SR 40 is a great east-west road across north central Florida between Ocala and Ormond Beach; although it’s two-lane it’s nice and smooth and there’s hardly any traffic between the eastside of Ocala and I-95 at Ormond Beach. This leg takes us off SR 40 northward to St. Augustine without once touching an Interstate.
Leaving Astor, where there are several RV campgrounds, we head east on SR 40 and over the drawbridge over the St. John’s River. After a few miles we come to US 17; from here we could proceed up US 17 throught Palatka and Green Cove Springs as we did a couple of years ago, and even on into Jacksonville but that’s reserved for masochists.s So we’re going to proceed east on SR 40.
A few miles more and we head north on SR 11 towards Bunnell. It’s pretty amazing, very smooth and virtually no traffic. After zipping up SR 11 at 55 or so, we proceed straight through the small town of Bunnell on SR 100. There’s a change past Bunnell; we encounter the occasional traffic light and shopping center. Flagler County’s expanding westward and you can just feel all those huge developments crouching just out of sight.
After a few more traffic lights and shopping centers, up over a bridge over the ICW and the stunning Atlantic Ocean greets us.
Hang a right on SR A1A and there’s the Flagler Beach Pier, the pier that half-collapsed in a hurricane and we’ve been seeing it on the Weather Channel for at least the past 10 years, but we’re not going that way so hang a left towards St. Augustine. This is actually a very nice drive with the Atlantic _right there_ quite a ways north until Hammock Dunes. We do, however, have to pay attention because beachgoers are parked alongside and hanging into this stretch of highway, and we don’t want to present them a Darwin Award.
There’s a couple of interesting stops up past Hammock (and I distinctly recall a giant orange that was missing today); on the left is Washington Oaks Gardens SP. It’s a formal gardens and house once owned by a distant relative on George Washington, and on the right is an ancillary day-use area informally called “the rocks.”
“The rocks” is a coquina aggregate outcrop reaching from Washington Oaks northward to Anastasia Island; I believe there are only two rocky beach outcrops in Florida, they are “the rocks” and at Blowing Rocks Beach in south Florida. As rocky beaches go it ain’t much but we do what we can do. The significance of the coquina outcrop was that the Spanish mined coquina from Anastasia Island and built a fort at St. Augustine that was never reduced or captured.
Past “the rocks” is Marineland, a very early Florida attraction featuring jumping dolphins. Marineland has descended down to state/county ownership; there’s obvious marine lab activity going on and it’s come up from it’ s caretaker status of a few years ago. It was once _why_ people visited Florida. They came down US 1 in search of Flipper and the big almighty orange.
We’ll trundle past Marineland through several nondescript beachfont communities/condo developments of no interest to anyone other than dweebs until we get to St. Augustine Beach ; the character changes to a certain funkiness. Around about Alligator Farm, Lighthouse Park and Anastasia SP we see closed restaurants, bustling shell shops and honest’to’god chelation therapy. It’s like we’ve crossed to the other side of the tracks..sorta.
We’re ending at Anastasia SP. The park entrance is confusing with Lighthouse Park but if that flummoxes you perhaps you should stay home and watch TV.