On The Road Again

We pulled out of Rainbow Resort on Monday morning.  It was sad to say goodbye to the friends we have made there but with any luck we will see them all again.  Here we are all hooked up and ready to roll.

We drove north east to St. Augustine, Florida for our first stop on the way home.  We plan on spending three nights here and take in some of the sights.  This is the oldest city in the USA and there is a ton of historic sights to take in.   

We are staying at St. John's RV Park.  Not much of a park.  A lot of really old trailers and no amenities.  There are a few sights available for renting and we did get a large pull through site.  We are parked on a cement pad which is badly broken up.  But it is handy to the freeway and we are only going to be here in the evenings so no big deal.  If we were to come to St. Augustine again we would not stay here!!

This morning the Old Town Trolley Tour shuttle picked us up at the park and took us into the downtown area.  There we transferred to the trolley and got the tour.  Since we have VERY limited internet in the park I am not sure how many pictures I will be able to post but will give it a try.

The trolley allows you to jump on and off at any of the stops.  Our first jump off was at The St. Augustine Distillery that has only been open to the public for a few weeks.  Until very recently these were not allowed in the state of Florida.  They only had their vodka on sale so far.  As vodka doesn't need to be aged they are able to get it on the shelves much quicker while aging the other products they will have.  Their vodka is made from sugar cane.  The distillery is in an old ice house which was built in the late 1800's. Here was a large and very interesting display giving us the history of the ice house.

 This young lady gave us the tour and told us about all the changes in the laws that were required to allow them to open this business and sell to the public.

 Here are a bunch of oak barrels that will be used to age their bourbon.  Their entire process is manual and they purchase all their product from the local farmers.  Wheat, sugar cane, corn, etc are all produced in Florida.

At the end of the tour they gave us a tasting of the vodka they produce and a moscow mule which is a vodka and ginger drink.  Neither were very good as far as I was concerned but the tour was interesting.

Our next stop was the San Sebastian Winery.  

 Again we had a tasting of several of their different wines, sherry and a port.  They grow most of their own grapes in Florida with the exception of one type of grape that they purchase from California.  Another local business and an interesting tour.

After all the testing we decided we should stop for lunch before we had our next stop for dessert.  The Whetstone Chocolate Factory.

Here we are given a lesson on the life of chocolate from the cocoa bean right down to the chocolate that we got to sample....yummy!! We learned the difference between milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate and how cocoa butter is produced as a by-product of the process.

Remember Lucy in the Chocolate Factory?  It was an episode of the old I Love Lucy show.  Probably way before your time!!!

 Here they are making chocolate covered pretzels.  The pretzels are hand placed on the roller, they then go through a chocolate bath and into this machine that hardens the chocolate.  At the end they are packaged.

Across the room was a lady that was making fudge in a large vat and pouring it into pans to cool.  This is considered artisan chocolate and all made by hand.  The sample were great!!

We hopped back on the trolley and got a tour around more of the city.  By the time we got back to the start it was getting to late to do any more exploring today.  We got on the shuttle and got a ride back to the park.  Today we just followed our stomachs.  Tomorrow we will head back into town and see some of the historic sites.

No internet access last night so was not able to post this.  So we are now Wed and I hope this goes through.

Until tomorrow - safe travels and good night from the Oldest City in America.