Road Trip to St. Augustine

*Thank you Toyota for sponsoring this post. Regardless all thoughts and opinions are my own and I only recommend brands that I truly love.

Tom and I always like to do a road trip for our anniversary. And we always want to go somewhere different. When we started brainstorming, St. Augustine kept coming to mind. I’ve been to St. Augustine growing up, it’s only about 3 hours from Savannah where I grew up, so I went occasionally as a kid. But it had been a while. What I remember is a really gorgeous city. A city with a lot of history and a lot to do. And perhaps most importantly, a city with a beach.

Thanks to our friends at Toyota we picked up a Toyota RAV4, loaded up the spacious trunk with all of our stuff (we are not light packers), and headed down to St. Augustine for Memorial Day weekend. It’s about a 6 hour drive from Atlanta which we’ve learned is pretty much the farthest we can go with the kids in the car. But we managed to get down there with only stopping once on the way down which was pretty remarkable. And the kids stayed content with snacks and stuffed animals and toys. The RAV4 rode smoothly and was very comfortable. Overall it was a great drive and we were there before we knew it!

We arrived at St. Augustine pretty late on Friday so we got set up and went to bed. Saturday morning the first thing we did was hit up the beach and start building sand castles! We had absolutely perfect weather for the beach. Once we had enough sun we went in and showered, let the kids nap a little, and then headed towards downtown St. Augustine. On the way we stopped at the St. Augustine Lighthouse where I really enjoyed learning more about the keepers’ families that lived there and the kids loved the playground.

Once we got downtown and found parking we headed to what we most wanted to do while in St. Augustine – the Pirate Museum! I was worried Maddie Grace might get scared but as soon as she was handed a treasure map she was obsessed with the place. Tom and I both really enjoyed it as well. It is set up really fun and we learned so much about pirates. Then we walked around the fort and the downtown area, found a place for dinner, and then another place for ice cream. Every time we go to an older city we have to do a ghost tour, although it’s getting harder with the kids. We still went for it and learned so much about the own (and it’s ghostly residents).

Sunday we decided to go for an easy beach day again full of sand castle building and boogie boarding. After showers and nap time we decided just to grab dinner at a seafood spot and hang out since the kids had a late night the night before.

Monday we had to check out pretty early but there was one thing on our list we had to do before we left St. Augustine. And that was the Alligator Farm. And oh man was it worth it. I think all of us really enjoyed this zoo full of alligators. And every type of alligator or crocodile that still exists. We got to see a feeding of the alligators, walk around the beautiful place and watch these awesome creatures, and of course the kids loved playing on the playground. It was the perfect way to end our trip and then drive back to Atlanta in the Toyota RAV4.

Our favorite things about the car? First was the Birds Eye View camera that was so handy for backing up. I’ve actually never seen this before and immediately knew how awesome it was just trying to get out of our driveway! We also loved listening to music from my phone via the cars bluetooth, and the automatic lift gate that made it super easy to get our luggage in and out of the huge trunk. The RAV4 was definitely the perfect companion for our road trip to St. Augustine!

Have you visited St. Augustine? Would love to hear about your experience and what you loved or didn’t love to do there below!