St. Augustine, FL

The oldest city in America. We love history so what better place to start our American Adventure, right? We drove out of Georgia on September 2, 2017. The night before we had a small gathering filled with tears and hugs. The last two weeks have been filled with good byes. I will elaborate on all our good bye gatherings in another post; let’s just say we are blessed to be loved by so many amazing friends.

Back to St. Augustine… we arrived Saturday. The trip down was fun, it was the first time I had actually be in the RV while it was in motion! That’s right I decided to live in an RV (bought it online) with my family for 2 years and still hadn’t been in it on the road. You see we just sold our SUV a few days before we ‘moved’. I would be the one driving the SUV while Chris was driving The Falcon (nickname for Millennium Falcon) while towing Roque One (the Jeep). Anyway, it’s a smooth ride but we did hit a few ‘bumps in the road’. The drivers side window decided to turn outward while we were on the highway. Chris couldn’t see behind us so if you happen to be driving down 75 on Saturday heading to your Labor Day holiday vacation and you saw a lady hanging out the window with a blue broom stick trying to adjust the mirror, that was me:) We pulled over and tried to tighten but within 10 minutes it moved again So I again hung out the window, over top Chris and adjusted it with the broom. We pulled over again at rest area and a nice gentleman from Lakeland, FL came over to ask what was going on and helped us fix it… with duct tape. Yep… our first duct tape repair. Chris was not happy driving down the road in our beautiful rig with black duct tape around his chrome mirror but it worked.

If you are keeping up you know I said a ‘few bumps in the road’, that’s right we had some more fun. We weren’t even out of Georgia yet when Chris looks out of his window at a blue truck next to him and the guy is making large gestures and pointing franticly to our RV. Chris immediately pulls off on the side of the road and sees our exhaust pipe sticking out sideways laying on the asphalt. He gets under the RV, evaluates the situation, gets his tools and gets to work. He reattached in quickly and we were on our way. The last bump in the road has to do with at 3:30 Florida kick off time and the first two bumps delaying our arrival and then the satellite not working and us not having a cable wire on board and me running out to buy one and then the Gators losing. The end. It you live in the south then you understand!

The day got better because my sister, my brother, and sister-in-law and 4 kiddos came to visit us that evening. They live in NC and TN so we had planned to all get together here in St. Augustine before we took off our west on our adventure. Kim, my sister, actually stayed with us in the RV as our first overnight guest.

We have enjoyed visiting the historic city with family.  Sunday, we saw the oldest school house, a cannon demonstration at Castillo de San Marcos, walked down St. George street, and toured the Pirate Museum where we saw the only real pirate flag and treasure chest in America. On Monday, we toured Flagler College which was once Hotel Ponce De Leon, saw the starting point of the Old Spanish trail which runs all the way to San Diego, CA, had a nice picnic lunch and the best ice cream ever (according to Abby and Mackenzie). We finished both of those days with beach and pool time. Mackenzie checked one of her bucket items off her list… SUP (stand up paddle boarding). I’ll have her post on that tomorrow.

Today, we woke up to information about Hurricane IRMA. We were suppose to stay until the 13th, but we will be leaving tomorrow so we aren’t in traffic with everyone evacuating Thursday and Friday. On our last day we started the day with pool and beach time. We then finished the day with a tour of the Oldest House Museum  and a walk down the oldest street.

On the way home we thought about getting gas in the Jeep tonight before we head out tomorrow. There was no gas to be found. Hopefully I’ll get some in the morning.

Tomorrow we will go to Fort Matanza before we head out. We will head up to middle of Georgia for now until we see what direction IRMA heads. Be safe!