Thanksgiving Trip: St. Augustine

We enjoyed a few days with Ben's family in St. Augustine. The first two days were cold and rainy, but we bundled up and had a few adventures anyway.

The Alligator Farm was basically a zoo with tons of crocodilians and lots of cool birds.

The kids fed a bunch of alligators vending machine pellets, and we saw a keeper handf-eed

rats to alligators big enough to pull her into the water if they'd wanted to.

Ever the treehugger

Liza always loves her some turtles/tortoises

Ever wonder how big a vulture is?
(the big one is a Cape Griffon vulture, the smaller is a Black vulture)

My favorite animals were actually the Hoffman's two-toed sloths

On Wednesday morning while several people were at the gym, the boys
watched some good 'ol Bob Ross with Mema.

Liza, Iris, and I took Sadie on a walk on the beach.

Evidence of damage from this year's hurricane season.

We visited the St. Augustine aquarium in the afternoon.

The guy on the right is a grad student studying marine biology.
He shared lots of great information during our guided tour.

Some of us fed nurse sharks!

I chose to feed the Southern Stingray.

The next stop was Castillo San Marcos!

Always cool to walk through an old Spanish fort.

A ranger took pity on us because we were so cold and let us into
the fort's prison cell, which is warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

Jack and Luke got sucked into the Pirate Museum gift shop
as we were walking around looking for a place to eat dinner.

We enjoyed walking down St. George street but didn't do any shopping.

After dinner we walked to the Visitors' Center to meet our trolley.

It was cold but fun to see all the buildings lit up for Christmas!
We sang along with the trolley's Christmas music very animatedly.
Liza hadn't been feeling well that day but she wanted to come along
anyway and she was a really good sport.

Flagler College