When you open the hotel door and your stomach flips — praise and hallelujah for recognizing glorious moments in life. That gasp you let out could be for something remarkably fine.

Sometimes those first hotel views call for a crash course in tolerance. I’ve checked out faster than I checked in when conditions weren’t right.

My out-loud gasp and throat-in-the-stomach feeling one February day on Florida’s east coast were the happy kind in an off-season holiday. Expected nice. Got more.

Photographer husband G. W. Tibbetts and I opened the door to our room at Florida’s Ponte Vedra Inn & Club in February, glad to be out of the Toyota Camry.

Direct view to the beach. Front door to back window in a straight line. Bed looked fine and the other details too, but that instant first view told us volumes about this place just 31 miles from Jacksonville and even closer to historic St. Augustine.

Our room wasn’t the special one. Every room gives that immediate ocean view, and you don’t have to ride an elevator umpteen levels to get it. This Inn with 250 rooms is two stories and no more. Ponte Vedra won’t let high rises on the beach; only the lighthouse is tall. That’s a glorious change from so many American beaches.

We had already admired the 1874 lighthouse from several angles: across the Matanzas River from downtown St. Augustine, looking past sailboats and schooners, and also at its base, looking up.

Even better would be planning ahead at least 48 hours and scheduling a Victorian picnic on the grounds, complete with the props to play late 1800s games, a walking tour guide book and admission to the tower and museum.

This is a brand-new offering, so new if you book soon you might be the first with a picnic for two for $50 or family of four for $75.

Lighthouse grounds include the 1886 and 1876 kitchens, Coast Guard buildings, Lighthouse Park neighborhood, Salt Run beach and fishing pier and many historic markers.

History converges like this in easy ways when you mix and match a holiday in Ponte Vedra with St. Augustine, considered America’s oldest city.

"We really honor local history here," says history buff David Nolan. His e-mail address is the clue to his passion: SaveOurHistory is how it starts.

Nolan likes nothing better than pointing out interesting architecture like the octagon- shaped house built in 1886 on Anastasia Island, just a quick trip across the Bridge of Lions.

Used to need a coal-powered train to get across, and Nolan said cinders from the smokestacks burned everybody’s clothes. A new draw span bridge under construction today matches the design of the old one — which will become an underwater reef — instead of introducing a new look out of sync with the history.

That decision, of course, took lots of community conversation and from historian Nolan’s way of looking at things is evidence of community pride.