Florida – Day 5

December 31, 2021

The plan was to get up at 7 am, pack-up, hit Wal-Mart and be back in time to catch the 8:45 am trolley. Yeah that didn’t happen. We did get up at 7 am but by the time we unhooked and got to Wal-Mart it was 7:45 am. Then of course there was wandering around Wal-Mart to find all the things on our list. $200 later we exited Wal-Mart at 8:45 am. Had to load everything into the RV and put the items we bought away. Then we headed back toward the campground to catch the trolley.

Our check out time at the campground was 11 am so we knew if we were going to spend the day in Saint Augustine we couldn’t stay there. The guy at the campground last night had told us that we could park at the Dollar Store across the street from the campground while we were exploring on the trolley. So we got parked and headed over to the the bench at the campground to wait for the 9:45 am trolley bus.

While waiting for the trolley we got on-line and booked our tickets for the Kennedy Space Center tomorrow. Someone told us they sell out quickly and we didn’t want to miss touring that.

The trolley bus hits all the hotels before heading into town to the trolley terminal. But our driver was very entertaining and pointed out the sights along the trip. Including a local lighthouse and told us about the drawbridge we had to drive over to get to town.

The trolley was open air and you could stay on for the whole 22 stops or hop off, explore, and catch the next trolley. The circle of the town and sites take an hour and a half. The trolley drivers keep you informed and entertained at the same time. We spent 3 hours exploring the town and enjoying the sights from the trolley.

We learned a bit about the history of Saint Augustine and Florida. Being a big history buff I love to learn history. Just a few facts so I don’t bore the non-history buffs. Saint Augustine was settled in the 1500’s by the Spanish. In 1763 the British claimed Florida in exchange for Havana. During the Revolutionary War Florida remained loyal to the British. In 1784 it was returned to the Spanish and didn’t become a state of the United States until 1845. In 1888 Henry Flagler who started Standard Oil with John Rockefeller arrived in Saint Augustine and fell in love with the area. He decided to turn it into a winter playground for the rich. He developed a railroad and built hotels

After our trolley tour we took the trolley bus back to the campground, walked across the street and picked up our RV and headed down the coast toward our next campgrounds. The KOA in Titusville is nice and just a short distance from the Kennedy Space Center. It was only a 90 minute drive from Saint Augustine and we checked in at 3:30 pm.

We were glad to be here early as we needed showers and wanted to do our laundry. We found out that we need to get a little wagon to make it easier to transport a very full laundry hamper across a campground to the laundry room. With 2 washers and dryers running and $7.50 we were able to get all our clothes clean in an hour. We brought our IPads and read our books as the laundry ran.

We had leftover baked potatoes for dinner and then listened to people shooting off fireworks until it was time for bed. No game night tonight we were both just to tired.