About a Week
8 days · ~1000 miles · from St. Augustine
The 1920s sea-to-sea auto trail's entire Southern act, end to end: from the Zero Milestone in America's oldest city to the Sabine River crossing into Texas — every mile on or beside old US 90, with zero feet of I-10.
This trip chains: US 90: The Florida Backbone · US 90: The Creole Coast · Bayou Teche & the Cajun Prairie · US 90: Rice & Rails
Photograph the Zero Milestone, take the old road to Jacksonville's Treaty Oak, then west into the pines: Olustee's battlefield late afternoon. Overnight Lake City.
White Springs and the actual Suwannee (carillon at the top of the hour), Madison's porches, Monticello's haunted opera house — into Tallahassee for a canopy-road golden hour and the capitol deck.
Quincy's Coca-Cola mansions, Florida Caverns at Marianna, the Two Egg and Britton Hill detours for collectors, Falling Waters' vanishing waterfall — sleep by DeFuniak's round lake.
Morning paddle out of Milton (Canoe Capital, it's official), then into Pensacola: Joe Patti's, Palafox Street, Blue Angels practice if it's a Tuesday or Wednesday.
The Creole Coast westbound: Flora-Bama straddle, Bamahenge in the pines, Point Clear and Fairhope's utopian pier. Overnight on the Eastern Shore.
Africatown's Heritage House (unhurried), the Carnival Museum, then the Mississippi Sound: Pascagoula's singing river, Biloxi's median lighthouse, 100 Men Hall — across the Rigolets into New Orleans.
US 90 west: Des Allemands catfish, Houma's swamps, Morgan City's Tarzan claim, the Teche's oak tunnel through Franklin and Jeanerette (hot-bread light!), Avery Island's Tabasco salt dome.
Boudin breakfast in Scott, Rayne's frogs, Crowley's hidden opera house, Jennings's first-oil derrick, Lake Charles's carpenter Victorians — end at Niblett's Bluff, where the Trail forded into Texas. Toast its remaining 1,500 ghost miles.