Kon Tiki Camping Resorts, St Augustine , FL Camping grounds

Name:Kon Tiki Camping Resorts
Type:restaurant
Street:
City:St Augustine
State:FL
Zip:32084
country:USA
Phone:
Status:unknown

Description:
I've had this little piece of Florida Tiki-ana in the collection for awhile, and finally edited the scans of it.

Maybe Flounder can check it out to see if anything remains, or if any of the locals remember anything.

edited to correct spelling mistake in title.

[ Edited by: tikigardener on 2004-12-28 21:28 ]

Thanks for sharing your great brochure Gardener. I have a postcard from the same place. The campground had a Moai out front that must have been 20 feet tall. On the postcard a fetching blonde is standing next to it; probably the same girl on your brochure. I've looked for this place, but have not been able to find it.
KG

[ Edited by: Kailuageoff on 2004-12-29 11:49 ]

Sounds like a cool postcard... do we get to see it?

TG

I was afraid you would ask. I'll try to post it soon. I've been running around like a tiki maniac and might have time this weekend. I shouldn't complain since I've hit the Mai-Kai, Julian's, the Hawaiian Inn and Frances Langford's Outrigger in one week. Whew....

Geoff,

I may be able to save you some time and trouble. I think we probably both have the same postcard:

I've actually corresponded with the photographer who took the picture (that's his wife doing the modelling) and will probably turn the postcard over to him since he has emotional attachment to it.

Evidently the owners of the resort discovered that photos of girls in bikinis drew tourists, because here's a later brochure, (I'm guessing from the 1970s?) that's cool and cheesy:

Finally, (and I apologize to the Florida collectors for hogging all this ephemera, but darnit, I love this place), Here are some window decals. These would be cool to reproduce (can't you picture them on an old 1960s VW bus side window). Does anyone know how one might go about producing some window decals using this old art?:

Thanks for getting this topic started, TikiGardener. I've been wanting to photograph this stuff for a while.

Sabu

Mahalo Sabu. That's the one. I think this is one of the all-time greatest tiki postcards. Surely, Sven would have used it in the BoT if he had been aware of it. And thanks for the PCT mug. I sent something to you in return that I hope you will enjoy.
KG

Heres what mapquest has to say.

But note the location of the "A-1-A" It seems like it would have been out on that barrier island.

Does the photographer remember anything about the place?

Oh, you could always endure the line at Kinko's and get a nice larger print done of that card. I bet it would look great on some glossy photo stock!

Kailuageoff,

I'm a big time fan of that postcard too. I'm making plenty of good copies before I give it up. I like TikiGardner's idea of making a large copy for framing on art-quality paper.

Glad you liked the PCT mug. I got your postcard in the mail. Much thanks. I didn't know about that location of Trader Vic's. Learn something new every day.

On 2005-01-02 15:00, TikiGardener wrote:
Heres what mapquest has to say.

(map)

But note the location of the "A-1-A" It seems like it would have been out on that barrier island.

Thanks Gardner.

I've been up and down that stretch of A1A numerous times and not seen a campground this size, nevermind Florida's Tiki Collosus. Man, that would be an amazing thing to find! Kind of like discovering Easter Island.

Anyway, I'll be heading up that way to visit NeptuneTiki's palace of Witco in two weeks, so I'll look again. Maybe the road moved at some point....

Sabu,
If you have any cards for the Outrigger Inn in St. Petersburg, you need to compare it with the card I sent you. This is another place that seems to have vanished into the Bermuda Triangle of Tiki. I'll keeping trying to figure out what happened, however, and post it if I ever figure it out.
KG

what is Neptunes Palace of Witco? TD

Sabu,
If you have any cards for the Outrigger Inn in St. Petersburg, you need to compare it with the card I sent you. This is another place that seems to have vanished into the Bermuda Triangle of Tiki. I'll keeping trying to figure out what happened, however, and post it if I ever figure it out.
KG

Bermuda Triangle no more... sort of....

Holiday Inn Sunspree
**(formerly The Outrigger Inn)
**6800 Sunshine Skyway Lane,
**St Petersburg

Holiday Inn........ porbably gutted of any tiki mana it had.

Tiki Gardener

[ Edited by: TikiGardener on 2005-01-08 01:23 ]

Oh, can we see the outrigger postcard?

I just drove up and down this part of A1A yesterday looking for clues. The area is now quite developed with lots of condos. There is one campground called the Bryn Mawr Ocean Resort that is in roughly the right place. http://www.brynmawroceanresort.com
Good aerial photo on their website. The ocean's in the right place - case closed. :wink:

btw - don't ever trust the placement of the star on those on-line maps. Using one of those maps, I sent a friend who was vacationing in Carmel to look for Vanities, the Nielsen's store where they sell Munktiki products. He ended up in a residential neighborhood. The sad part was he had started walking from a point within sight of the shop. ha.

It probably is, but they've changed the concrete pad and road layout considerably.

Also is this pace about sevn miles south of St Augustine?

The zip code is right.

TG

[ Edited by: TikiGardener on 2005-01-09 12:39 ]

TG,
It is indeed between 7 and 8 miles south of downtown St Augustine. Based on the new and old aerial photos (and my sense of the scope), the Bryn Mawr facility looks like it may be one half of the Kon-Tiki site.

