Road Trip! East Coast Florida Beach Towns and Beaches

After a few fun-filled days in Orlando, we struck out on a road trip to explore Florida beach towns and beaches. We headed to the coast for some beaches on our way to our destination, St. Augustine. We started our Florida East Coast Road Trip at New Smyrna Beach. From there we drove the scenic A1A coastal road on to St. Augustine where we spent a couple days. We then drove further north to see what there was to be seen in the northern Florida beach towns and beaches, ending in Jacksonville Beach, before moving back inland for some hiking and more Orlando before flying home to British Columbia Canada.

New Smyrna Beach

From Orlando, we headed east for lunch in the little coastal town of New Smyrna Beach, known for it’s surfing, artsy culture and…..shark bites! The best motto we saw was:

A little drinking town with a shark problem.

New Smyrna Beach

Here we started our northern journey along the scenic A1A coastal road. Orlando to New Smyrna Beach is approximately 90 km / 1+ hour drive on the highways. 

We hit up Flagler Avenue (pictured above), where the action apparently is. And sure enough every little patio was filled with people drinking beer and enjoying the sun. Flagler Avenue is adorable. It is filled with little local stores that are fun to mosey through.

At the end of the street is the beach, where for $20 you can do a beach drive – i.e. you can take your car and drive up and down the beach. I really wanted to do this, but Jill made a good point that it may not be healthy for any sea life that is living under the sand… good point, Jill, good point. Instead, we walked the gorgeous beach in the sun and blustering wind.

We had lunch at the Breakers Restaurant located in a pink building on the beach at the end of Flagler street, sitting on some prime real estate right on the beach overlooking the sand and water. From outside it looked like a mellow little place with decent food (and the food was tasty). Inside was like a full on deep south American hub: it was overwhelmingly “American”, with heavy accents, white retirees with browned alligator-skin- tans, and a man wearing a shirt that said “God, Family, Guns, Country “. There was not a single person of colour visible in there, and I would guess that Jill and I might have been the only openly gay folk in there. It was extremely loud. Lunch was fried, and all dishes and cutlery were disposable, including beer glasses.

I have never felt so Canadian in my life. While our lunch experience was an interesting experience with deep south American culture, the lack of recycling and the over-representation of likely Trump supporters made me happy to be done lunch and to be moving onto the outdoors.

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I don’t want to sound down on New Smyrna Beach, because it was very cute, and the beach is awesome (but just be aware if you hang out on blankets you might get hit by cars). New Smyrna Beach is a town that would be great to stay in for a couple days if you are looking for a beach base, when you could better immerse yourself in the fun-loving culture.

The reality is that once we left Orlando and headed east, we were submersed in the “deep south” and this was a tad bit of culture shock for me. Our lunch at the Beaches Restaurant in New Smyrna Beach was the first place we felt immersed in it. However, as soon as you get out of Orlando on the back roads, this feeling of being in the “deep south” starts to feel overwhelming, as you pass houses with flag poles with both Confederate flags coupled with Trump flags, and pro-gun t-shirts and bumper stickers. All of this felt very surreal to me, as a Canadian gay woman, who thinks Trump is a total smuck and can’t fathom why anyone thinks guns are cool.

For an interesting article by Rosalind Bentley from the New York Times on the sites in Florida where the Underground Railway was run, click here. This article also expressed in words for me how I felt about driving through Florida, and the intensely “deep south” feeling to it, that made me uncomfortable.

For a good blog on New Smyrna Beach see this blog post on New Smyrna Beach from Amy, someone who lives there and can give you more well-rounded advice about this cute town.

Driving North on Hwy A1A to St. Augustine: Florida Beach Towns and Beaches

We left New Smyrna Beach and drove the scenic Hwy A1A north up the peninsula along the ocean on the east coast of Florida, where we perused the coastal towns and beaches.

