St. Augustine Vacation Cont’d…

Today was our last full day of vacation, so we decided on doing another beach day with the Bryant family.  It was a perfect beach day.  We had so much fun!  When we decided to call it a day, we went in to get ready and headed to the Black Molly for dinner.  After that, it was time to pack everything up to get ready for the drive home the next day.  So long, St. Augustine!  You were such a fun place and we hope to be back!!

St. Augustine Vacation Cont’d

Today we headed back downtown to historic St. Augustine.  We visited the Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park, the Old Jail, the oldest wooden schoolhouse and continued with the trolley tour, also.  We had lunch at Five Flags Café at the Fountain of Youth Park.  I took soooo many pictures this day, but most of them were ‘sightseeing pictures’.

I think Hannah’s face gives away how tasty this water was…

Visiting the oldest wood school house was interesting for me since I’m a teacher.  I believe the craziest thing I saw in the school house was “The Dungeon” that was used for punishment for students that misbehaved.  I couldn’t believe it!!  They put the student in a dark closet under the stairs!

St. Augustine Vacation–Day 5

Today we went to the St. Augustine Animal Reserve.  The animal reserve is an exotic animal sanctuary.  I first saw it on Trip Advisor several weeks ago, so I researched it a bit before going ahead and placing an order to book our tickets.  Tours are only done by private tours a couple days/times a week, so I had to preorder the tickets to ensure we had a spot.  While we were there we got a guided tour and saw lions, tigers, leopards, cougars, wolves and other animals.  They also fed each animal on our tour which was pretty cool to see.  We also saw a tiger taking a bubble bath.  It was extremely HOT and the kids got hosed down every couple animals because it was so hot.  The only bad thing was there were NO cameras allowed on the tour, so I have no pictures of the actual tour we went on.  I was able to snap a few pictures after the tour, and I purchased a CD of pictures of all the animals that we saw.  I’d say this was definitely an exciting adventure for Kyle & Hannah.  We all learned so much, but I felt sorry for the smaller children on our tour.  I think it’s too long and hot for smaller children.  The intro into each animal species, and the animals’ history would also get boring for small children.  For older children (7 & up), I’d say this is a must see.  (The Bryant family also joined us on this tour). 

after the tour we were all starving, so we headed to Sonny’s BBQ.  I have to say one of my favorite things we ate on our entire vacation was an appetizer from here.  They were called Redneck Eggrolls.  They were eggrolls with bbq pulled pork, pepperjack cheese, and coleslaw inside.  We dipped them in a bbq ranch sauce.  They were fabulous!!!!  After Sonny’s, we headed to Greg’s Aunt & Uncle’s place to hang out and swim. 

St. Augustine Vacation–Day 4

The Bryant family was staying about 30 minutes from us with Greg’s Aunt & Uncle, so they came down today for a beach day.  We spent the day on the beach until it looked like it was going to rain, so we waited the rain out and then headed to the pool.  We ordered pizza from Dominos for dinner tonight.