South Florida!! St. Augustine

Castillo de San Marcos

We left S. Carolina and made a run for St. Augustine Florida on the East Coast. It is a beautiful city and hails to be the oldest settlement in the US. This proved to be the Northernmost outpost of the Spanish holdings in the new world. We visited a beautiful fort, Castillo de San Marcos that was built in 1565 to protect the Spanish interests in the area. It's right on the intracoastal waterway.

It was an amazing structure not only for it's age and number of different forces to occupy it (Spanish, English, Confederate, Union, etc) , but the fact that it was made of blocks of coquino- or limestone with shells in it. It's extremely well preserved and maintained by the National Park Service (great place to use our NPS passes and for the kids get their Passports stamped!!)

Our campground was on Vilano Is., 1mile East of St. Augustine. The sites were lovely sand, under palm trees. The kids had the most fun perfecting their snorkel technique in the heated pool.

We left St. Augustine on Jan. 4 and stopped at the Kennedy Space  Visitors Center. It was an impressive place once you got past the expensive entrance fee. The two big hits were the space shuttle simulation and the IMAX movie Hubble, about the space shuttle and Hubble telescope findings! Truly an amazing feat for humans.  Makes you really wonder if there is anybody else out there!