The journey from Smyrna Beach to St. Augustine is approximately 110 km, along a flat easy road. Due to the lower speed limits on this scenic route, it takes about 2 hours of driving time without stops. But you will want to stop on this beach side road.

The drive along Hwy A1A is is dotted with Florida beach towns, beaches and beach -front houses. Unfortunately, a lot of the time you can’t see the water because there are dunes in between the road and the water. But there are a lot of little towns and places to pull into where you can access the vast beach or do pit stops along the way.

Daytona Beach had the best mid-century modern and old school hotels and buildings, along this older highway. They were so many awesome old motels with original amazing signs, many run down and in need of some love and for sale, that Jill changed her retirement goal: she would now like us one of the adorable old motels on the beach and become beach bum hoteliers. Not a bad life. The beach, we hear, can get very very busy with the “there to be seen” crowd in the summer. But in February it looked great.

For a beach experience all to yourself, just keep driving past Daytona Beach and find a patch of sand.

Try Flagler Beach for more remote beaches in a town where there are still some places to eat. Or just pull off at any of the beaches or smaller towns along the way to have the beach all to yourself.

Check out Washington Oaks Gardens State Park with a gorgeous beach and cool trees, near the town of Hammock, which looked adorable with a nice bike path and scenery.

Along this route is Marineland, which is both a town and a place. It is hailed as being the “World’s First Oceanarium” which has been in action since 1938. You can swim with dolphin, see sea turtles and learn about the sea.

We landed in St. Augustine late in the afternoon, which was the largest centre since New Smyrna Beach, but with a very different vibe. St. Augustine is a cool, hip, historic place, which is hailed to be the oldest city in the USA. It also was a sanctuary for escaping slaves in the 1700’s and was a key part of the Underground Railway. We spent a couple of days enjoying the sweet city of St. Augustine.

For more info on St. Augustine, see my blog post “A Guide to St. Augustine Florida, the Oldest City in North America: Our Favourites and Photos“.

North of St. Augustine on Hwy A1A: Florida Beach Towns and Beaches

From St. Augustine we continued to travel north along the A1A to Jacksonville Beach. We headed across the bridge from St. Augustine to Vilano Beach and then took the A1A north along the spit. Here there is water on both sides of you. The ocean on our right was roaring. But, as before, it’s often hard to see the water from the car due to the sand dunes. There are a number of places to pull off and check out the beach or explore, and this area is full of nature.

Most of this stretch is part of the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve (GTM Research Reserve) and the Guana River Management Area. This area is a protected ecosystem and habitats, where you can hike, kayak, and boat around the estuaries, beaches and forests.

There are four entry ways to the park, along the Hwy A1A. On the GTM Research Reserve website you can find more information on the research reserve, including trail maps.

We stopped at South parking lot. Leading from the parking lot is the short Hammock Trail hike, which surprisingly brought us to the site of a small airplane crash, rather than to the interior beach as we were expecting. The yellow and red plane remnants remain in the middle of the forest, its teeny tiny little cabin deteriorated and rusty. This plane must have been incredibly small—like a two-seater. The airplane crash is pretty neat and was well worth the stop.

We then took the other path and crossed the road to the east coast beach side. Holy wow. It was windy but gorgeous and completely and utterly deserted. We were the only people in sight. If you are looking for some solo beach time, try this stretch of land.

We turned off at Jacksonville Beach and headed back inland, after checking out the Florida beach towns and beaches along the east coast. We continued our road trip through central Florida, where we went through the Ocala National Forest and went hiking on the Florida Trail.

To read about the next phase of this road trip through Florida, check out my blog post: “Hiking in Florida: Ocala National Forest and the Florida Trail”.

This post is part of Beyond the Gaybourhood’s FLORIDA SERIES. For more information on Florida, including information on what to do in Orlando, theme parks, a road trip up the Coastal A1A, St. Augustine, and hiking the Florida Trail in the Ocala National Forest, read my blog post “Orlando and Beyond: Florida Road Trip”.

Orlando and Beyond: Florida Road Trip