The oldest city of all...

The day wasn't over yet...when we left Canaveral, we continued on up the coast towards St. Augustine, Florida.

Our next stop was at Fort Matanzas...

Sadly, we were about 5 minutes too late to catch the last ferry over to the fort.  Oh well, next time...right :)? 

Anyway, we missed the boat, so we only got to check out the displays and things on the mainland side.  The Ranger was great, he gave the kids their Jr. Ranger books and then he gave me their badges to award them after they completed the books (the park was closing).  The mosquitoes were THICK, so we didn't hang around long...

A bit further down the road and we found ourselves at the St. Augustine Lighthouse.  I just love these pretty old things :)...

After we had feasted our eyes upon the stately southern charmer, we decided to head into the heart of the old city.  There was just a bit of daylight left and we weren't going to let it go to waste :)...

the old city gates

We walked the old streets for a while and then decided to check out the fort...

Castillo De San Marcos is beautiful.  So very old...

If you look closely at the walls, you will see lots of tiny little seashells.  This material is called coquina.  It's really cool, kind of like a natural cement of sorts.  You can read more about it here...

It was closed, being so late in the day we expected that it would be.  That's ok, we had reservations to spend the night nearby and plans to return bright and early the next morning to tour the inside...