I hope you're singing today's blog post to Neil Diamond's famous song...more about that later. :-)
We flew from Puerto Rico to Orlando today and quickly made our way to Fort Matanzas National Monument. This was a pretty cool site - Fort Matanzas was actually a watchtower for "the back door to St. Augustine." The fort itself was built in the 1700's, but there was a wooden watchtower even earlier than that. This fort was super small, but it served its purpose back in the day. It was never fired at, but in the 80 years it was active, it fired warning shots 12 times, resulting in the bad guys turning away each time. This site also had a 1/2-mile long Nature Trail, and the only thing we saw on this trail were Golden Silk Spiders. These things were all over the trail and they were huge, yuck.
Next we went to Castillo de San Marcos National Monument. This is another fort in St. Augustine, FL, which seemed like a really cute town! This fort was pretty cool and is the main fort that defended St. Augustine.
After Castillo de San Marcos, we went over to Fort Caroline National Memorial. This was a very pretty stop and is the reason for today's blog title - we couldn't stop singing this in the car and while at the fort. The fort doesn't exist anymore, and the NPS has recreated what they believed the fort looked like. The hike to the fort is a very easy and shady 1/2-mile, and is a very pretty hike with all the Spanish moss in the trees. We also started to hike to Spanish Pond and Aligator Pond across the street from the visitor center, but we turned around when the mosquitos were a bit too hungry and so were we.
We had dinner at Amelia Tavern which we thought was a brewpub, but it turns out they do not make their own beer. They are a relatively new place, so I'm wondering if they just haven't started their own beer yet. The beers they did have were good. I really liked the brown and of course Steve liked the Belgian IPA.
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