to a year in advance. But there are some things you can’t predict that far out, including health of your loved ones and the weather.
We had originally planned on driving from Denver to Florida in late December, then flying to spend the holidays with family in Toronto, and then flying back on Jan. 9 in time to start our RVing trip in St. Augustine.
But my mother’s health meant we were driving, not flying, and left us with a campground reservation further south than we wanted to go. On Tuesday, we left Skidaway Island State Park in Georgia and headed to Tomoka State Park in Ormand Beach, about 45 minutes south of St. Augustine.
In retrospect, we should have canceled the Tomoka reservation and stayed another day at Skidaway. That’s because the weather had turned really nasty. We left amid high winds and tornado warnings. The first hour of our drive was rough as winds buffeted the trailer relentlessly. Gusts of winds hit surprisingly hard, necessitating steady hands to keep us in our lane.
The winds slowed down a bit after we crossed into Florida, our eighth state, and passed Jacksonville. By the afternoon, the rains had also subsided.
Tomoka State Park is a beautiful state park, with ample vegetation separating sandy sites. We had just enough time to park the RV, connect our hook-ups and grill some chicken for dinner, before the rains returned. We settled in to watch a movie and headed to sleep to the rhythmic sounds of raindrops on our rooftop.
The following morning, we tackled a 4-mile nature walk to Tomoka Point where the Timucuan Native American village known as Nocoroco once stood. We barely had time to eat lunch and pack up before our 1 pm check-out time. Showers would have to wait.
The drive back north to St. Augustine was uneventful. We listened to a few Florida history podcasts to get a sense for what awaited us in America’s oldest city. But the professor on the podcast droned on monotonously for 40 minutes, reciting date after date with little context.
We had snagged reservations at Anastasia State Park, one of more popular and busiests parks in the state. After a luxuriously long, hot shower, we grilled steak and salmon for dinner, and then headed into the city.
From mid-November through the month of January, St. Augustine puts on quite a show of holiday lights. More than 3 million white lights adorn the historical center of the city, and businesses stay open longer to accommodate the tourists.
I imagine Christmas in Florida seems somewhat surreal. Jingle Bells or White Christmas just doesn’t pair well with palm trees and tropical drinks. But on this night, baby, it was cold outside. We viewed the lights in down puffy coats and hats. Still, the display was beautiful.
Despite its old world charm, St. Augustine has a thick touristy veneer to it. There are constantly trollers and tours shepherding visitors along the streets with a constant hum of tour guide commentary. While the streets and buildings have a colonial feel, they’re mostly hawking t-shirts, souvenirs or overpriced dinners.
Nonetheless, we dutifully played tourist, and headed to the Castillo de San Marcos the following morning. The fort built in the late 1600 is one of the oldest man-made landmarks in North America. Built by the Spanish to defend the city and the fleet of ships bringing gold, silver and spices from the New World, it has stood the test of time. Made from a shell-limestone composite that is found in only a few places in the world, the fort had never lost a battle. The walls absorbed cannonfire instead of shattering. The site is maintained by the National Park Service and the displays do a good job of explaining life at the fort through Spanish, British and American occupation.
Across from the Castillo, are the Colonial Quarter and Pirate Museum. Owned by Pat Croce, the former GM of the Philadelphia 76ers, the Pirate Museum was originally opened in Key West. That made it a long trek for school field trips, so he moved it to St. Augustine. We opted to skip the Pirate Museum and visit the Colonial Quarter instead. This living museum has demonstrations of blacksmithing and leatherworking, with entertaining and informative commentary from a tour guide. The grounds include one of the oldest buildings in St. Augustine and a reproduction of a Spanish caravel ship, the kind used by Columbus when he “discovered” America. It’s surprisingly small. The tour finishes with the firing of a colonial-era cannon, all gun powder, no cannon balls. Afterward we climbed the watchtower to get a birds-eye view of the Castillo and St. Augustine.
Mrs. 123 was dismayed to learn that all those years teaching kids in Virginia that Jamestown was the first settlement in the U.S. was patently false. “That’s the British version of history,” our tour guide Bert told us.
Jamestown was founded in 1607. St. Augustine dates back to 1565.
The sun had come out a bit and coaxed us into a hike mood. We drove about 10 miles north of the city to Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve. The reserve sits along the Tolomato and Guana River estuaries, and features more than 10 miles of trails. Unfortunately, the recent heavy rains left the first trail we chose impassable. But the wildlife we saw along the way made up for it.
Early on, we spotted a gopher tortoise, who scurried into his den as I tried to get closer. Then we saw about a dozen armadillos. They seemed oblivious to our presence as they noisily rooted out in the leaves for food. I guess when you’re armor-plated you don’t have to worry about being stealthy.
Days: 6
Miles traveled: 1147
Next stop: Cape Canaveral, Florida
