jensen beachWeekend drives are great!  This weekend we have driven along Highway 1, the Dixie Highway and A1A, the beaches road, from Palm Beach to Jacksonville.  Do you have any idea how many iconic beaches are in that stretch? The big ones that come to mind are Daytona, New Smyrna, Ormond and Jacksonville Beach.

There are also important sights, like Cape Canaveral.  Well, we didn’t have time to see the last one, but we sure drove around a lot of beaches, stopped and walked a few of them and did a quick driving tour of St. Augustine, the oldest continually inhabited city in America. We would have seen so much more had we walked the old city, but sometimes I just don’t want to be with thousands of other tourists.  Fun fact on St. Augustine: it was so named as the founder of the city arrived on its shores on the feast of St. Augustine day.

Along the way, we had to stop in Jensen Beach for the photo-op.

jensen beach2

We saw a lot of beach houses, regal estates, gorgeous palm tree lined streets, old mission style buildings, art deco hotels and a great number of Spring Break tourists.

Saturday night was a big of a challenge when we wanted to stop for the night.  We drove to several places over 2 hours until I finally found a spot just south of Daytona Beach in New Smyrna. Our campground was not near the beach but rather near an old sugar mill.  This area had been known as a large sugar plantation used to produce rum. Until prohibition, of course.

Tonight, we decided to stop just beyond the Georgia/Florida border at St. Marys.  The campground is fine, but those nasty little bugs are about, making it hard to get outside and enjoy the evening.