Dune Trails & Winter Tides: A Relaxed 2-Day Beaches and State Parks Getaway in Jacksonville, Florida

Morning comes in quietly at Zap Cat Espresso Bar: the hiss of the steam wand, classic rock humming low, the smell of orange coconut cream cutting through roasted coffee. You wrap your hands around a warm cup, already in beach clothes, watching locals roll in with sandy flip-flops and laptops. Then you trade caffeine for calm at the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, where gallery footsteps echo softly and the St. Johns River glints beyond manicured hedges—art and nature in one slow inhale. By midday, you’re back at the coast, sliding into a banquette at Hawkers Asian Street Food in Neptune Beach, where the clatter of plates and the spice of curry duck noodles wake up your palate. Lunch spills into a lazy walk down to Neptune Beach itself, the sand cool and slightly damp in December, waves folding over themselves while kids dig and dog walkers trace long arcs along the shore. As the sky softens, you climb to a table at North Beach Fish Camp, the bar alive with conversation, fresh oysters on ice, and the faint salt smell drifting in each time the door opens. You end the night a few steps away at Bodega Bar + Coffee, where the lights are low, the soundtrack leans indie, and your nightcap feels like a local secret. Tomorrow will stretch farther up the coast, into pine woods and dune trails, but tonight is all about letting the rhythm of Neptune Beach slow your pulse.

The day opens on the Jacksonville Beach Pier, where wooden planks creak under your shoes and the Atlantic looks steel-blue in the slanting morning light. Anglers line the railings, tackle boxes at their feet, the faint metallic smell of bait and salt in the air as waves crash below. By midday you’re tucked into Sizemore’s Coastal Kitchen, the dining room bright and airy, a plate of blackened fish and crisp slaw in front of you, the clink of ice in strong drinks keeping time with the surf outside. Afternoon belongs to Kathryn Abbey Hanna Park, where the world shifts from strip malls to pines in a single turn. Trails wind through scrub and live oaks, sand crunching underfoot, and then suddenly the ocean appears again—wide and unadorned, quieter than the main beaches, the only sounds wind and distant surf. You return to town with salt-dried skin and that pleasantly used-up feeling, ready for a more polished evening at Marker 32, where candlelight bounces off glass and the marsh outside turns dusky gold. The night closes at Flask and Cannon, rum-heavy air and tiki mugs sweating under colored lights as the roar of the ocean plays faintly in the background. Yesterday taught you the rhythm of the beaches; today stitches in the wild edges that make this coastline feel like it could go on forever.