St. Augustine -- Apr. 16th

Woke up really early today. I set my alarm for 830, but I think I was up about an hour before that. I met Tara’s son Gareth, and we all hung out a little bit before he went to school. Kirstin had the day off school, and Bill had the day off work. Tara had to work at 130, but that left us a good amount of time to go down by the ocean and get breakfast at a place called the Oasis. It had a beautiful view, and I ordered two eggs, sunny, bacon, biscuit, and grits. I helped Kirstin with her word find and won in Tic-Tac-Toe 3 games to 2 with 1 cat. The meal was good, even though we had to wait a little longer than we expected, as the waitress forgot to put our order in for about 20 minutes. We went down to the historic district, walked around by the oceanfront, and historic fort for awhile. I gave Kirstin my small camera and let her take about 120 pictures with it. They came out very interesting, some good, some bad, definitely all with a unique perspective, and kind of a window into a child’s thought process and see how they look at the world. She had a blast. We got some gelato, and walked around the shops a little more. We went into this one store that had a really good selection of super hot sauces. I have researched this a little bit and recognized the Blair’s 3am and 2 am to be pretty rare and between 1 and 2 million scoville units! After that, Tara had to go to work, and the three of us went back to the house, relaxed, and I dumped some photos on my pc. I changed into shorts and we went over to Tara’s parents’ house and we all took the canoe out into the river. Kirstin was afraid of the neighbor’s dog, Champ, and of course Champ wanted to follow us the whole route we paddled in the canoe. We saw a great blue heron, a bald eagle, crab, and a couple of fish. The river is lined with beautiful trees and they all have that Spanish moss hanging down from them, very pretty. Right around then, it was time for dinner. Tara suggested a place she used to work way back when, that they said was very unique and an interesting menu. Right up my alley. We got there, and it was awesome! Exactly what I look for. It was a down home place on the river that used to be a bait and tackle shop. It was called Clark’s. We walked in, and they have more taxidermy animals than Canfield’s. It was all set up really nicely. We sat on the deck, right on the river and turtles(large ones), gar, and other fish swam right by our table the whole time. We gave the kids a couple of quarters and there was a gumball machine full of fish food for them to feed the animals. It was fun. We soon discovered that if you walked down a little bit, there was a small bridge, and a small alligator just hanging out right off the bridge. Pretty cool. We sat back down to eat and it was great. Bill and I had ordered four appetizers to split. We got: ostrich, snake, kangaroo, and some Cajun sausage. Yum. The kangaroo was the highlight of the meal, tasted just like beef, but more tender and seemingly less fat. The other items were all good, too, and we helped the kids finish off their meals and headed back home. I took a short nap, being worn out from waking up early, getting sun, and a full meal. When I woke up, I let the kids help Bill shave my hair off. They had a good time. I kissed Kirstin goodnight, and blogged. Bill and Tara were very gracious hosts and I had a really good time visiting them and especially Kirstin, hopefully I can do it again soon.