Matanzas Fort and Washington Garden

The warm weather has come back to Florida and we are loving it. I am sitting on my balcony watching sailboats and pelicans on the ocean. I have a glass of wine, sandy feet, and a warm breeze on my face. Ahhhh!
Today we visited the smallest of all of the Spanish forts: Fort Matanzas which was built in 1740 when it was no longer the French, but rather the British who were a threat to the Spanish Florida colony. Whoever controlled Florida controlled the rich shipping lanes coming from the Spanish Caribbean. Florida Governor Montiano knew the British would continue to try to conquer Florida and would most likely attempt to come through the unguarded inlet at Matanzas. So, he ordered a fort to be built to guard these southern approaches-- Fort Matanzas. The fort is on Rattlesnake Island in the Matanzas River. The National Park Service runs free pontoon boat shuttles to the island and then an interpreter dressed as a Spanish officer talked about the political implications of the fort. Florida was eventually sold to the Americans for a penny an acre. It is pretty swampy land, but had some highly important seaports. A good buy
It was a perfect day to be out on the water - sunny, breezy and not hot. We were finished at this small park by lunchtime and decided just to drive south along the coast until we found someplace to eat our picnic lunch. We soon got to Washington Oaks Garden State Park. This beautiful parcel of land used to be the winter home for a distant relative of President George Washington. The gardens were established by Louise and Owen Young who purchased the land in 1936 and built a winter retirement home. They named it Washington Oaks and there are many, huge live oaks trees on the property. I just love these curvy, sprawling trees. They were used to make support braces in old ships because the grain of the lumber was already curved. In 1965, most of the property was donated to the State. It is early for most of the roses in the rose garden but we enjoyed taking a walk along the nature trail and touring the relatively small house built on the Matànzas River. It cost us $5 to get into the park - cheap day for us today.
This evening we looked on TripAdvisor for another dinner spot and went to a truly tiny Italian family run restaurant which makes everything from scratch. I could hear the cook pounding my veal cutlet as I ate some wonderful bread and eggplant caponata. Yummy. I tried to save room for the key lime pie we brought home for desert. Only two more days. Sigh.