Day 23: Jacksonville, FL

Stop 19:  Jacksonville, FL

The rain ended at about 7:00 PM last night and this morning dawned clear and sunny. Tropical Storm Andrea has moved on ahead of us.  At the rate that we're moving, I guess. we should be looking for Bubba (next storm has to be a B male - I dub it Bubba) to catch up with us.

We had a nice drive to Jacksonville (about 164 miles) and, once we were set up, took a side trip to St. Augustine.  On the way out to the shore, we passed through this beautiful, dense wood.

Upon reaching St Augustine, we had our first view of the Atlantic Ocean over the ramparts of the Castillo de San Marcos.

I turned 62 in April and immediately went out to get my $10 America The Beautiful (National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands) Lifetime Pass.  I expected to be able to enter all of these places by just flashing the card.  What I didn't expect was the "go to the front of the line feature".  At the Grand Canyon, the line of cars was a mile long but they had a separate line for people with passes.  We drove right in.  Today, we went to the end of the long line and, when I pulled the card out of my wallet, a Park Service employee rushed to my side and escorted us to the door.  Pretty cool.

Here are a few pictures of the Castillo (built in 1672):



After the Castillo, we visited the (very touristy) Old Town. 

I was kind of amazed to see the shells in the stone that some of the walls were made of:

Oldest wooden schoolhouse in America:



The RV park that we are in is huge and very nice.  It even has a small café.  We had dinner there and took the following pictures from our table:

There were turtles everywhere (5 in this picture):



This fountain is probably a device for aerating the lake:



There are RV sites all the way around the large lake (called Flamingo Lake):

Here's our daily trailer photo:

-J-