Tuesday, January 18, 2011

St. Augustine Light With Misty & Bob

On January 8, I took my St. Louis friends Misty and Bob to see the lighthouse and and the Castillo San Marco in St. Augustine.  Misty and I are both lighthouse nuts, so every pic you see of Misty, she is grinning!  On the way there, I told Bob to pull over, pull over.  There was a bunch of birds on the side of the road, birdfooting around some crops.  From where we sat, I thought they were sandhill cranes.  After looking at the pictures at home, I realized they weren’t and looked them up.  Wood Storks!  Around them are cow egrets.  Click on any pic for a closeup, then click on back to return.

Wood Storks 2 

Then we went looking for St. Augustine Lighthouse, not sure which way to turn once we got off the causeway.  Easy decision as we could easily see it from the causeway, sticking up off to our left!  It was even more impressive up close!

Light 1Light 2 

Here we are at the base entrance with Bob standing by the Christmas tree at the base of the stairs..

Misty & Kathy at entrance Bob & Tree

These next pics wouldn’t get in order for me.  First is the view of the stairs looking up from base, second is about half way up looking down, third is Bob from the first landing and last is the view from the top all the way down.  Not for the faint of heart.

This was as high as Bob would go, about two landings up.  Not the 13th floor, just the 13th stop on the guided tour.

Misty & Bob

Proof that we made it to the top.  Cold and windy, but gorgeous!

Misty & Kathy

Here’s our views from the top, including Bob on the porch of the lighthouse keepers’ house.

This is a lovely little garden off to the side of the keepers’ house.  You can see the gnarly live oaks with their resurrection ferns on the branches.  It has rained recently, so the ferns were nice and green.

Garden & trees

Here’s the First Order Fresnel Lens from the inside.

Fresnel Lens 1st Order 

Misty on the porch of the keepers’ house.  Amazing that this was a burned out hulk in the 60’s!

Keepers' House

These were the first pics I finished processing.  Will finish up our trip to St. Augustine with the Castillo pics soon.  Going to work on the manatees at Blue Springs State Park first.

Thanks for stopping by.  As always, comments are welcome.

(-: ¸.·´* .·´*¨¨)) -:¦:- ***
((¸¸.·´*~Kathy.·´*)****¨¨))
-:¦:- ·· ((¸¸.·´* .·´*((¸¸.·.·´ *-:¦:- ... :-)

2 comments:

Deelite said...

Wow Kathy your pics turned out great. Wasn't our time together fun!!! So glad to find out those are wood storks, we have not seen wood storks in the wild here in St Louis, only in the zoo. I love how you showed the pics from the top of the lighthouse. You are getting so good with all this blogging. And oh yes thanks for remembering your camera, when I forgot mine. U R the best!

~* Tracy *~ said...

I love the photo of you and Dee at the top of the lighthouse. Am really enjoying reading about your adventures. Loving your photos