St Augustine, FL

St Augustine, FL - Pellicer Creek Campground

St Augustine is a great old city - It’s got the vibe of New Orleans without the drunken bawdiness. We’ve been here several times to see dear friends, sink our feet in the white, chalky-fine sand beaches, and sample excellent cuisine - notably the Ice Plant featuring craft cocktails and hand-crafted ice spheres for your old fashioned.

We chose the Pellicer Creek campground, which abutted Pellicer Creek - a 15 foot wide channel bordered by tropical lushness straight out of Conrad's Heart of Darkness. In addition to concern about alligators jumping up at our inflatable kayak, our campground hosts warned us that a nest of water moccasins lived under campground’s dock. So we left Pippi safely in the RV and *very* gingerly eased into the kayak and moved off from shore as quickly as possible (I think if I’d known how aggressively these critters are said to defend their nests, I’d have been a lot less sanguine about using the dock).

We also enjoyed hiking around the Princess Place Preserve, where I photographed this very photogenic and friendly dragonfly.

Pellicer Creek widens into this, further downstream.

Would We Come Back Here?

Heck yes, we'd come back. However, mostly to see friends. Florida is a surprisingly big state for something that looks on a map like a somewhat questionable appendage hanging off the rest of the country. So there's a lot of Florida to be explored before seeing that much more of St. Augustine. One of us has never even been to Key West, which seems like missing out on some sort of inalienable right. And we both liked the Panhandle/Upper Gulf Coast way more than we expected. So yes, we hope to come back many times.

Would we stay at Pellicer Creek Campground? I liked the proprietors who were extremely casual--in a good way. The place, though possibly even more crowded than your average private campground, was well-maintained. The Verizon LTE sign was adequate. Their wi-fi service was interesting in that they limited the number of devices that each site could use. The limit was something reasonable but we blew past that almost immediately--it turns out we have something like 7 devices that can make use of wi-fi, if you include a raspberry pi in the mix. I might stay here again but mostly because the other places that came up when I searched seemed to offer bingo night. I don't want to die in a place that has bingo night and, since any of us can die at any moment, I prefer to stay away from bingo night.

Would We Live Here?

If we wanted to live in Florida at all, St. Augustine would be high on our list--though only after checking out the west coast of Florida more. We've been told that the west coast of Florida is a bit "red necky" but the people on the west coast have choice words for the east coasters, too. And in Canada, at least when I was young, everyone made fun of people from Newfoundland. Everyone's got to feel better than someone else. I, for one, feel better than all those who don't feel as good as me.

But, to answer the question, we're still moving on, looking for that perfect place.