zephyr sunriseadventure as a family

Zeph and Chris checking out the fort

Chris, in his never-ending campsite sleuthing pursuit, found us a spot for five nights at the desirable Anastasia State Park in St Augustine, towards the northeastern part of Florida. We pulled into town after sunset, which we hadn’t done in awhile, and made a wrong turn down a street close to the state park, with a beautiful canopy of untrimmed oak trees which the top of the Moho swiftly trimmed free of charge to the city of St Augustine. We finally pulled into the campground and tucked the Moho into a tiny corner of a site surrounded on three sides by more canopy. The next day we got to explore the park and the city in the daylight. Anastasia State Park is really a pretty campground. The spots are a bit close together, although pretty private with all the plant growth in the park.

Our campsite at Anastasia State Park

There’s a great little food truck just outside of the campground, I believe it’s called Surf Tacos or something like that. It even had an item on the menu called “Lower Trestles” so we felt like we were in good hands. The tacos were pretty tasty!

The taco truck outside of Anastasia State Park

We headed into downtown St Augustine to see what we could see. St Augustine is the oldest continually inhabited European settlement in America. It was home to Henry Flagler, a prominent business and oil man and the founder of the east coast railway in Florida. We first heard his name in the Florida Keys, as the railway he built reached all the way down to Key West. Flagler had a heavy hand in developing the city of St Augustine. He built the Ponce De Leon Hotel, which is now Flagler College, and either paid for the building of, donated land to, or personally designed some of the churches in the downtown area. He had an eye for design and it seems everything he commissioned to build is quite beautiful.
We learned much about Flagler and other interesting characters around town on our Old Town Trolley Tour. We figured this was a good way to get to know the city and be able to hop on and off the trolley when we wanted to get out and look around some more. The trolley drivers were well-educated about the area… we learned about the old graveyard in town that was the sight of mass graves during the yellow fever epidemic. These graves held about 35 people, and if you were the thirty-fifth person in that grave your name and info went on the headstone.
We visited the Fountain of Youth and saw the spot where Spanish conquistador Ponce De Leon came on land in the 1500s. We went to the Pirate Museum (a bit small and a little over-rated but if you LOVE pirates – you know who you are – you’ll probably enjoy it). We visited the oldest wooden schoolhouse in the country.

Z fell asleep on me after visiting the Fountain of Youth

We also went to Castillo de San Marcos, the oldest masonry fort in the continental United States, dating back to 1672. There’s so much history in St Augustine, it’s hard to keep track of it all. The lighthouse in town is beautiful. We ventured up to the top (actually, we took turns because Zeph wasn’t allowed to go up to the top). The view from the top was quite lovely and it was very quiet up there.

The St Augustine Lighthouse

We found a crepe place in town and stopped for a late breakfast one day. The place was super weird, but not in the worst way. They served crepes and Russian food, and had hookahs if you felt like an early morning smoke (we didn’t). The food was pretty tasty actually so the initial “weirdness” impression slowly dissipated as we ate.
On our way out of town we drove through a fun lightning rain storm, heading north to Savannah, Georgia. More on that lovely city next time. Oh, by the way, St Augustine was our last stop in the wonderfully warm state of Florida… it was a bittersweet goodbye!

Someone’s too cool