St. Augustine, Florida

We've decided to stay. Roadtrip over.



No. I'm just kidding. But the thought did cross our mind. St. Augustine is an awesome place. The pace of life is just a little different than any place we've traveled to yet. I don't know if it's just a winter thing but life runs slower here. It's not in overdrive 24/7 like so many other places. I've only ever been to the Disney World/Orlando section of Florida before and that is definitely an overdrive kind of place. It's a perpetually sticky, colorful, loud, kids-in-tow type of town. But here....oh, here is not like that. Here it is calm, almost muted. The waves lull us to sleep each night. And each morning we're greeted with a sunrise (yes, we've actually seen it. Twice! It's much easier to see it when it comes into your room and you can fall back asleep after you've seen what you want to see.) People are pleasant and helpful. And as an added bonus, there were people to visit here!

We got to hang out with Mary a couple times while were here. She took us out to dinner at two of her favorite restaurants here and we learned a lot about one another. Mary is quite a woman. She is one of the most intelligent women I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. She uses words such as 'hellacious' with remarkable ease. We so enjoyed her company and hearing of her own adventures and travels. She told us that she went deep sea fishing and caught a 325 lb. Marlin! She's been to a number of the places that we want to go still and it's exciting to hear her stories of them. She's so encouraging to. Full of wonderful advice and words to live by. She is such an accomplished woman who has done so much for other people. I find her very admirable. I think I would have very much enjoyed having her as a professor were she still teaching.

We also had the opportunity to look one of Josh's old high school friends up. Joey used to live in California but his job moved him here to St. Augustine about a year ago and so we met up with him and caught up on life. Joey is an airplane engineer (I'm sure his exact title is something way more intense and lengthy but I don't remember anymore) and works for the Department of Defense. In his off time, he likes to race. We had plans to go see him race but the event got moved and so we didn't get to. Joey races in an entirely different way than I have ever heard. He does Autocross. In my rather limited understanding, it's like a giant obstacle course where it's more about navigating turns and using techniques in a lower gear to be the fastest one to complete the course. He told us it's rare for him to ever get beyond second gear! This is crazy to me because I'm a drag racer at heart and speed is the best in my book. But autocross does look fun too.

The other thing we did while here was go surfing!!!! We got ourselves some surf lessons from Andrew who just moved back from the gnarly waves of California. He is in the true fashion of surf-dom with his long curly locks and tanned physique.  He used to do a lot of surfing with the Wounded Warriors program out in Cali and so he was a great teacher for both Josh and myself.  We had so much fun! I can't even explain how much fun it is. The water is so deceptively powerful and vast. It's unnerving how far you can be pushed by a wave or drift out into the ocean without even realizing it.

Pit Surf Shop: the site of our surf lessons and some new Sanuks :)

Surf's up!

Action shot of Josh!

Closer action shot

We are not really looking forward to leaving tomorrow. But, it has to be done or we'll never make it the rest of the way out West. So, off to New Orleans we go.