St Augustine… Next Stop

St Augustine is Florida’s first city. This is my second visit here. Both times with the pandemic. We have driven through the old town, but never felt the need to explore these tiny streets. It felt like another tourist trap. No one wore masks. Very crowded. Pretty, but we have seen enough that we didn’t need to stop. It is surely picturesque!

We found our campground. Christine did her research! She found a great spot…. But I had to back in. I had never done it before. The campground in front had their Jeep parked in a bad spot. After a few tries, I really wanted to give up, but I managed it! Later, I saw a man back into the site next to me and I looked professional next to him, hurray!

It is easy to want to relax after the work we put into driving to our spot and setting up. Yet we explored. We really wanted to paint but we were exhausted. So, guess what we decided to do? Find another place to eat. We liked it here at Auntie Kate’s. We could walk there and take the dog. But we waited over an hour (or two). Finally, we got served. Loved our food and were satiated.

With our bellies full, we went to the beach. With no stairs or ramp it was hard to walk down the steep slope with all of our gear. Once set up we heard a band setting up on the deck of a house behind us. They sounded great and I got excited to come back and see them for my New Years Eve. I did a painting on the beach. It’s weird when no one cares when you are painting. But no one seemed interested in what I was doing except a young surfer dude. I really didn’t like what I was doing anyway…

Leaving with all of our gear made me nervous cause Christine wrenched her back and the way out was a tall cliff of sand, but a family coming by took control and between all of them, we were up in seconds! I was so relieved. That night I was itching to see that band but Christine didn’t feel well and I was too chicken to go by myself so we stayed in and listened to everyone celebrating into the next day. I was so depressed.

The next day I woke up early and took a 3 mile walk reflecting on my new empty life. It was foggy out so it matched my mood. But it was pretty still. I cried almost the whole time. Missing my old life and wondering what was in store for me. I hear it’s common for widows to feel this way at this at this point of their widowhood. Just feeling lost…

One of my Facebook friends told me of some interesting places to visit so we went on a little adventure. Our first stop was Princess Preserve Estate park. It was beautiful there. The first in-ground swimming pool in the country and still working.

It was hot and we were on the fence on what to paint so we headed for Bings landing. It was more upscale there. We heard there was a great BBQ joint there, so that was our motivation. But it was very crowded and too frenetic to bother so we headed home. We stopped at the Vilano Beach Peir. It was pretty with a lot of people fishing off it. Getting hungry we went to all of the restaurants in the area but being a holiday, everything was packed. So we made a nice meal at the RV.