February 11, 2012

I forgot to mention that south of Macon, GA we stopped to eat at a little local restaurant. They served very thin, kind of lacy, fried things that people seemed to really like. One came with Ed's meal but he didn't particularly care for it. Come to find out it is made with a thin cornbread batter which is drizzled onto a grill with a lot of grease on it. I would guess it is the south's equivalent to our elephant ears.

We spent the day in St. Augustine, FL. It is crowded with few places to park. We paid $10. to park all day in a garage at the visitor's center. First we toured the fort, Castillo de San Marcos. It is the largest seaport fort we have visited. The walls are made of concino which is like concrete but made with crushed seashells. They said that this is much stronger than concrete.

There was a cannon there that could shoot 1.2 miles. It was BIG. The fort sits on Mantanza Bay but you can see the ocean from the fort. At one point about 1,400 people were in it for 50 days while there was a siege by some army. The Spanish, British and Americans all used the fort which was built by the Spanish.

We also saw pieces of eight. We have read about them but never seen any.

We walked all through the old, historic part of town. If you can overlook the ticky tacky shops many of the buildings are old. What we found most beautiful was Flagler College which is partially housed in a mansion that Henry Flagler, the railroad/land magnate built. He then turned it into a college.

This is a dwarf date palm tree but does not produce dates. The taller palm trees are the ones most frequently seen here.

We also went through the Lightner Museum which is housed in another of his mansion/hotels. We saw a petrified dinosaur egg, a few Louis Tiffany pieces, and a lot of antique furniture, musical instruments, dishes, etc. It has a varied assortment of very nice articles.

There was also an Egyptian child mummy there.

After walking all day, we walked all over an outlet mall next to our motel. Then we decided to walk 1/2 mile to a restaurant to eat. We were pooped.