Day 32: Palatka to St. Augustine

March 6, 2015

The cold, rain, and wind that had been forecast for northern Florida cetainly showed up on schedule. To be fair, the cold was not actually freezing, but more like 10 degrees. And the rain was more like drizzle. But together with the wind, it was enough to turn a moderate cruise into St. Augustine into a bit of a slog.

The adventure cycling route for Palatka to St Augustine seemed to meander about, presumably looking for low traffic but typically no shoulder roads, in prefence to the straight on SR 207, a four lane affair with a designated bike lane. We had earlier decided to follow ACA, thinking sure, why not take a back roads tour - after all, we're on vacation. But with the unpleasant conditions, we opted instead to just get there as fast as possible.

Coming out of Palatka, I thought I might have seen a bike path, but we shrugged it off, since we had no information about such a thing. However, about 15 km down the road we literally fell over it. It is called the Palatka to St Augustine State Trail, and it follows the former route of the Jacksonville, St. Augustine, and Halifax Railway. What's more, the route is part of the "East Coast Greenway", which seems to exist in some form from Maine to Florida. On our GPS, this appeared as a pink line, and apparently did indeed go all the way to St Augustine.

Suddenly we went from slogging it out with the wind and traffic, to peacefully gliding down a tree lined bikeway. It was really great, and our day improved a lot. The trail came out of the woods and paralleled 207 for a while, then crossed it with a lovely crossing full of flashing warnings for the cars. We looked at our ACA map and saw that the ACA route was still meandering about somewhere to the north. Why on earth was ACA not using this lovely trail, we wondered, and sailed on with it, back in to the woods. We sailed another 3-4 km, that is, and then the trail stopped. It was not that we came to some sort of interesection, with a sign saying "trail closed, use alternate" or anything. No, it just stopped, in the middle of nowhere. Where the trail would have gone was still the original rails. Maybe somebody ran out of money? Maybe they ran out before thay could afford $2 for a "trail ends - 2 miles" sign! Grrr.

Leaving Palatka. Drivers have a chance to stock up on drink!

Palatka is on the major St John's river system. Here is the bridge to east Palatka

On the way to St Augustine, scenery is rather non descript, but here at least was a field of kale.

A basically unmarked entrance to the Palatka-St Augustine rail trail

The trail is also part of this - which we need to investigate further

The trail passes through some very historic spots

There was no alternative but to backtrack to 207 and continue on in to St Augustine that way. Actually, as we did near the city, we jumped up to the ACA route, which enters town along King Street. Since this for many people the culmination of the long haul on the Southern Tier from San Diego, I was thinking the street should be at least a broad avenue lined with maybe Royal Palms. In truth, King passes through a very poor neighbourhood, with run down houses, pawn shops, and suchlike. . Oh well. On the other hand, I still expected St Augustine to be pretty good. So many times in Europe the most wonderful old cities have been surrounded by modern grunge.

St Augustine worked out in just the same way. Soon enough we were surrounded by Spanish colonial style buildings, museums, and tourist streets lined with souvenir, craft, clothing, fudge, and suchlike shops.

Although we had a prepaid and hard to get reservation at the nearby State Park, in the wind and rain somewhere indoors seemed like a much better idea. This is particularly the case since our newer, higher tech tent can not be set up from inside the shelter of its fly.

So while still outside of town we had gotten on the phone and arranged a spot at the Pirate Haus hostel, in the centre of town. We were really tickled when we got there, for the whole place has a pirate theme. This extends to pirate images and topics all around, and world maps, for instance, in our washroom.

We had to carry our bikes up a steep flight of stairs, but our room had lots of space. Actually it seems to be a dorm room of sorts, since it in principle could sleep six. At $119, we seem to be paying somewhat accordingly. We stashed our bikes and gear and headed out onto the streets to see as quickly as possible what this place is about. On the advice of the hostel man, we headed over to St George street, where he said all the interesting stuff was.

The stairs up to the hostel in St augustine

Bathroom at Pirate Haus. We believe the owner is German. Many of the maps are of Germany

The same company that operates tour trolleys in Savannah and many other cities has a service here. The cost is $25 each. Since these are open sided trailers and I was freezing, I was for just walking the streets. Dodie (accurately, it turns out) felt we would see little through random walking. So we piled onto a trolley, sitting right in the middle of the bench seat to stay out of the wet, left and right, and huddled there trying to understand the narration. The problem was a combination of local accent and just gabbling too fast. Even so, we did get a good idea of what the main interesting things here are.

It's funny about these trolley or bus tours. Each world class city seems to have about 25 things worth mentioning to a tourist, and they are totally well known to everyone, except the tourist, who must part with $25 to join the club. Afterward it all seems so obvious - Tower of London, Eiffel tower, Amsterdam Flower market , yeah, yeah.

So what is it for St Augustine?

First off, the flavour and history of St Augustine is Spanish. Don Juan Ponce de Leon was first mate on Columbus' second voyage. At some time, a few years after 1492, he travelled north from Puerto Rico, searching perhaps for the "Fountain of Youth" he travelled north and claimed La Florida for Spain, at a point near St Augustine. The place temporarily flipped to the British (in a swap for Cuba) and then back again. However the main influence here seem to have been Henry Flagler. A partner of John d. Rockefeller in Standard Oil, he was taken with the place and its history, and basically took over the town. He built a railway from here to Key West, churches, and several hotels and churches.

So the main sights are Flagler College, with its unique Spanish architecture, and the hotels and churches built by Flagler ( the Ponce de Leon, and the Grace United Methodist , and others). Then there are other buildings, also in the Spanish style, though most things here are from the 1800's. Finally there is a whole list of attractions, each one annoyingly with a fairly high admission price. I have a list in front of me with 27 of these. For example, there is the Old Jail tour ($9), the Chocolate Factory ($8), the Wax Museum ($10), the Oldest House ($6), the Oldest Wooden School House ($4.25), and even Flagler College ($8.50).

Coming off the trolley tour, we were both thoroughly chilled. We were actually shaking uncontrollably. We ducked in to a pizza place advertising genuine New York pizza, and got a slice each. It was true, this was the real thing. Excellent. Since the trolley ticket is good for 3 days, we planned to have another shot at it tomorrow. However, we would need a place for the bikes. We asked the hostel manager if we could stash our stuff on the sun deck for a few hours after check out time, and he refused. This very much has coloured our attitude toward this place.

So we have rejigged our plan and will take our bikes around town, using the overview we got from the trolley. We just will not go in to any of the "attractions". Of these, actually, only the chocolate factory had a strong hope of prying loose our $10's. A chocolate factory, or anything chocolate, does not have to try very hard to achieve this.

After a spin around for a few hours, we will head off just a bit down A1A, toward our next camping spot, a KoA. That spin will surely produce some better photos and historical signs than I could manage today from the trolley. In the meantime, here is one view of what we have seen:

The next five shots are examples of architecture in St Augustine

Today's ride: 58 km (36 miles)
Total: 1,677 km (1,041 miles)

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