MORE OF HISTORICAL ST AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA

Hello again- We spent Monday and Tuesday of this week in St. Augustine doing our last of the sight seeing there. We hopped the Tour Trolley again to check out the Dow Museum of Historic Homes which features a city block that has nine early colonial houses dating from 1790 to 1910 which have been restored for display. When leaving that block of houses through the opening house and gate, I asked about a purple plant that seemed to be all around the grounds. The lady in charge was so pleasant that she readily asked if I would like a few slips. I carried them around for the rest of the day, but they did stay wet and I do believe that they will survive. She said that they are called the Purple Queen and are of the wandering Jew variety. Since I had not added live plants to our life style, I guess this will be my start. I do miss my flower bed of perennials. The first of the village of houses was built in 1572 soon after St. Augustine was founded. Most of the houses that escaped destruction from fire, hurricanes, rot and termites over the years were destroyed in the attack by the English in 1702. Notice how this house is leaning!! A winter resident of St. Augustine, Amos Spear, built this house in 1877. During this time Henry Flagler bought up property to the west of his location and began filling in the creek and surrounding areas to build his magnificent hotels. The lean of this house was not caused by poor construction, but rather by the fact that Flagler had filled in a nearby lake. Thus in the 1940's a hurricane and flood washed away the sand causing the lean. This is some of the furniture on display in these homes.

We finished Monday "shopping", rather wandering through

the boutiques on St. George Street that is closed to all traffic. It was fun, but since we are not in need and do not have space, we did not spend money. After finishing on St. George Street, we decided to drive over the new Lion Bridge to the island and check out the location of the Light House for the next day. We found the traffic getting to the bridge terrible in the afternoon. We were sitting at a crosswalk that had people crossing, the last was a young woman running across pushing a baby in a stroller. It was a good thing that Gary had his foot firmly on the brake pedal as

this piggy lady came up from behind quickly and pulled right in front of us in the left turn lane. Mind you this is a cross walk that she pulled in to!

We also toured the Old Jail which was paid for by Henry Flagler because he did not want the original jail that was located too close to the new hotels that he was building. The city would not move the old jail so he gave them $10,000 to build a new one. It was built with an attached home for the sheriff and his family and painted pink to blend in with the Spanish Renaissance style that he was using in the city.

This is the back view with the house on the left. The front view also had a porch for the family on the house side of the structure. The city has night tours of this jail because of it's claim to fame as being haunted. But we did not take one of these tours. Can't imagine that we missed much!

The gallows was right behind the jail and was used for eight legal hangings in it's history and probably many illegal hangings.

We also checked out Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum located in the Castle Warden. The "Castle" was once a hotel owned by author, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. It was originally a Moorish Revival style mansion, built in 1887 as a winter home by millionaire, William Warden. Mr. Warden had thirteen children and each had their own bedroom, but there was only one bathroom in the whole mansion. The wooden interior of the mansion was destroyed by fire, and later restored to house the hotel, where Ripley had stayed as a guest. Then the Ripley family purchased it after his death in 1948 to house his first museum which they opened in 1950. One items on display is this ferris wheel made from erector sets at 1/12 scale of the original Ferris Wheel built in 1893 for the World's Columbian Exposition. Rick, I knew that you especially would enjoy this. It stands 21.3 feet high and weighs 1200 pound, is made from 19,507 pieces, contains 15,560 nuts and bolts and took 1239 hours to construct! How is that for detail?

Out side of Ripley's we checked out what could be our new home??

It is a four room home inside of a redwood log.

From there we went on to the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument

which was built during the years 1672 thru 1695, of tabby walls made of coquina rock found so plentifully in this area. It replaced nine successive wooden structures that protected St. Augustine from the date of it's founding. And the history goes on and on!

Gary walked the walls and checked out the view from there! We ate lunch at the Santa Maria Restaurant in the bay

and fed the birds and fish from openings beside the tables next to the windows on the bay side of the building. From there we finally went on over the Lion Bridge again to the Island to go through the St. Augustine Light House and Museum.

It was by far the cleanest and largest light house that we have ever been in. I climbed three sections of steps and returned to the bottom because my knee was bothering me so much that day. I don't suppose that it could have been because of the four days of intense touring?? Gary was having trouble also, but he made it up all nine sections, totaling 219 steps. This is still a functioning light house and the view was magnificent! Looking one direction you could see the entire historic part of St. Augustine!

On our way home, we drove along highway A1A, going both north one day and south another day, to check out the beach homes. Magnificent!! I can't imagine living that close during a hurricane though!

Stay with us and we will bring you up to speed on our stay near Brunswick GA. I do believe that we might get to the beach near there!