Scenic A1A Byway Self Guided Driving Audio Tour

Jacksonville Beach is a hotspot for surfers year-round. The gnarliest swells come in the winter, when waves can reach up to 10 feet high! Note: This 43-mile-long tour covers the essentials of A1A in 2-3 hours.

It’s dotted with beautiful beaches. The first one we can visit isn’t far: Mickler’s Landing, coming up soon on the left. There’s surfing, seashells, and shark teeth!

Why is a former jail so pretty? Well, financier Henry Flagler didn’t want any ugly buildings in St. Augustine. So the old jail was built to look like a Victorian manor!

The Spanish Governor decided to do something about it. He ordered the construction of the fort, which began in 1672. It took a whopping 23 years to build!

It’s dotted with beautiful beaches. The first one we can visit isn’t far: Mickler’s Landing, coming up soon on the left. There’s surfing, seashells, and shark teeth!

Whew, that’s quite a mouthful! Let’s just call it the Guana Reserve, like the locals do. Scientists come from all over the world to study the animals and plants in this expansive estuary.

The ocean flowed into other parts of the Timucua lives. They understood the moon to be a symbol of water. Since water was associated with life, the Timucua saw the moon as the goddess of all mothers. And because water held such an important place in Timucuan society, that meant mothers did too! Family lines were traced matrilineally through mothers rather than fathers.

We’re approaching the city of St. Augustine. Founded in 1565 by Spanish admiral Pedro Menendez de Aviles, St. Augustine is the oldest city in the United States. Yes, even older than Jamestown! But, arr me mateys, did ya know that St. Augustine was once where pirates hunted for gold?

We’re cruising through the community of Vilano Beach, home to a very peculiar landmark. Here, we’ll find the Bluebird of Happiness!

Unsurprisingly, locals say the Old Jail is haunted. Guests often feel a cold, clammy hand rest on their shoulders. Some have smelled the foul stench of sewage even though none was found on site. Creepy!

When engineers and stone masons arrived from Spain, they didn’t know how to build a fort out of the rocks found on this coast. The coquina stones were porous and the Spanish didn’t know how well they’d hold up against a cannonball. So just to be safe, they built the walls almost 20 feet thick!

Former St. Augustine mayor Andrew Anderson donated the lions, who are named Fiel and Firme, or Faithful and Firm. They’re an homage to the city’s founder, Pedro Menendez de Aviles. His coat of arms bore two lions!

The current one dates back to 1871, but earlier iterations have stood on this spot since 1589! Lighthouse keepers have kept watch here for hundreds of years… and in some cases, they never left.

Besides offering some splendid scenery, this park is also a positively fabulous place for birdwatching. It’s home to 195 different species of birds! For context, that’s almost a quarter of all bird species in the United States! While the park is home to some common bird species like robins and herons, it also sees a few found nowhere else in the country.

In 1740, the Governor of Georgia, a British colony, decided to make a play for St. Augustine, a Spanish one. Luckily, the St. Augustine mayor had a feeling that the Brits were up to no good. So he sent a courier to Havana to get some supplies.

Now, Matanzas is a Spanish word that translates to “killings” or “slaughter.” So why does such a beautiful river have such a violent name? It dates back to 1565, when this river ran red with blood. Here’s what happened: