The Fountain of Youth

I've already told you about two different trips we have made to St. Augustine since we arrived in Jacksonville (one for historic sightseeing and the other for the World Golf Hall of Fame), but another St. Augustine attraction we wanted to check out was the Fountain of Youth and surrounding park. For the past month they have been offering a substantial discount on admission to Florida teachers (teacher gets in free and all guests are 50% off), so we took advantage last weekend and spent our Sunday morning at the Fountain of Youth.

Fountain of Youth time!

Upon arrival, our first stop was the fountain itself, where we heard a little history from the guide stationed at the spring and sampled the water for ourselves.

This isn't what the "Fountain of Youth" actually looked like, but this water is flowing from the same spring.

Display depicting what the original "Fountain" would have looked like

I'm not going to lie, I fed Ellie all that youthful water she could drink in the hopes that it will keep her frozen at this age forever, because she is AWESOME right now.

We then spent some time exploring the grounds and checking out the other exhibits they had set up, including a model shipwreck, model Native American village, and a weaponry demonstration. We also checked out the planetarium, where Ellie adorably said hello to all the stars.

Model shipwreck

Ellie enjoying an Ellie-sized doorway in the Native American village

Checking out the scenery

Ponce de Leon himself

Watching the weaponry demonstration

Eric and Ellie exploring the grounds

Hanging out on a tree limb

Replica of an old church

Ellie wanted to share her Wall-E toy with the local peafowl

Meditation.

It was a beautiful morning and we had a very nice time exploring the park. When we had enough, we exited and stopped for some lunch at the on-site "snack bar." I say "snack bar" because it's just a little walk-up food hut with picnic tables surrounding it, but the food is not what you'd expect (far more than just burgers and hot dogs) and was actually really very good. We had a blackened chicken quesadilla with black beans and rice and a pulled pork sandwich with fries and both were quite tasty. We may stop there again for a meal next time we're in St. Augustine - that's how good it was!

After lunch we headed back to Jacksonville. It was just a quick morning excursion but we had a lot of fun!