Castillo De San Marcos

The Castillo De San Marcos National Monument is right on the beach adjacent to downtown St Augustine, the oldest city in America. It was founded by the Spanish in the early 16th century, and the fort was built to protect it. The fort was pretty cool, but finding a place to park was difficult. I let Susan and the kids off near the fort and then had to park several blocks away. The fort had many more visitors than we had been used to over the last week - it figures that we would hit one of the most popular sites in the region on a Saturday. The fort is pretty well preserved, and has several exhibits in it. We also got to watch a demonstration of a cannon being fired. I would have liked to spend some more time looking around, as well as checking out St Augustine, which looked pretty interesting, but we decided to get to another site before it closed. Susan agreed that St Augustine would be a good place to explore more in the future.

Fort Matanzas is located 14 miles to the south of the Castillo De San Marcos. It was built by the Spanish to protect the southern approach to St Augustine. It was a small fort - only a handful of men were stationed there at any one time, with an equal number of cannons. We watched a short film in a pretty small theater, and then completed the short Jr Ranger program by looking at the couple of displays in the small visitor center before boarding the boat for the 5 minute trip to the island where the fort is located. 

At the fort, a man dressed as a Spanish soldier gave a short talk about the fort and what it would be liked to be stationed there, and then we explored the two rooms of the fort, and the kids climbed up to the roof. They enjoyed taking to the Spanish soldier. It took slightly over an hour to see pretty much everything. We then drove south to New Smyrna to spend the night.