My favorite elementary school field trip:  St. Augustine, Florida.  Fourth graders, charter bus, and as much history (and a little shopping) as you can shove down their sweet little throats in five hours!  And I absolutely LOVE it and so do they.  Fortunately, we live close enough (kind of) that we’ve also been able to visit as a family a few times as well to enjoy it at our own pace without the constraints of a scheduled tour, tired classmates and stressed teachers doing constant head counts (for which I am grateful).

This was my third time chaperoning (and I get to do it again next year for the last time) and I let my daughter have the camera and get the sights from her perspective.  The results?  I will be handing her the camera more frequently….

She’s a mini-me:  (obviously she didn’t take this…I did…the rest are hers!)

She was fascinated by the Spanish settlement, how their faith (and ours) was EVERYwhere, seeing how they lived, growing their gardens, caring for livestock, cooking their meals, preparing their own leather goods and the sturdy carpentry skills.

She was able to try out her sweeping skills with the homemade brooms and quickly decided she was grateful for OUR broom!

 

Dinner looked and SMELLED phenomenal…our table didn’t look quite like this, but we did have beans and rice that night!

Vivid colors on the pottery.

Grapes in the garden, ripe on the vine.

Castillo de San Marcos.  Ah, a lovely sight to behold on such a beautiful day!

Cannons over the wall for protection.

The church in the fort.

 The altar of St. Mark.                                                                            Holy water font.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bell tower.

Rolling cannon.

The school bell and the orange tree at the Oldest Wooden Schoolhouse.