JTD

I tried sending an email using the email link they have on their site. But it just bounced back as undeliverable.

Oh the trevails of internet urban archeology!

TG

On 2005-01-07 19:58, TIKI DAVID wrote:
what is Neptunes Palace of Witco? TD

Ha, Ha....

Don't look for it on mapquest. It's NeptuneTiki's house. He collects Witco.

I'm going to start another thread on the St. Petersburg location of Trader Vics so we don't clutter this one up.
KG

This site is just down the road from my house. Sorry to say, but not a trace of Tiki left. Just miles and miles of beach condos.

I'm late to this discussion, but I ran across it yesterday via a Google search and thought I'd toss in what I know.

My family stayed at Kon Tiki for many summer vacations in the early to mid 70s. The pictures posted here of the map, brochure, postcard, and decal are all things I fondly remember, and it's been great fun seeing them again.

Details not found in these materials are:

• It was a really nice campgroud -- clean, nice people, not crowded
• The beach was great, as they are in that part of FL
• There was a mini golf course that also had a Tiki theme, with statues and palms and whatnot.
• Next to the golf course was a hut occupied by a wood carver who made Tiki-like masks and other things to use as home decor. My family has at least a couple of them stashed somewhere, probably in the basement, but they hung in our house for years. I also have a "necklace" that's a tiki head (probably about 4" long) on a thong that I wore proudly upon return from vacation. The hut was a gathering place, esp. after dark and being next to the golf course -- we kids loved watching the carver work, and as a bonus he had a radio tuned to a Jacksonville Top 40 station. Groovy!

You guys came close on the location, but not exactly. Bryn Mawr was already there when we visited Kon Tiki; the two campgrounds were next door to each other. I can't remember if KT was to the north or south of BM, but the two definitely co-existed. So ... it seems all traces of KT are gone. Very sad ...

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/4850+A1a+S+St+Augustine+FL+32080-7447/#a/maps/l::4850+A1a+S:St+Augustine:FL:32080-7447:US:29.8058:-81.265799:address:/m:hyb:12:29.8058:-81.265799:0::/io:0:::::f:EN:M:/e

The aerial view

This was a great campground that sat on the beach on Anastasia Island before you got to Crescent Beach. It was now where the Hibiscus Condos sit. This campground had a huge ocean front view with walk over the dunes access. It had a huge tiki out front. As a kid we camped there in tents. My sisters' boyfriends in high school would camp there with a keg of beer in their tent, but it really was a family place. Great location to fish and you could also drive on the beach sand there. There were no paved roads between it and the beach. It was a sad day when it closed. Bryn Mawr was more inland, back towards where Marsh Creek Country Club is today.

Hi I camped at Kon Tiki Campground for about two months in a pop up travel trailer, enjoyed the beach and the sand and the Tiki Heads everywhere. This was in March of 1973. In the middle, rather more towards A1A there was a small store with groceries and merchandise. There were also showers available too. It was a great get away and very affordable back then. I had pictures of the place but seem to have misplaced them. Sorry to hear it is no longer. I,m pretty sure that it was where The Bryn Mawr Ocean Resort is today. The location seems right and familiar to me. It wasn't,t that fancy back then but still very nice.

Ran across this nice old photo with the moai at the entrance sign for the Kon Tiki campground.

DC

Bumping this one back up to post some new information we dug up in our researching.

The Kon-Tiki was opened in 1967 by former WWII veteran Bob Sonntag along with a group of investors.

Prior to opening the Kon-Tiki Mr. Sonntag was a director of marketing for a pharmaceutical company.

The 20' tall tiki was created to compete with other nearby state-run campgrounds.

In 1979 the investors chose to sell the property in large part due to rising value of oceanfront property.

At the time of the closing Mr. Sonntag says his campground hosted over one million guests.

Looks like the postcard image is gone from an earlier post so here's our copy of the card.

Of course you can also behold it in all its glory in that torrid tome called TIKI MODERN :)

Wow...it's like the original Mojave Oasis.Cool !

Hi. Sorry to resurrect an old topic, but my grandfather Bob Sonntag started the Kon Tiki campground back in the 60s. My mom used to work in the office/store during the summers and was apparently one of the bikini babes in the brochure photos. My grandfather turning 90 in October and I’m trying to gather photos, stories, or any other fond memories anybody might have that we can compile and give to him as a surprise on his birthday. If you have any memories of the campground you would like to share, we’d love to hear them. I’m gathering it all at [email protected] if you have anything you would be willing to share.

Thanks!

Found this on Pinterest:

Nice! That looks like a photo from 50 or so years ago, when St. Augustine was MUCH more quiet and low key than it is today.

There's not much tiki visible in St. Augustine today, however there are some bartenders in town who are keeping the flame alive and very much into tiki.

Found an article on the Kon Tiki Campground with a little history on the owners/developers.

The rendering would seem to indicate that there were two Moai at the campground entrance.

DC

Spotted another brochure from the Kon Tiki Camping Resort that has some photos of the grounds and the Moai.

DC

A rather spiffy decal from the Kon Tiki Camping resort. I would buy a retro one of these for my motorhome!

DC