Which prompted a trip to Jacksonville, Florida, yesterday, to the nearest Apple store for, apparently, hundreds of miles. A stroke of luck got us in the store at a time when they were not eyeball deep in customers, and were able to score a tech that knew his Apple products. One of the problems was that we had been unable to install the latest update due to shakey wifi connections, so while that was running (using the super fast instore Apple wifi, our tech checked back with us from time to time to check on progress. When all was updated and settings reviewed, we took off, considering ourselves extremely lucky!
A late lunch at Ted's Montana Grill, got us a cowboy'ism, a bowl of bison chili and a bison burger.
And we returned to a great sunset! It had been raining in Jacksonville all day, with heavy thunderstorms. I guess we just caught the end of it in St. Augustine!
Today, after a good night's sleep, we were up...well.....kinda early, and headed into St Augustine to tour the Castillo De San Marcos. This fort guarded the ocean entrance to St Augustine from 1695 until after the Spanish-American War.
We rested a bit along Matanzas Bay, just before entering the National Monument. The temp was just about 90, and the humidity was running in the high 60's. Not a feel good kind of day!
The Fort is situated so as to guard the town of St Augustine, and provide protection to the Spanish treasure galleons that sailed by on their way home to Spain.
This Sally Port is the only way into or out of the Fort. The only other way in would be through a very small sewage pipe that terminated well out into the bay and used wave action to clean the privies. Just thought you needed to know that.
The interior parade ground is much smaller than we expected. Most of the military personnel who were stationed here lived with their families in town and "commuted" to work. The Fort was designed to provide a haven for townspeople as well as a military warehouse.
The Fort has survived through four succeeding occupations. Spanish, British, Spanish again, and American. All have left their mark on the venerable structure, but it continues to guard St Augustine, in spirit, if not in fact.
Most of the rooms in the Fort are set up as storerooms, with very few being used at barracks. Heavy use of the Roman Arch gave the Fort it's immense strength.
Designed so that crossfire could be brought to bear on every wall of the fort, the installation was never breached. To the east, cannon could drop shot on ships three miles away. To the north, the land had been cleared for a distance of 250 yards, preventing a land attack from succeeding. This model shows the revolutionary (for it's time) design.
The east now has a calm, beautiful view, but imagine what it must have been like with hundreds of cannon on every level.
This wall took the brunt of the British attach in the 1740's. More on that in a moment.
The San Carlos Bastion faces Northeast, and is the primary lookout since it looks at the Atlantic Ocean.
The east wall, facing the sea, has a small building at the base of the wall, behind the seawall that protects the lower level of the fort. This is a furnace that contains a rack that cannonballs are fed into from one side, where they slowly drop down an incline to a stop at the end. Picking up enough heat to turn red hot, the solid shot were "tonged" into cannon and fired in the hope of starting a fire aboard a ship.
The north side protects against land attacks.
The St Agustin Bastion (yeah, that's the correct spelling) lookout remains open to the public.
And that allows us to get a look to the left, straight-ahead, and to the right, just as a sentry would have done.
The For's construction was prompted by the burning of St Augustine by Sir Francis Drake in 1586. Then the English settled Jamestown in 1607, and sacked St Augustine in 1668. When the English settled Charleston in 1670, the Spanish decided to build the Fort.
Built of native coquina stone, a stone comprised of millions of tiny shells. Soft and workable when fresh, it hardens when exposed to heat and sunlight. The stone is so strong, that when the British occupied St Augustine in 1702, they besieged the fort for 50 days, burned the town, but were unable to take the fort. In 1740, a siege of some 27 days again failed to breach the walls of this great structure.
This view from the north side shows what an attaching army would face.
Coming round the west side, we see the moat and the entrance to the Sally Port.
These City Gates were the only entrance from the north into St Augustine. They continue to guard the town from a point just a few hundred yards from Castillo De San Marcos.
A quick cool-down at a Ben and Jerry's store helped us to combat the heat of the afternoon! Then back to the motorhome for a good home-cooked meal!
What a day!
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