St. Augustine Lighthouse

This blog was almost abandoned, but I'm resurrecting it for now! In over two decades of living in Florida and countless visits to St. Augustine, starting with school field trips and then trips on my own, I had never been to the St. Augustine Lighthouse. Visible from downtown, the St. Augustine Light is located on Anastasia Island and was built in 1874.

One of the fascinating parts of lighthouses to me is always the design of the stairs leading to the top. There seems to be a lot of variation from lighthouse to lighthouse. Some, like the Ponce Inlet lighthouse have staircases that spiral around the walls of the building all the way to the top. Others like the Cape Florida Light in Key Biscayne have variations on the spiral staircases, only based around a central column rather than attached to the walls. On the St. Augustine Light, the stairs spiraled up around half the building, with landings on the other half. I don't ever remember being in a lighthouse with a staircase designed quite like this.

Once the stairs were all climbed, there was a nice view of the top of the lighthouse from the balcony just below.

There were rather impressive and decorative braces holding up the observation platform.

 

View of downtown St. Augustine.

The lighthouse made some nifty looking shadows on the beach.

I liked this house under the lighthouse!

Great Horned Owl at Flagler College

I was in St. Augustine near the fountain in front of the Lightner Museum (former Alcazar Hotel) when I spotted this great horned owl across the street at Flagler College. The bird flew to several of the windows on the upper floors of the school where he would stop and peer inside for a while before moving on to another window. He eventually made it up to a chimney where he sat for a while before flying off.

It was a very unique sight, and was a bit Harry Potter-like with an owl flying around a castle-like school in broad daylight. Maybe the owl was delivering a letter to a student...

Osprey Thunderbird?

Identify this bird! It looks like an osprey to me, only it is way too big! The picture was taken on from the temporary Bridge of Lions in St. Augustine, Florida. The bird was no more than ten feet away and stood at least three feet tall. Any clues?



Could large birds like this be the source of the thunderbird legends?