Few things are more romantic than a road trip. It’s just the two of you, with time alone on the open road, to discover together what’s around the next curve. If you enjoy seafood, a dip in the Atlantic, astonishingly colorful sunrises and a sense of old Florida, the way it was before the never-ending throngs of Disney and South Beach and Panama City tourists swarmed in, then take a drive down historic and scenic Highway A1A.
A1A meanders for about 340 miles along the entire length of the Atlantic coast of Florida, a spectacular ride past dunes of white sand and beaches whose colors run the gamut from steel gray to seashell pink to pure sugar. Almost always you can see the ocean as you drive A1A, and depending on the time of day and the weather, the sparkling water is deep blue or green or more often a mishmash of the two, with waves sometimes colossal from storms brewing off the coast. Expect to see plenty of shorebirds, lots and lots of them, from graceful herons and egrets to fat-beaked pelicans to the speedy little sandpiper.
While A1A begins at Amelia Island and Fernandina Beach near the Georgia state line, and then weaves through coastal towns including St. Augustine, Daytona Beach, Palm Beach, Boca Raton and Miami before it runs out of asphalt in Key West at the southernmost point in the continental U.S., it is a 72-mile stretch of road known as the A1A Scenic and Historic Coastal Byway that is its showpiece.
