St Augustine to Darien

Getting ready of a morning with five women takes longer than we thought but finally we were on our way to brecky and starting today.  Actually before that Kathie, Esther and I dived out of bed at about 6.30 to take photos of the sunrise.  Just a lovely view from our balcony of the St George Inn, which also overlooks the Castillo de San Marcus.

Our gorgeously quaint Inn that we stayed at...

We visited the Castilla de San Marcos.  This masonry fort is the oldest and best preserved example of a Spanish fortification in the continental United States and for many years was the northernmost outpost of Spain's vast New World empire.

Such history and some wonderfully dressed soldiers re-enacted aiming and shooting over the water.

Some pics and a chat later had me taking a selfie with one of the soldiers...

We all voted this an amazingly good time exploring the fort and then we next visited the stripey lighthouse.  For ever so long I have looked at pics of this on the web and it was every bit as good as I imagined.  

And how cool that the lighthouse cat is black and white too!  Kathie, once again, took some incredible angled shots...

Terrific view from the top...

Onward north and soon enough we were in Georgia.  Stopped for some lunch ... somewhere ...

And after a detour to Brunswick which wasn't exactly what we thought we got to Darien before dark.  Oh my goodness, the Blue Heron Inn is tucked way way into the marsh and we were soon sitting down by the camp fire with the other guests chatting with them, enjoying their company waiting for the shucked oysters.

We then headed back into Darrien to Skippers Fish Camp for dinner.  Mike will be very disappointed in me, not having shrimp or crab or oysters, but instead I had pulled pork with a side of baked potato and coleslaw.  Delicious.

Then we headed back.  Now let me explain, we are staying in what I have been told is the "boon docks" in a really charming Inn, in the middle of marsh lands, owned by a charming couple, with two dogs (Shadow and Sassy) and a couple of cats (including Ernestine the 6 clawed cat) who happens to be curled up on the couch with me right now purring like a train engine).  On the way back from Skippers we took a wrong turn, or we missed our turn and ended in the middle of nowhere.  In fits of giggles.  My map app just showed graph paper.

And Mollie took a photo of our surroundings.  Actually she took about ten photos of the surroundings, in case we were lost forever more and they found our withered bodies in the car in months to come!  This of course had us in fits of giggles, wondering if we did a u-ey would we end up down in the marsh!  

Finally found our way back and then Mollie decided to take a shadow pic which she decided "well that's just silly, now we look like a four headed monster"!!!  Now if you are reading this and know Mollie I bet you can just hear her saying that.

A big day, Lynnie the "rev head" is doing amazing with the driving, doing some pretty great maneuvers with Mildred the GPS (and let's face it driving on the wrong side of the road every maneuver looks pretty incredible to us) and the others have taken to bed as Esther and I have stayed up tapping on our screens updating our blogs.  Very intermittent reception here so this blog post may not be published until tomorrow.  And Ernestine keeps wanting to crawl up on my lap and is getting a bit insistent so I'm thinking time for bed for me too.

But before I go have I mentioned how much I love these ladies...

Beautiful Kathie

Lovely Lynnie

Darling Mollie acting like a little koala in a tree

And my dear friend Esther who put this all together, thank you soooo much Esther