Vacations

In my last post about our vacation trip to Saint Augustine, I want to share some pictures and information about Castillo de San Marcos – Saint Augustine’s Spanish fort!

The Fort:

Castillo de San Marcos protected the harbor to Saint Augustine. According to the National Park Service, the fort is the only extant 17th century military construction in the United States and the oldest masonry fortress in the country. The fort uses a bastion system of fortification with the diamond-shaped corners for cannons. It was a very cool thing to visit!

If you have visited to Florida, you know that there isn’t a lot of stone to work with in the state. When the Spaniards built the fort, they used a limestone call coquina. At first, limestone would seem a poor choice for a fortification, but the porous nature of the coquina had a profound effect on the durability of the fort. Instead of shattering like a harder stone, the coquina simply absorbed the cannon balls. The National Park Service analogy was that it was like shooting a BB into Styrofoam!

Saint Augustine had a moat around it and the moat extended to the fort. The city gates weren’t very far from the fort and were locked each night at 8 pm. If you weren’t inside the gates by then, you spent the night outside. Talk about enforcing a curfew!!

From this picture, the fort is off to the left. It takes maybe a couple of minutes to walk from the gates to the entrance to the fort.

The courtyard view of the fort shows the numerous rooms and offices enclosed by Castillo de San Marcos.

This courtyard served as a training ground, recreation area, and staging area for equipment during battles. The rooms housed the armory, infirmary, storage, the treasury, officers quarters, and barracks for the soldiers. I spent time floating around the world on a submarine, so I can relate to the cramped sleeping arrangements the soldiers had!

As you can see, not the most comfortable sleeping arrangements, but I guess it beat sleeping on the ground.

Cannons at Castillo de San Marcos:

As I mentioned, the fort guarded the entrance to the harbor. Looking out from the ramparts, you can see the ocean beyond the land. Quite a view!

Imagine if you were on a ship trying to attack Saint Augustine. The cannon in the picture is one of many that could be trained on you and bombard your ship from 6 miles away! Speaking of cannons, here is one of the cannons in the courtyard.

I think this is a 16 pounder, meaning it shot a 16 pound cannon ball. That would make a really big hole in your ship!

Here is another cannon mounted on the wall of the fort and pointed toward the ocean. To give you some idea of the size of the weapon, Aidan and Maggie (yes, the inspirations for the characters in The Gemstone Chronicles) are standing next to one. Pretty impressive!

Wrap up:

There you have our visit to Castillo de San Marcos and Saint Augustine. I couldn’t show you everything we saw and did and there is so much more we could have seen. Overall, though, we had a ball! We may have to schedule another trip down there to cover some of the things we missed (like zip-lining over the alligators at the Alligator Farm)!

Where did you go on your summer vacation and what did you see? Leave me a comment and let me know! I might have to add it to my upcoming vacation plans!!

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For my second post about our vacation trip to Saint Augustine, I thought I would show you some great pictures from the Saint Augustine Lighthouse!

There are 219 steps to the top of the lighthouse, and Aidan, Maggie, and I walked every single one of them to get up there. More on that later.

One of my favorite things about the lighthouse was the Lighthouse Keeper’s House. If you recall from The Gemstone Chronicles, one of the more enigmatic characters was Keeper. Now, I have to admit that Keeper’s house in the books was nothing like the Keeper’s House at the Saint Augustine Lighthouse, but I thought the name was cool and a neat reminder of the books!

And here is the facade of the house. I think it is a little fancier than what I imagined Keeper’s house looked like in Celahir!

Back to the lighthouse. As I mentioned, there are 219 steps to the top – no elevator. It seemed to spiral upwards without end, but we finally got there. To give you some idea of the steps, take a look at the picture that Lana took.

We trudged up the stairs (and only took a couple of rest stops) and finally made it! The view was absolutely worth it! I took some panoramic pictures from different locations around the lighthouse so you could get a feel for what we were seeing.

The views, as you can see, were amazing! I think the last picture is my favorite since I can see the ocean stretching out to the horizon. As a former submarine sailor, we didn’t get to see much scenery like this when we were underway.

I did take a picture looking down at the Keeper’s house. Not a bad place to have lighthouse duty!

There you have our visit to the Saint Augustine Lighthouse. We didn’t do the ghost tour that includes the lighthouse, but it could be an interesting thing to do.

If you have been to Saint Augustine, what was your favorite thing to do or see? Leave me a comment and let me know! And if you need a great read for your beach trip, The Gemstone Chronicles, is available in paperback and ebook on Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Smashwords, and many other outlets!

Avast ye maties! There be pirate treasure in Saint Augustine, Florida!! And here is a picture of a real Jolly Roger!!

I’m talking about the Pirate Museum in Saint Augustine, Florida and I took a few days off, loaded up the lovely and adorable Nana and the grandchildren (the real Aidan and Maggie who were the inspiration for their namesakes in The Gemstone Chronicles), and visited the oldest continually occupied city in the United States. We saw the Fountain of Youth (and took a really big drink), the original Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum, and many other sites (posts on those sites to follow later).

The Pirate Museum:

What did we find at the Pirate Museum? The flag picture above for one thing. It’s one of only three real Jolly Rogers in existence. We also found out about many different pirates like Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, Calico Jack Rackham (and his two female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read), and Black Bart Roberts.

Many of the pirates had a code of conduct that forbade gambling, fighting aboard ship (with others of the crew), women aboard ship, requiring each sailor to ensure his cutlass, piece, and pistols cleaned and ready to use at any time, and other rules. Some of the penalties for violation of the rules were death or marooning. Pirates were a tough bunch!

But, we went to see pirate treasure and we found treasure aplenty! Take a look at some of what we saw!!

These are dishes from around 1692. They are in amazing shape!

The above picture is a boarding axe! Can you imagine a screaming pirate clambering over the gunwales of your ship wielding one of these??

Elegant but deadly, these pistols would have been kept cleaned and ready to use.

The Atocha:

One of the coolest displays are some of the treasures from the Atocha, a Spanish ship that sank off the Florida coast in 1622. Imagine finding a silver bar like this one!

There were about 1000 of these bars listed on the manifest of the Atocha. They were part of the treasure valued at $450 million!

Here is a tiny fraction of the artifacts found from the Atocha. Although hard to see in the picture, look for the silver mermaid in the lower left hand corner. It is a beautiful piece of work!

Yes, that is a gold bar from the Atocha! There were 125 of these bars on the ship. What a tremendous feeling it must have been to uncover these!!

Now, to be fair, the pirates didn’t attack Atocha. She wrecked during a storm near Key West. It’s still a very cool addition to the Pirate Museum! If you want to know more about the Atocha and the tragic story behind the search, visit Mel Fisher’s website!

This was my first visit to Saint Augustine. The history of the area impressed me. If you want to visit history, great beaches (remember to read The Gemstone Chronicles while you are soaking up the sun), and maybe find a pirate treasure, try the Saint Augustine area!!

If you’ve visited Saint Augustine, let me a comment and let me know how you liked it. Tell me your favorite attraction and what you missed. And, if you happen to be reading The Gemstone Chronicles, send me a picture of you reading it!!

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