life in the campground at St Augustine

Our campground is at North Beach on the Atlantic - just about 3 miles from the famous Fountain of Youth.  It's an older campground, cut from a palmetto jungle.  The result is that the campsites are very private.  We sit on a barrier island with the Atlantic on one side, and the inlet on the other.  It's really quite special as far as RV campgrounds go!

We arrived here on February 1st and this is our first morning on the Beach... Groundhog's Day, Candlemas, Imbolc, Bridget's Fest..... whatever!  Sorry, but we really don't care about 6 more weeks of winter if this is what winter looks like!

The Bridge of Lions

The oldest bridge is know as the Bridge of Lions, which carries you over the inlet, and onto Anastasia Island (where the State Park with the huge, sand dune beach is located).  It's considered lucky to have your pictures taken with the Lions.... so of course we did!

Behind us, in the old town marina, is this replica of a pirate ship that cruises the inlet periodically, staging pirate  invasions at various places & firing their guns to amuse the tourists.  Last New Years we were here, and this ship "attacked" our campground docks.  After a heated battle with the local pirate police, they retreated - all the while singing "what do you do with a drunken sailor"  It was an experience.

The Fort - Castillo de San Marcos

St Augustine is famous for this very early Spanish fort - in amazing condition considering the amount of action it endured while fending off the British.  The views are amazing.

I was especially fascinated by the ornamentation on the big guns - beautiful sea serpents and this amazing "green man" or "foliate man"  (see the leaves sprouting between his eyes)

 this fish was a positioning handle, but the greenman was simply an ornamentation, serving no real purpose.

early morning walks in St. Augustine - the old town

We love to wander the back alleys of St. Augustine early in the morning - you never know what treasures will be hiding behind the next gate, or garden wall.  The camellias and azelea are in bloom, but we also found bougenvilla in every color, datura, coreopsis, redbud, lantana, pointsetta  and hibiscus and more.  The tiny private gardens are amazing!

this little guy could have been Ivan's twin!  He was a B&B cat.

"fiber art" at the Harn Gallery in Gainesville

We loved the Gainesville Museum of Natural History, and the Art Museum next door..... especially this one huge "quilt"  on display

the piece is titled "Old Man's Cloth" and the artist is an African man well known for his large quilt installations.  But the most amazing fact is that it's not made of fabric

When viewed up close you can see the metal twists joining the pieces together....but even on close examination I didn't realize what the pieces were made of

 

The "fiber" is the metal collars from whiskey bottles or the metal cap-pieces from whiskey bottles; each pierced and threaded with copper wire and joined together.  Amazing!  I didn't find much information on this piece, but guess the quilt was roughly 10 feet x 13 or 14 feet!

ALLIGATORS ALL AROUND!

I have this unexplainable fascination with alligators and reptiles.  I was always the one wanting a stop at the alligator farm or snake ranch..... and the gators at the Paynes Prairie Preserve have been awesome!  even tho' they mostly just lie there in their sunspots.

Last week we went for a walk on the Prairie after a rainfall, and found that the gators were moving around from one pool to another - and we even spotted a couple in the canal/creek.  A short walk later we spotted a couple big ones had migrated up the canal, and were sunning themselves on the sandy bottom of the culvert - a good 20 below the path we were on, and seemed very safely distant from us, considering how steep the sides of the culvert were, and how sandy the soil was.

We continued our walk, and on the return trip we discovered that alligators are alot more agile then I thought!

This little fellow was about 15ft long, and had climbed that bank in less than 10 minutes.  He was now up on the path - where the sun must have been stronger!

I may be fascinated with them, but I don't like them this close without the concrete barriers and fencing!

He's clearly grinning about this.  It must be a favorite stunt for the hapless tourist.  10 minutes later when we checked again he was gone without a trace.

Rainbow Springs Florida

Both Fred and I have many memories of old Florida from the 50's.... exotic gardens, tourist traps with really tacky souvenirs, beautiful other-worldly attractions with alligators and monkeys and snakes.  Most are gone now, but a few have been taken over by the State Park systems and continue to provide some of the entertainment that made these parks so popular.

We went to Rainbow Springs, which was a very popular and quite large water & animal park in the 50's.  The gardens have been adopted by the garden clubs of the area, and the animals all set free..... but what a beautiful park!  It almost was tempting to go for a swim!  The water is a constant 72 degrees!

This would be a beautiful park to visit when everything was in bloom.... but we did see Camellia, azalea, wild begonias, redbuds and magnolia in bloom!  It must be stunning in the spring!