Day - 71 St. Augustine

So much damage to so many places.   Most of the Historical District had a couple of feet of water in it and shop keepers are closed yet inside removing damaged goods and drying out floors and walls.  This fellow here looks like he is featuring sandwiches and sand bags.

Ponce De Leon found the Fountain Of Youth and I have been looking for it earnestly since about the age of 50.  I expect in only a few sips I will drop about 20 pounds, regain my crop top, loose the wrinkles, and be able to use the bathroom without it being a major function.

Speaking of bathroom, crap.  It is closed for repairs and 'clean up'.  Looks like all of my dreams are not going to come true.  I am still bald, fat, wrinkled, and well, taking a leak is literal.

We went over to the Old Jail.  We decided to take the tour as we discovered our trip to Jacksonville to visit a plantation was foiled by clean up and its closure, as is the Fountain of Youth.

Our tour guide was a Hollywood Hopeful.   Very dramatic and made the tour entertaining as well as informative.   Besides Martha and Myself, there was only one other couple.

The gallows here served as the last sight for nine official hung souls, and seventeen unofficial.

I'm not sure what an unofficial hanging actually is.  Glad I wasn't hung.  Hmmmmmm.  Did I really just say that?

Four to a cell, barely room to stand between the bunks.   Each cell had a bathroom.   A bucket that you carried down and dumped on your way out each morning for your 14 hour day on the chain gang.

Smell was not an issue.  Once a month everyone got two minutes in the bath tub.   No change of water and no soap.  White men first, then men of color followed.  

Martha standing between the bunks.

Then we went over to the Fort, Castillo De San Marcos.  Surrounded by a moat.  It is the oldest Fort in the U.S.   Huge too.   

It too was closed for clean up so we could only walk the exterior.

No Gators in sight, Martha could turn her back to the Moat.

Across from the Fort is St. George Street.   Normally buzzing with tourist activity, shops and tourists were at a minimum.  

We were able to locate the Hat from Hogwarts.  It must be on vacation here.  For only a dollar each we could have discovered which House we would be in.   We declined as we might have been separated and that would be a disaster so far from home.

Heading back to the trailer, we had to wait in traffic as the draw bridge was up.  There are lots of those around here.

Tomorrow we move on the Vero Beach.   We will stay with Martha's Cousin Skip and wife Marilyn for two nights before heading down to Key West.   The weather calls for cloudy days, rain, and thunder showers.  So far, the East Coast has not been very touristy for us.  We stopped at a grocery and bought a couple of steaks as this is the first RV site we have been to that has individual BBQ's to use.  In the grocery there was a produce worker who was bald and wearing a hair net.  Pretty funny, perhaps he went to the Fountain of Youth prior to the Hurricane and has not looked in a mirror since. I'll write more tomorrow, if I haven't succumbed to old age and despair.