Florida, Jacksonville - Sunday, May 19, 2019 - Tour of Old St. Augustine

We’ve been to St. Augustine before and we are looking forward to another visit today.  In 1513 Ponce de Leon claimed Florida for Spain. Pedro Mendez and 700 soldiers and colonists founded St. Augustine in September 1565 making it the oldest continually occupied European settlement in North America.  The town was burned and rebuilt several times, the last time was in 1702 so none of the buildings in current St. Augustine are any older than that.


On our way we crossed over the Dames Point Bridge.  It is 2 miles long and 175 feet high.  My pictures don’t do it justice.

We parked in the very ornate parking garage across from the visitor’s center.  This garage is within walking distance to everything in old town St. Augustine.  Cost per day is $16.

The visitor’s center isn’t nearly so ornate and unfortunately needs a little scrub.

The inside of the visitor’s center is much nicer than the outside.

You would be surprised at how many people try to take their big trucks and SUVs down these narrow brick streets.

This cute bed and breakfast is called the Hemmingway House, not because Hemmingway has ever been there, but because Hemmingway is the owner’s favorite author.

Our destination for lunch is Harry’s Restaurant, the red building.

We opted for outside seating.

Our appetizer, bacon wrapped scallops on fried grit cakes, was amazing.  Greg usually shies away from grits, but he seemed to like them fried.

I had the blackened shrimp salad and Greg had a chicken chef salad.  Both were great choices.

Old St. Augustine is right on the Atlantic Intercostal waterway, a continuous navigation channel that begins in Virginia and ends in Key West.  It provides a route for commercial and recreational vessels that aren’t able to travel safely in the open ocean.

The Bridge of Lions drawbridge spans the intercostal waterway connecting St. Augustine to Anastasia Island.  It was completed in 1927 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

As we approached, the bridge was closed but we could hear the announcement that the bridge would open in one minute.

The bridge went up and a large sailboat made its way through.

This pirate ship in the marina is an eye catcher.  It is used for tours.

This beautiful building served as the Governor’s House from 1710-1812.

I was hoping we could get into this building for a walk through, but everything was closed up for some construction.  This was previously the very elite Ponce de Leon Hotel.  It is currently the main building of Flagler College.  The hotel was built by Henry Flagler, co-founder of Standard Oil.  It was completed in 1887.  Tiffany and Company provided the many stained glass windows in the dining room.  Electricity was supplied by Edison Electric Company.  It was one of the first buildings to be wired for electricity from the onset.  It helped that Edison was a friend of Flagler.  I read that when the hotel opened Flagler had to hire special people to just turn on the lights in the rooms because many of the guests were afraid of electricity and wouldn’t do it themselves. 

The beautiful windows in the dining room are hard to see from the outside because they are now covered with Plexiglas.  I think they would still be very beautiful from the inside.

We were able to see a few of the special artistic touches up close.

St. George Street is the main street in Old St. Augustine.

 We visited a gourmet popsicle store for dessert – I had champagne mango.  Neither the outside nor the inside were picture worthy, but this stairway inside was very cute. 

Lots of artist alleys off of St. George Street.

Many of the buildings are built of the same material as this wall, I think it is called “coquina”.

Florida, Jacksonville - Saturday, May 18, 2019 - Boneyard and Black Rock Beaches

As we drive to our destination this morning I am a little apprehensive.  I’ve seen a few pictures of these beaches that have made me want to see them.  But, the reviews I read have included remarks that the trail to the desolate beach is really long, there is a steep grade to get down to the beach and getting back out is really hard.  But I keep thinking we are really in pretty good shape, we can do this.

Lots of bridges and water on our way out.  Mayport Naval Station is a busy place this morning.

We got lucky and snagged one of the 12 or so parking spaces at the Black Rock Trailhead.  The trail is packed sand with lots of trees shading overhead.  It’s plenty wide for two to walk side by side without brushing up against the foliage.  I thought it was awesome.  It’s about 1/3 mile to get to the beach.  This is supposed to be a habitat of a really colorful bird, the painted bunting.  We didn’t spot any of those.

Lots of saw palmetto and ferns under the trees.  The foliage was so thick that you couldn’t tell what was in there – not a walk to take at night.  But, the beach would be amazing during a full moon.

This is the view coming off the trail – took my breath away.  There is indeed a little steep part to get down to the beach, it is about 3 feet high but it has enough of an incline that it’s not a problem at all, even going back up.  A little more challenging is the big tree trunk you have to go over but that didn’t stop us either.

The “boneyard” of bleached live oaks has been created by erosion of the shoreline over the years.  Our timing was perfect today, we got here at low tide.  At high tide most of this driftwood is covered, only the upper limbs are seen from the water and you can’t walk around.

The black rock part of the beach is made up of a rare organic soil formation that can be found in very few parts of the world.  It is made up of compressed sand and decayed leaves from the shoreline.  The black rocks are not visible during high tide.

We were surprised that the tidal pools in the black rocks didn’t contain more than just a few shells.  I guess the fish are smart enough to get out before they get caught.  If you look closely at this shot of the rocks you can tell that they are indeed comprised of some kind of vegetation.

In the background you can see the bridge to Amelia Island.  I originally thought I wanted to make that our destination for today, I’m so glad I choose these beautiful secluded beaches.  The only other people we saw were about 6 college age boys who were busy fishing and 4 other couples.

Wildlife picture of the day, a live sand crab.  Looks like someone stepped right on its front door.

This little sand crab didn’t make it.

We stopped at the Sand Dollar Restaurant for lunch.

Our table looked out over the water.

The ferry was just next door.

I had the shrimp po’boy and Greg had the fish club.  We had leftovers for supper tonight.