First Florida Vacation Part 2

I am a bit fuzzier about exactly what we did after South of the Border. If I looked back at the slides I would know. From looking at the map though I am almost positive that we next stopped and explored Charleston. Also thinking back, this must have been a full two week vacation instead of the 10 days we took on the boat.

Charleston & Savannah

I kind of remember the houses in Charleston being bright pastel colors but my memories might be corrupted from going back as an adult. Then we would have next gone to Savannah. I remember being fascinated by the Spanish Moss in the trees. Once again, no strong memories of Savannah at this point 45 years later.

St. Augustine & Oldest House

The next stop that I remember was in St. Augustine. I think there was some display about Ponce de Leon and the Fountain of Youth. I also remember taking a tour of the oldest house in the United States. It is no longer the oldest house. They have built an older one since then. Actually, when we saw it, it was thought to be the oldest house in the US but they have since discovered it was built later than they realized. It is still one of the oldest in the United States, just not the oldest.

From there we went to Disney World. Wrong. At the time, Disneyland was still new and Disney World hadn’t even been conceived of yet.

Marineland

A bit south of St. Augustine was Marineland. There was no way I was going to miss that since my hero was Jacques Cousteau and I thought I wanted to be a marine biologist. It was one of the first if not the first dolphin displays in the country and possibly the world. They put on a great show and we were amazed by how high they could jump and all the flips and other tricks that they could do.

Cape Canaveral

From there we went to Cape Canaveral although at that point it might have been renamed Cape Kennedy since it was after Kennedy was assassinated. The tour of the space facility was impressive. The size of them was incredible and almost more incredible were the huge machines that wheeled them into place. The building that they worked on them in was humongous (is that a word?) I believe they said it was the largest building in the world by cubic feet. It was definitely the largest airplane / rocket hanger in the world. It needed to be high enough to hold the rockets and the doorway had to be high enough for them to get through. I wonder now how they dealt with a door that big. The tractors that moved them out to the launch pad only move 2-3 miles per hour so they had to plan in advance for when they wanted to launch so they would get them there on time. If bad weather was coming, this could be a problem.

Aunt Jo

After this, I think we visited Aunt Jo who was living there with Ilmo at the time. I know she lived in Panama City, Florida for a while but that is over on the Gulf Coast past Tallahassee. I am sure that we did not go there. But where she was I can’t remember. I do remember huge palm trees lining the street that ran along the water front and condos or apartment buildings along the side of the road away from the water. I will talk more about this next time.