The campground at Anastasia State Park was our first on the Atlantic Ocean. It was our 7th campground on this tour. Our first night there was our 60th night in the RV in 2021, our 188th night since we purchased it (188 days of fun!!!!). The beach has four miles of white sand beach, 139 campsites and a .7 mile nature walk, called the Ancient Dunes Trail. Our campsite was spacious with trees and plants providing decent privacy. The trees in the campground were mostly palm trees, red cedar and live oaks, which were covered with spanish moss. It was was quite pretty, with plenty of shade.
The lighthouse is not far from the park, so we stopped by and walked around outside. The area was quite crowded, so we didn’t stay long.
I didn’t take many photos in town, in St. Augustine, since we did not spend a lot of time there. We first went into town during early afternoon on a Tuesday, hoping to avoid Easter weekend crowds. St. Augustine is the oldest city in the US and also the oldest continuously occupied European Settlement in the continental U.S. There is a lot of history there and some of the buildings date back to the 1700’s.
We went to the historic part of town and found that all of the shops, museums, bars and restaurants were too crowded, for us (note – masks are not required in Florida), so we just walked around outside, as quickly as possible. In the main shopping area, we found it was difficult to keep our distance from the many large families and groups of mostly unmasked people. We attempted to check out Flagler College, as we were told it is a must-see, but it is currently closed to the public because of the pandemic. We went to the fort, but it was not open on Tuesdays. A couple of days later, I heard from a friend who was visiting there, that there was a line a block long, to get into the fort.
After deciding not to return to town, a friend recommended The Fountain of Youth as having a nice garden area to walk through, even though the fountain itself is a tourist trap. We drove there, late one morning, taking a different route into town, to avoid traffic. The traffic was actually worse than Detroit area traffic during Friday afternoon rush hour and during road construction. Rather than spend $40 to look at some gardens and a fountain, with crowds, we left and spent the remainder of our stay in the park. We wish we could have really explored the entire town. It’s quite beautiful and we know we would have really enjoyed it, if there was no pandemic.
The park was full but did not feel crowded. We were happy to have neighbors who were a retired couple, vacationing from Marine City, MI. He retired from an automotive-related fabrication shop. She is an artist who regularly sells her pottery at the annual New Baltimore Art Fair. We just might see them again. We noticed that this park had a lot of families and people on short excursions. We encountered more unfriendly campers than we had at previous parks. We are hoping that sometime along the way, we will again be surrounded by the friendly, retired snowbirds.
We took walks to the beach, along the beach and on the Ancient Dunes Trail. We spent time on the beach with our chairs and umbrella. I ran a little. It was too windy and rough for surfing or paddling. We also checked out other loops in the campground, to note which we would prefer for a future visit. Dave spent time, daily, cleaning sections of the RV that were covered with bugs from the drive across the state. Meanwhile, the spanish moss, trees and squirrels were covering the top of the RV with debris. (As I write this, we are in the next location, sitting through the end of a heavy rain storm, which started about 21 hours ago. We are hoping it was enough to clean the roof…) We really enjoyed the beach and trails and the park, in general. Unfortunately, we felt a little like we were trapped there, unable to go anywhere else. We will not likely return soon, because the area is so busy and crowded.
