Roadtrek Rally - St Augustine

Monday, 13 November

We enjoyed a leisurely start as first stop of the day was the recreation office to settle up on the campsite for last night.  Their posted hours said they would open at 8am, so we were at the office a few minutes before 8am to pay up and head out.  Alas, they did not open till 8:20.

By 8:30, we were on our way to St Brendon’s Isle, our mail forwarding service in Green Cove Springs, to pick up mail.

After getting our mail, we drove the few miles to play golf at Magnolia Point Golf & Country Club.  They were able to get us on, and were running a special - $25 with a cart, a hot dog and a beer.  The course was very nice, although the greens had recently been over seeded and had not yet been mowed to normal length.  So the greens were like putting on like carpet - very slow, bumpy and unpredictable.  Darrell struggled all day.  Kris got off to a great start, and Darrell closed the gap to one stroke by the turn.  Kris played the back nine better than Darrell to finish 5 strokes ahead.

When we finished about 1:30pm, we noticed people were enjoying swimming in the swimming pool by the clubhouse, cooling off in the 85 degrees and enjoying the sunny weather.

Kris took note that Magnolia Point Golf Course was the 84th different golf course we had played this year.  Got me to wondering if we might get to 100.  As we headed east from Green Cove Springs, we passed the mom-and-pop golf course we had played on other trips to Florida - and saw it was closed.  So lad we had decided on the course we did, and did not start the day with disappointment on our Plan A golf plan.

Our destination for the day was the Compass RV Resort near St Augustine, and there was a Starbucks along the route.  Kris paid up using the Starbucks mobile app to order for the first time.  We also made a quick stop at Camping World for something as it was only a few blocks from Starbucks.

We arrived at the Compass RV Resort just before 4pm, got parked in the campsite and just made the check in time for the Roadtrek Rally.  

The rally social also started at 4pm, followed by a pot luck at 5pm.  Our pot luck contribution (actually Kris’) was a quiche, which was gone really quick.

Wednesday, 14 Nov

Tuesday night we tried something different - for us.  We ran the air conditioner in Sprinty all night for the first time in since July 2017.  We had run it a few times when we had passengers riding in the back and needed some cool air in the back, but had not run it at night for sleeping since the FMCA Rally in Indianapolis in July 2017 when we were “camped” with hundreds of other RVs in the asphalt parking lot, no shade, and high temperatures during the day in the upper 80s.

With sporadic rain showers in St Augustine, it was warm and muggy.  We reconfirmed that the air conditioner does not do well on the low fan setting - it shut down after 3 hours due to ice buildup on the coils.  It seemed to run fine on the high setting, holding the set temperature like it should.  In either fan setting, it is loud.  Loud enough that we could not hear anything outside - the off-and-on rain, the traffic noise, or anything else.  Perhaps Sprinty will get a new air conditioner.  Maybe an upgrade as Advanced RV (a high end Sprinter upfitter in Willoughby, OH) has found a source for an air conditioner from Australia that is a lot quieter and more efficient.  They offer retrofits on all brands of RVs.  

We woke up to 72 degrees.  As we enjoyed our morning coffee, we basked in the silence having turned the air conditioner off when we got up.  

One of the rally options was to purchase a trolley ticket as part of the camp fee.  The RV Resort has arrangements for a shuttle to pick people up at the RV Resort and take them to the Old Town Trolley terminal - so we did not have to to navigate Saint Augustine or worry about parking Sprinty.

Kris signed us up for the 10am shuttle instead of 9am to enjoy a lazy start to the day, after four straight mornings of get up and go.

At 10am we boarded the shuttle and left Sprinty with 32 of his cousins to hang out at the resort.  As recommended, we initially planned to ride the trolley the entire loop to learn more about St Augustine, and decide which places we .  needed to actually check,out.  Well we made it to stop 15 (of 22) when we decided lunch was a more pressing interest than completing the loop, then looking for lunch.  Stop 15 was closest to the west end of the Bridge of Lions, so we got off, walked over the bridge, and a few more blocks to O’Steens Restaurant, famous for their fried shrimp.  The restaurant is one of those popular places that has benches outside to wait for your table.  And they don’t take credit cards.  Out timing was good, and we were seated right away.  Being that O’Steens is known for their fried shrimp, we had the small plate of fried shrimp that came with two sides.  The food appeared very quickly was was quite tasty - we were glad to have learned about it from the rally hosts who eat there about once a month.

After lunch, we crossed back over the Bridge of Lions and made our way to the Lightner Museum.   The Lightner Museum is housed in the former Alcazar Hotel built in 1888 by Henry Flagler.  The museum, ”St. Augustine’s Lightner Museum of Hobbies”, opened in 1948 with the collections of “Gilded Age” artwork, antiques, and curios of Otto C. Lightner.  As once-proud Chicago estates were put up for auction or sold for taxes during the Depression, Lightner quickly purchased the collections of millionaires that had been acquired over a lifetime.  It was an interesting collection of fine pieces that clearly were the type of articles only the very wealthy would own.

We exited the museum on the south side, where we had to opportunity to see the location of the indoor pool of the Alcazar Hotel, which at 120 feet long and 50 feet wide was the largest indoor pool in the world at the time it was built.

From there, we walked the six blocks or so to the St Augustine distillery.  The distillery is located in the historic Florida Power and Light Ice Plant.  Built as part of St. Augustine’s first power and ice complex in 1907, the ice plant made 125,000 pounds of ice a day for the shrimp packing industry, the fishing industry and residential use.  As modern refrigeration was introduced, ice plants like this closed down.  The building was pretty much abandoned until the distillery purchased it a few years ago and set up a craft distillery, where they make gin, bourbon, and rum.  We learned about the process for making spirits (not all that different from making beer), and skipped the tasting where they provided generous samples of their spirits, and the tour ended in the gift shop.

We then made our way back to stop 15 and reboarded the trolley to finish the 22-stop loop.  At the beginning/end, we took on the St Augustine Historic Museum which was included in the price of the trolley tickets.  The exhibits covered the major periods of history is a rather simple way - it seemed more geared to school age children.

We then caught the shuttle back to camp just in time for the social which was sponored by Sunshine State RV, a RV dealer specializing in Class B motorhomes.  They started as a used Class B dealer, and when a couple of the big RV dealers in Florida closed, they became a dealer for new Class Bs including Roadtrek.  In the few years they have been a Roadtrek dealer, they have become the 9th largest Roadtrek dealer in the country.  And somewhat unique in the RV industry, they have a stellar reputation for servicing Class B motorhomes, perhaps honed by their history of being a used RV dealer.  So much so, The option of taking Sprinty to Gainesville, FL for service would be considered if Sprinty needed anything.  In fact, I talked to Nick Schmidt (the owner) about Sprinty’s feeble air conditioning.

With cooler temperatures expected as the front moves through, we only ran the air conditioning for a few hours more as a dehumidifier, turning it off in the middle of the night to enjoy a more peaceful night.