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| O - Dark 30 sunrise |
We gave the boat a good wash down once we arrived. Marineland was built as a marine studio in the late 30’s and was later the first ocean and dolphin encounter park. Marineland is out in the middle of nowhere right along the Atlantic coast. At one time there were a number of motels, restaurants and marina as part of the complex. Before Sea World they would have as many as 900,000 visitors a year. after Sea World it fell on hard times and all that left are a few buildings and the dolphin tanks which were rebuilt a few years ago and are now in operation. The marina was reopened last year with floating docks and is a nice facility.
Wednesday was another early start, everything was fogged up due to the cooler temperatures, this was the first morning since January when you needed a jacket in the morning, I guess we are seeing the effects of moving North.
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| A little out of focus but these are mosaic tiles on a bridge pillar. |
We had nearly a 2 knot current pushing us along most of the way to St. Augustine. We also are beginning to experience larger tides. We are at the Municipal Marina and will be here for three nights.
We had some issues getting into the dock as once again they wanted to put us in a narrow slip, so after getting that straightened out and turning around we were in a bigger slip with the dock master telling us we may need to move if he would need this spot for a larger boat.
We started off to tour the town of St. Augustine. Our first stop was Castillo de San Marcos, this fortress was started in 1672 so it is one of the oldest standing structures in North America. It was quiet impressive.
There was a tram that did a loop around the town and pointed out places of interest so we decided that this would give us a better understanding of all that there was to see, plus the tickets were good for three days. We enjoyed the ride, know we will plan on all that we want to see tomorrow. Dinner was at the A1A restaurant not far from the marina, we enjoyed the company of Ginny & Craig from Brown Eyed Girl and John & Mary from Mary Francis.
We started off early on Thursday to go to a tour of Flagler Collage that was once the Flagler Hotel. It was completed in 1885 and was built for the very rich people to come to Florida and stay the season. This is the Henry Flagler that we had mentioned before who built the railroad to Key West and then also built other very large hotels along that rail way. The dining in this hotel which is now the cafeteria for the school had Tiffany windows all around and furnishing designed by him as well. We then were taken into the ladies parlor where there was many Tiffany chandeliers that were just beautiful.
Our next tour was of the government house, then onto the oldest jail that was built by Henry Flagler as well, because the original one was to close to his hotel. All in all it was a full day of museums and tours. Oh, forgot to mention that there are a lot of shops in St. Augustine so of course we visited a few of them also.
Friday we too advantage of our tram tickets and went over to the St. Augustine beach and then on to the lighthouse. The lighthouse has 219 steps to the top and the view was fantastic, well worth the climb.
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| Thought some boys would like the old tractor. |
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| St. Augsitne beach. |
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| The view was worth the climb. |
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| Pirate ship shots for our young pirate lover. |
By the time we returned from today’s adventure we had a late lunch, went for a walk and came back to the boat to prepare for tomorrows departure.
Mary & John
Mary & John
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