St. Augustine was founded in 1565 and is one of the oldest surviving towns in America. It was a struggling Spanish outpost in Spain's American empire. The town now is now a popular tourist attraction and vacation destination. It still has a lot of "old world charm" however with many historic buildings, restaurants, and things to do. We visited St. Augustine about 5 years ago and felt it was worth a return trip.
Our first stop was Anastasia State park on Anastasia Island just off the Atlantic Coast in St Augustine. It is essentially a beach park with 4 miles of beaches, hiking trails and a campground with 139 sites with water and electric hook ups. The park is also the site of a quarry where Native Americans and then Spanish slaves and prisoners hewed out building blocks of soft shellstone called Coquina with hand tools for over 300 years. The blocks were used to construct many of the structures and fortifications in St Augustine that are still standing today.
The weather was partly cloudy with fairly strong winds today. It was not a good day for a beach walk but we did see the beach from a boardwalk overlook. The water was also rough and the waves actually looked more like the Pacific coast than the Atlantic. t looks like a nice beach, that even despite the wind there were a few beach goers and fisherman out there.
After checking out the campground in the park (not designed for medium to large RVs) we drove down to the south end of the island to visit the Fort Matanzas National Monument.
Fort Matanzas is a small fort built by the Spanish in 1742 to protect the "back door" to St. Augustine, Matanzas Inlet, 14 miles south of St. Augustine that allowed access to the Matanzas River. Over its long history, it was occupied by the Spanish, the British, Spain again and finally the United States. It fell into disrepair after it was finally abandoned but was restored in the 1920s and designated as a national monument.
The restored fort is actually just across the inlet on Rattlesnake Island a small island just across the inlet. Access to the fort is by a small boat (35 people) operated by the national park service. Yo get a boarding pass at the visitor center and are accompanied by a park service ranger for a 45 minute - one hour tour of the fort. It was an interesting visit and another glimpse of early Florida history.
It was then time for dinner so we travelled back into old St. Augustine to one of our favorite Florida Restaurants, the Columbia Restaurant. We first stumbled on the Columbia on our first visit to St. Augustine five years ago. The first Columbia was founded in Ybor City, now a Tampa suburb, in 1905. There are now 2 or 3 Columbia restaurants in the Tampa Bay Clearwater area and one here in St. Augustine. We had another great Spanish/Cuban meal in an excellent setting.
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