An extra day in St. Augustine

Jennifer with RVRoof.com called us on Friday while we were walking around St. Augustine to tell us that they were going to need another day on the roof.  The polar vortex that was occurring across most of the country with temperatures at record lows also caused their shipments to get delayed.  The material needed to complete the top coat on the roof had not come in and Jennifer drove north while her supplier drove south so she could pick up the top coat material.  (We found out later she had to drive all the way from Green Cove Springs, FL, to Macon, GA.)

Fortunately, we were able to stay at the same hotel, for the same low rate, and in the same room, for another night.  The weather was cold and windy again so we spent most of the day Saturday just watching football games or reading in our room. 

We did go out for dinner to the Sunset Grille that was located just a couple of blocks down the street.  I had seen advertised that they had "award-winning" clam chowder so we had to check that out.  We both had a cup of the chowder.  It was very good but not as good as the New England clam chowder we had last year when we were in the Northeast.  We also split a shrimp combination dinner of 12 shrimp that were served blackened, grilled, and fried.  This was delicious also.

After our third night in the hotel, we were ready to be back home in the RV.  The hotel was O.K. for the price.  It was clean and comfortable and had free breakfast of cereal, toast, and pastries.  But by the last day, we were glad to be leaving.

Since we had a couple of hours before driving back to pick up the motorhome, we drove south a few miles to Fort Matanzas, a National Monument.  The word "matanzas" is Spanish for slaughters.  The river was named this because of the slaughters of the French by the Spanish in maintaining control of Florida when St. Augustine was established.

The one weakness to St. Augustine and the Castillo de San Marcos was this inlet to the south along the Matanzas river.

In 1742, almost 200 years after St. Augustine had been founded and almost 50 years after Castillo de San Marcos had been completed, the Spanish constructed Fort Matanzas to further protect St. Augustine from other intruders.

After its completion, Fort Matanzas successfully prevented an attack on St. Augustine by blocking the British from the south.

The National Park Service operates a ferry (for free) that will take you across the river to the fort but we didn't have enough time to take the ferry.  I got another stamp in my National Park passport book and we headed back to the car that was surrounded by more of those big, long-branched Florida trees.

I  wonder how old some of these trees are?

After leaving Fort Matanzas, we drove across the street to Crescent Beach.  The weather had been so cold and windy while we were staying in St. Augustine that we never went to the beach even though the hotel was right across the street from the beach.  We drove to a beach access and enjoyed the views for a few minutes on this nice sunny and WARM day.

The tide was coming in,

but there were a few people walking on the beach.

We stood there on the boardwalk and just enjoyed the view for a few minutes more before leaving to go pick up the motorhome.  I experimented with the Sepia setting which makes the photo look very old.

After leaving the beach, we drove to RVRoof.com to pick up the motorhome.  It was still in their shop when we arrived so we could climb up on their scaffolds to inspect the roof.  As far as we could tell, it looked great.  Then, Chuck pulled the motorhome out of their shop so we could try all the rooftop equipment (satellite, air conditioners, radio, and TV antenna) and they all worked fine.  The real test will be when we get our first rain which was predicted for later in the week.

Since we had not found any RV parks near St. Augustine that we liked, we decided to just go back to Wilderness RV Park in Silver Springs.  We knew we would have to drive the car back to St. Augustine on Tuesday for Chuck's dentist appointment; but it was only about a 90 minute drive and we preferred staying at the nicer and less expensive Wilderness RV Park until we go to the Tampa RV show later in the month.