The Kingsley Plantation was an amazing tour. It's also a National Park, so I got another stamp in my National Park Passport book, which was an unexpected bonus!
They had self-guided audiotours. We both got what was basically an iPhone with headphones to go to the 16 stations. It was an excellent tour, and there were benches in shady areas to sit and listen at most of the stations. This plantation was very interesting because the owner, Kingsley, had married a young black woman who was a slave. He freed her, and she became the mistress of the plantation. It was weird to think that a former slave woman became a slave owner herself. Very strange. She outlived him and continued running the plantation. He also had three other wives, but she was the first one and the one always in charge. The tour took about two hours, and by the time we were done, Mark and I both felt like we had been through an emotional wringer, kind of like what it must feel like to go through Auschwitz.
Then we rode the FERRY! I had never driven my car on to a ferry, so that was exciting for me. It was only a five minute ride across the St. John's River, connecting the two sides of A1A, but it was exciting for us. Then we took that all the way into St. Augustine. It was a lovely drive.
We got to the Welcome Center about 4:50 p.m. and went in to get Trolley Tour tickets for two days and tickets to many other attractions. If you bundled them the night before, it was a big discount. Then we went straight to the condo and got settled in. This two bedroom condo is GORGEOUS! It's all full of beautiful decor items of shells, lighthouses, beach motif stuff. It's really delightful. After getting unpacked, we went to dinner at a very cool diner-type place called Ned's Southside Kitchen where I got Fish and Grits! I have seen shrimp and grits on menus but never fish and grits. The collard greens and the Tasso Cream Sauce that came with it both had ham in them, but they nicely substituted carrots and a cheese cream sauce instead for me. The fish was fried cod, and the grits were done perfectly. It was amazing and probably a once-in-a-lifetime dinner. Mark got a salmon Caesar salad that he said was also very good. A little stop at WalMart for some groceries finished that day.
Today we will do the HOHO Trolley and go to Castillo de San Marcos, the big Spanish fort, where I will get the passport stamp I expected to get on this trip. Tonight we are doing the Ghosts and Graveyard Tour on the trolley at 8 p.m., which should be fun.
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| Getting my passport stamp at Kingsley Plantation. |
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| Starting the audiotour along the St. John's River. |
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| Looking up at the main house with the kitchen attached. |
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| About two dozen remnants of slave quarters are in a semi -circle. They were made of Tabby construction, oyster shells and sand and other things. They were very labor intensive to build. Each had two rooms, a main room with a fireplace for living and a smaller room for sleeping. Each slave had a 1/4 acre plot to grow vegetables for his family. This was a cotton plantation, but those fields are all just overgrown again with trees and nature. |
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| Driving on to the ferry. |
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| Buying our tickets at the Trolley Tour Welcome Center. |
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| Enjoying a minute on the porch of the Welcome Center. |
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| Living room, dining room, and a little bit of the kitchen in the condo. It's all beautifully done in a beach motif, |
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| With my fish and grits! |
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