St. Augustine for Dummies

. . . A WHIRLWIND RUN THROUGH THE TOWN

Yes, the dummies are us. In our day onshore, we made a whirlwind run through St. Augustine. Here are the highlights:

St. Augustine Old Jail

Sheriff Joe Perry -- an actual city sheriff in the early 1900s -- oversees the St. Augustine Old Jail. Standard Oil billionaire Henry Flagler, who adopted St. Augustine and made great investments in it, built the city a new jail (because he wanted the property the old jail was on). The outside was ornate enough that visitors thought it was a hotel and knocked on the door wanting a room. Those visitors wouldn't have wanted inside if they'd known what was there.

Prisoners at the old St. Augustine jail had an average life span of two years. Women cooked, cleaned, and gardened. Men served on the chain gang. If prisoners misbehaved, they were put in the big bird cage (next to Deputy Deborah Doright) for 24 hours, and it was hung from a roof for public ridicule. It gives a new meaning to the name Jail Bird.

The Oldest Wood Schoolhouse in the U.S.

The oldest wood school house in the U.S. looks really, really old. We're not sure why the anchor chain is wrapped around it and the anchor nearby. Maybe it's to keep it from blowing away in hurricanes? Maybe it's because education is the anchor of our society!

Castillo de San Marcos

The walls of the Castillo de San Marcos are 18 feet thick at the base tapering to nine feet at the top. It replaced a succession of nine wooden forts the Spanish built on the same location.

The fort is constructed of massive blocks of coquina (ko-KEE-nah). Coquina is a natural limestone composed of broken shells that solidified into a mass when mixed with sand and cemented with calcite from the shells themselves. The coquina for the Castillo de San Marcos was mined from barrier islands near St. Augustine. The fort took 23 years to build.

Life for Spanish soldiers was hard. Their barracks were plush though compared to the cells at the old jail that prisoners used some 300 years later.

Kent was fascinated by the cannons on the roof of the castillo. This one looks ready to fire onto the harbor and Bridge of the Lions.

Spanish soldiers were also smaller than most people today -- about Jane's size, to be exact. She explored the sentry tower that was a perfect fit.

Flagler Memorial Church

The Flagler Memorial Church is an awe-inspiring church along the lines of cathedrals in Europe. This view is just a small portion of the church. The Flagler family attended church here and made major contributions to the building fund.

Lightner Museum

We weren't sure what we'd find at the museum. What we found were Chicago publisher Otto Lightner's ecclectic personal collections of natural history, art, crystal and glasswork, and furnishings. The building the museum is in was built by -- you guessed it! -- Henry Flagler as the Alcazar Hotel and later sold to Lightner.

Of course, Kent's favorite exhibit at the Lightner was the shrunken head.

Jane's favorite exhibit was the Tiffany dragonfly lamp.

The piece we both liked was the folk-art style hooked rug with a not-so-nice, but humorous poem about in-laws. It does not apply to our in-laws.

The Bridge of Lions One Last Time

As we toured on the trolley, the reason for the name for the bridge became clear -- the stone lions at the base of the bridge, both ends. 

We enjoyed our quick visit and wish we could have seen more -- the lighthouse, Flagler College, and even the Fountain of Youth. As a place to visit, St. Augustine has a lot to offer. We'll be back.

We are pushing now to reach Jacksonville tonight and then on to Green Cove Springs Marina on the St. John's River tomorrow. Plans are to go home for two weeks, come back to do a little work on Carina -- like putting a new zinc on our prop -- and start the last two thirds of the Loop.