The Nation's Oldest City

St. Augustine, Florida...I've never given it much thought. Since we were going as far East on Interstate 10 as we could, we decided to make a stop at the World Golf Hall of Fame.  It is at the World Golf Village in St. Augustine.  If not for the Hall of Fame we would have not bothered to stop here. What a mistake that would have been.

The drive through Florida was beautiful. They have lovely highways divided with a large grass and tree lined median.  You rarely see the road going the other direction. You just drive along your two lane road with everyone going the same direction. We seem to be the slow pokes as cars AND trucks pass us like we are standing still. The trucks seem to be able to drive at the same speed as cars everywhere except California.  It was strange driving 80 in Texas and have trucks passing us!

After the tropical storm dropped buckets of water there is standing water across the state. As we got further East we started to see damage to the trees from the winds. I'm so glad we waited out the storm.

We arrived at the World Golf Hall of Fame prepared to wander through for about an hour then move on to our room.  It took two hours to go through it.  There is so much history on the game and especially the beginning of the game. You could spend days if you wanted to read about all of the ancient players and equipment.  All very interesting.

My favorite part, or course, is that Fred Couples was inducted with this year's honorees.  He has always been my favorite golfer and it was a thrill to see so many of his trophies and memorabilia.  The honorees have donated items of interest and trophies they have won over their career. Each one has a section devoted to their personal history.

We go upstairs to the Trophy Room where there are trophies from all major tournaments, PGA, USGA, LPGA and Ryder Cup.  That was so fun to see.                      





The view from he Trophy room is 190 feet high and overlooks the village.

 
 This Girl Scout sash was donated by Nancy Lopez. She is my favorite LPGA player and there is an entire room dedicated to her.  I loved that she was a Girl Scout!


We left to find our hotel and then to see what else might be of interest in
St. Augustine. I had no idea what a great city this was.  I knew my history and about Ponce de Leon and the Fountain of Youth but who really thinks about it very much?  This is the oldest city in the Nation! It has the oldest everything: oldest house, oldest drug store, school house...

and this cemetery! It is so well preserved.  It is the Tolomato Cemetery.  It is 250 years old and the last person to be buried here was in 1863.  It was amazing.

We walked through shops and galleries along with hundreds of other tourists. There are so many people here. This is a city I would have never planned to visit. We are so glad we did!