Driving Around Florida Day 6

The Florida Turnpike was the bulk of our driving on Day 6, and there is a lot of Turnpike toll roads throughout Central Florida. This day we drove the bulk of Central Florida all the way to St. Augustine, which is just south of the big city of Jacksonville. Interestingly, St. Augustine was founded by the Spanish in 1565, which means it holds the title of the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in the continental United States, predating Jamestown and Plymouth.

If you are new here, as I mentioned in my previous post in Driving Around Florida Day 1, I’m posting a short recap of some of my favorite images on a trip we took to Florida a few weeks ago. If you would like to see the full length post with all the photos you can click through to our Shanty Travelers blog or follow the link specifically for “Day 6” of our trip at A Week Around Florida: Istokpoga to St. Augustine Day 6.

Driving to St. Augustine

One of my favorites photos of the drive that day was our breakfast stop at one of the travel plazas. This particular day was a Sunday, and because we installed Starlink into the roof of Loki, we were able to watch our Sunday Morning Church service at our normal time, streamed from home.

There is a lot going on in that photo between the choir bells and the cinnamon rolls, but I think it's a really cool snapshot of life in 2025-2026.

Driving through Orlando, even on a Sunday had some serious traffic to contend with. But, we ended up just getting on the express lane to Daytona Beach and on our side of the divide there was virtually no traffic at all. Road shots may not be all that photographically interesting, but I love the different architecture of the bridges, skyways, and light and dark contrasts, even deep shadows, that cover roadways.

Anastasia State Park

Finally, we made it to the north with one afternoon to enjoy before the cold and super blustery air was supposed to show up. We stayed at Anastasia State Park with these typical wide open huge beaches they have over on the Atlantic side.

The difference between the Gulf and the Atlantic is amazing. This is especially true between our local beaches at the Alabama Gulf Coast, Gulf Shores, Orange Beach etc., where you have this super pure bright white sand, but a more narrow beach. On the Atlantic side you have darker sand (which is actually much easier on the eyes and skin), and these massive wide open beaches (although still no dogs allowed at all... the Alabama-Florida coast is just not dog-friendly, period). Everything was still super high sun high contrast on this day. Tomorrow would be different.

A Week in Florida Series

This is series of travel posts originating from our travel site, Shanty Travelers. As I mentioned above, to see the full length post with all the photos you can click through to our Shanty Travelers blog or follow the link specifically for “Day 6” of our trip at A Week Around Florida: Istokpoga to St. Augustine Day 6.

See you for Day 7 soon (there are 8 days in this series in case you were wondering).

Featured Image