Our first stop on our Full time adventure!
We are staying in Anastasia State Park, St. Augustine Beach.
We’ve played in St. Augustine many times. Oldest continually inhabited city in the U.S. (1565). The St. John’s River runs through it – unusual in that it flows south to north. It’s a favorite.
We are pooped so we spent the day puttering around the coach, getting everything stored and better organized. Had a long nap. After dinner this evening, we wandered to the beach. Oh, it was glorious! Look at these photos of pre sunset. What a renewing way to end our first real day of retirement!
Good evening! We met Dave Gaddes (Rob’s best man) and Bin Qua, his wife, for breakfast in St Augustine Beach. We brought them back to the coach for a few minutes before we had to head back to their home in Palm Coast. Dave’s 91 yr old Mom lives with them and has severe dementia. He has a 4 hr window each Thursday for a caregiver to come in and stay with her so he has a chance to run errands, etc. Great visit.
Rob and I went back into St Augustine and did the self guided tour and ranger talk at the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument – we both got in free with Rob’s lifetime Park Pass. The current senior pass is $80. The cannon demo is only on the weekends, so we didn’t experience it. The tour was well worth doing. It was built by the Spanish in 1672 as a masonry fort to withstand fires and seiges. There had been 8 previous wooden forts that burned down and/or were in bad position for fresh water. This masonry (coquina=shell and sand compressed into a stone) passed hands many times but always with a treaty / peacefully. It was never stormed and taken.
Then we literally crossed the street (A1A) and wandered Old Towne. We’ve been here quite a few times, so we were looking to do things we had never done before. We went to the Cathedral Basilica of St Augustine because I wanted to see the stained glass. Lovely. We went to the Lightner Museum briefly. We wandered around, got ice cream, and then decided to come back to the coach. Weather forecast had rain off and on, getting more severe throughout the weekend.
We came back and researched and booked a campsite outside Savannah, Georgia. I’m kind of amazed to find one for the long weekend. We will depart tomorrow and stay there 3 nights.
We decided to keep our ‘date’ and went to the park beach again about 6pm. We saw a nasty bit of weather heading our way, but we had a wonderful hour at the very quiet beach. Ahhhh!
Came back to the coach, made a light dinner, and we are both researching some coach related elements with the TV on in the background. This will likely become a very common routine.
Last night, it poured rain and we awoke to ponds all around our camp site and campground. We expect the same tonight. But we have plenty of time in the morning before checkout to dump our black and grey water tanks, fill our water tank, drop off garbage, and get underway before checkout deadline of 1pm. We have about a 3 hr drive north to Savannah. The plan is to get there before dark and get settled before dinner. We will check in from Savannah.
