We spent the past week in St. Augustine, Florida. It was heavenly. Obviously.
A friend of ours invited us to his aunt's beach house along Old Hwy A1A. We slept in a home on the beach front. For free.
Sweet deal.
We woke up every morning, walked up the driveway and onto the white sand beach.
Deserted white sand beach, I might add.
I'm not a huge fan of getting up at 6 am, especially when it's technically 4 am in the time zone you're used to. However, I made an exception for the idea of seeing the sunrise over the Atlantic.
There were amazing beach homes all along the beach. Amazing beach homes that no one lives in, apparently, as we didn't see another soul on the beach the entire four days we were there.
At one point, Wilberforce commented how relaxing being on the beach was. I agreed. I hadn't thought about work in at least 24 hours.
That is relaxing.
The house we stayed in was awesome. Packed full of people. It was a three bedroom, two and a half bath home in which we fit sixteen adults. I slept on a couch and every morning when I woke up, I had a view of the ocean through the massive wall of windows/patio doors on the front of the house.
I'll take it.
We spent a lot of time on the beach. A lot of time eating. A lot of time hanging out.
The oyster roast was Saturday evening, so the boys had the wonderful job of cleaning the oysters we got from a neighbor. If they had been cleaning oysters in Wyoming in February, they would have complained. However, sitting in the sun and sand makes oyster cleaning much more bearable. I would assume, anyways. The girls didn't have to help. We prepared other delicious food inside, ate bread, and drank wine.
Have I mentioned the beach?
I love how every task involves a trip to the beach. We need water to wash the oysters. Let's go to the beach. We need to wash off the patio chairs. Bring them to the beach. I need to stretch my legs. Head to the beach. I haven't been to the beach in at least 25 minutes. Let's go to the beach.
A trip to the beach is pretty easy to fit into the schedule often when all you have to do is walk five feet across the one lane, sand dune covered road.
During one of our bazillion beach walks, we explored tide pools.
We found starfish and clams and all kinds of goodies.
Sometimes we would find stranded starfish. After we decided they were still alive, we threw them back into the ocean. Starfish rescue.
I could be an animal lover if it involved starfish. They don't have hair.
Guess what we did Sunday?
Walked on the beach. Duh.
But then we headed to downtown St. Augustine - the oldest city in the United States.
We toured the fort. Pretty awesome.
It was freaking windy, though. I didn't mind - wind is much easier to deal with when the sun is shining and it's 80 degrees.
PS...Walmarts in Florida have palm trees in the parking lots. Ridiculous.
We wandered around the narrow streets of St. Augustine, checking out the shops, eating boar jerky, stuffing our faces with anything we could find that had massive amounts of sugar in it, and drinking martinis.
Jamie had an addiction to anything key lime. Key lime martinis, key lime bars, key lime chocolate covered popsicles, key lime sorbet. You name it, she ate it.
The buildings downtown were awesome. That's all I have to say about that.
We headed back to the beach house and...walked on the beach. Surprise.
Nat went for a swim. The water was only 65 degrees...a little chilly for me yet.
Monday morning was a sad day for me - I wasn't ready to come back to Colorado. We went for our routine 6 am walk. Monday was the chilliest day - only in the low 60's at 6 am. Brrr.
I brought breakfast.
Can you tell that Wilberforce had the camera attached to his face the whole trip?
These two got engaged on the beach Monday morning! How awesome is that? I knew it was coming.
His aunt apparently knew, as well. When they came inside and told everyone the news, she ran to her bedroom and came back with this.
All in all, our beach vacation was amazing. Probably my favorite vacation spot yet! Can't wait to go back.
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