The Oldest City in the USA

Since the girls didn’t make the finals rounds for day two, Kris and I decided we would drive up to St. Augustine for a little sightseeing. I know they have the old Spanish fort and I also thought it would be cool to see the Fountain of Youth. And I thought they would have a few other things to do there that we would just be able to do on a whim once we got there. I looked it up and found something about the fort, punched it into the Garmin, and we were on our way!

It turned out to be about a two hour drive, but I figured since we didn’t have anything else to do, it wouldn’t really matter. I thought that I would try a “shortcut” and take an earlier exit to get to the fort. I was reading something about taking a ferry to it, which I don’t remember at all (I remember visiting the fort when I was about seven and there was no ferry involved). But I thought that maybe they had changed something. It turns out the fort I had looked up was Fort Matanzas, however the fort I was thinking of was the Castillo de San Marcos. I followed the directions and we drove past the turn for Fort Matanzas. It was sort of in the middle of nowhere and I thought, this can’t be right, so we kept going, and I asked Kris to look it up on her phone. It took about another half an hour to get there, but we finally arrived at Castillos de San Marcos in the historic district of St. Augustine.

The tour was about what you would expect. There were people dressed up in 16th century Spanish army uniforms who gave a 15-20 minute speech/presentation of the fort and the duties the soldiers performed there, then they fired off their cannon. After that we got to wander around, in and out of rooms. It was interesting that it was actually an active fort up until the end of the Spanish-American war, and that there were (5) different flags that have flown over the fort since it was built.

When we were done with walking around the fort (you can only look around so long, and I don’t think that Kris or her aunt found it as interesting as I did) we took a walk across the street to what looked like a small, narrow alley, that was filled with little shops in what looked like 18th century buildings. We walked in and out looking at things. We got Sarah a couple of trinkets in a Native American (aka First Nation) shop specializing in turquoise and silver jewelry. We bought her some spiritual stones that were supposed to bring her good luck.

When we were done walking around the shops we moved about a mile up the road to the official Fountain of Youth. 

 
(Interestingly, this spot was also featured in Expedition Unknown’s episode on The Secret and buried treasure in America). There wasn’t a whole lot to do here, but we did go in and get a small Dixie cup of water from the Fountain of Youth (Do I look younger?).

It was actually a little "sulfury" smelling and didn't taste all that good.  But since life expectancy in Europe at the time of Ponce de Leon was only something like 35-40, and the natives in Florida were quite a bit older, so they figured it had to be the water.  

There was also a planetarium show that depicted what it would have been like for Ponce De Leon to navigate by the stars to the New World. When that was done we took a slow walk around the park. There is an active excavation going on where they are exploring a native settlement that was actually on that property 400-500 years ago. 

When we were done, of course they have you “exit thru a gift shop”. Nothing but cheap trinkets, so we didn’t purchase anything.  Maybe I should have bottled up some of that young water for later on.

If we had more time, I could have spent the entire day going around St. Augustine. We didn’t even go to the Pirate Treasure Museum, or the Lightner Museum. We had to get to my parents’ house for dinner and it was a good 90 minute drive to get there. Add to it that I was lost as far as which roads to take to get there, and we had a long drive ahead of us. Maybe that will be on a list of things to do on future trips to FL.