Southward bound
Primary among destinations to the south of Jacksonville is historic St. Augustine, a seaside city whose bridge to the beaches is guarded by a pair of prim lions. A far more imposing guardian, however, is the massive Castillo de San Marcos, whose stone ramparts tower over a city that can trace its ancestry back five centuries to 1493 when intrepid explorer Christopher Columbus stopped by.
St. Augustine has capitalized on its antiquity with a bevy of historic sites, ranging from the oldest house to the oldest schoolroom, the oldest store and a long list of "oldest" attractions that occasionally test credibility but are, nonetheless, entertaining. A variety of other attractions await, ranging from some of the worlds weirdests at Ripleys Believe it or Not Museum to the Fountain of Youth, where who knows what might happen!
Themed tours of this city, the oldest continuously occupied settlement in the nation, include "A Ghostly Experience" stroll among a number of other intriguing walking tours along cobblestoned streets and narrow alleyways.
Here, too, is one of the states oldest themed attractions, entertaining Marineland Ocean Resort, where you can play with dolphins, explore a reef and learn more about the regions watery environment. At the St. Augustine Lighthouse and Museum, you can clamber to the top for a gulls-eye view and, at the museum, get a look at activities that thrived here in the 19th Century.
St. Augustine has 10 championship golf courses, including several of the states top courses for touring professionals with tournaments that lure the sports top celebrities.
Beaches roll across 42 miles of the region with Anastasia State Recreation Area, St. Johns County Fishing Pier, and Guana River State Park beloved by anglers. Wildlife enthusiasts can see some of Floridas real "natives" on a canoe trip down Pelicier Creek at Faver Dykes State Park.
Looking northward
Tops among the resort destinations here on the First Coast is alluring Amelia Island, about 32 miles north of Jacksonville. Getting there along the scenic drive north on A1A to Mayport makes for a serene drive to which you can add a seafood-restaurant stop in Mayport and a short sail across the water on the Mayport Ferry.
Here, little seems to have changed in a century or so. Shrimp boats are still blessed each year and pretty streets are lined with lace-trimmed Victorian houses, many of them restored and refurbished and welcoming guests to bed-and-breakfast inns.
On a walk through the shady streets of the islands Fernandina Beach Village, you can drop back into that golden era when money was big and so was ostentatious use of it. Gingerbread woodwork trims round towers and whimsical architecture covers a global array of influences ranging from Italianate and Chinese Chippendale to Florida Vernacular!
Rich and famous travelers have been dropping in here for generations from Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to South Americas liberator Jose Martí, both of whom once checked into Florida House Inn, a restored 1857 estate billed as the states oldest tourist hotel, complete with a 40-foot dining parlor.
Fernandinas main street runs right to the sea, its brick and cobblestone roads lined with antique shops and cozy dining rooms, chic boutiques and historic buildings living a new life. An Amelia Island Museum of History offers walking tours and its members create re-enactments of the past in a renovated 1935 county jail!
Soaring over the town is the islands oldest structure, the 1839 Amelia Island Lighthouse, still shining its beacon for sailors more than 150 years later.
Close by, Fort Clinch State Park surrounds a pre-Civil War fort that guards the northern tip of the island. In summer, costumed park rangers re-create life at the fort on candlelight tours, and, at any time of year, the parks 1,000 acres are popular for camping, hiking, biking, fishing, picnics and beachcombing among the dunes.
Amelia Island is also home to handsome Amelia Island Plantation, one of the states most celebrated business and leisure resort destinations, offering top-rated golf courses with seaside greens, horseback riding on the sand, jogging and walking trails, bicycling paths and tennis courts.
Island flavor
Andrew Carnegie, famed for philanthropy that created many a library in the U.S. and around the world, put his stamp on this region through his descendants, some of whom established a residence on Cumberland Island, Georgia. Wealthy enough to own the entire island, the family numbered the island among its private getaways for years, but, in 1972, the island became part of a national seashore project.
Cumberland Island today offers 16 miles of sand dunes and beaches in as natural a setting as you're likely to find in todays southernmost reaches. Even getting there is entertaining: you sail on a U.S. National Park Service ferry that departs from St. Marys, a town about an hours drive north of Jacksonville, to this intriguing island where a substantial number of the inhabitants are...wild horses!
Plum Orchard and Dungeness, two impressive residences in which the Carnegies once vacationed, can be toured here, and if you'd really like to sink into the remote-island atmosphere, you can book a room at Greyfield, now restored and operating as an inn.
St. Marys, a pretty little town lined with furbelowed Victorian homes, makes an interesting stop, too. Home to a bustling submarine base, St Marys is just a 15-minute drive from Jekyll Island, Georgia, another alluring barrier island that had more than its fair share of wealthy winter residents. Among the "names" once in residence here: the Pulitzers, Astors, Rockefellers and Vanderbilts. Tram and horse-drawn buggy tours trot you past the paradisical "cottages" of Millionaires Village.
On the other side of the spectrum from sea and beach is the "Land of the Trembling Earth," a translation of the name the Seminole Indian tribe gave a massive swamp that covers 700 square miles of Georgia. Sprawling Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, a study in jungles, forests and prairies, is deep, dark, mysterious and home to a vast array of wildlife, from microscopic water-dwelling amoeba to toothy alligators who slither through the swampland. Both spooky and serene, this huge swamp about an hour northwest of Jacksonville has been featured in a dozen films and can be viewed from a 90-foot observation tower, from the water on an Indian Waterway boat tour, and by land on walking trails that wend their way past a 1920s homestead.
Farther west and farther south are still more intriguing spots. Floridas handsome, hilly capital city of Tallahassee, the caverns of Marianna, the powdery-soft beaches of Pensacola, the white-fenced horse farms of Ocala, the navy blue waters of Silver Springs, the antique-store-lined streets of Micanopy, the spa springs of Green Cove Springs. But those are other stories.....
Marylyn Springer