While visiting New Smyrna Beach this past weekend for our 17th wedding anniversary, we spent a morning at Smyrna Dunes Park.
It’s 184 acres of dunes and beach, filled with native plants and wildlife (look for the gopher tortoises that are everywhere!). There is a 2 mile (handicapped accessible) boardwalk that circles the park, observation towers, and docks that go out into the ocean. As my wife said, there is no place to look that isn’t beautiful.
Admission was $10 per car (regardless of number of passengers) so this could be a very family-friendly place to go. There is a large picnic pavilion with bathrooms at the trail head, plus eight pavilions with tables scattered along the trail at scenic spots.
We try hard to invest in memories and not things when on vacation, and we both agreed that this was the highlight of our trip, and had it been the only thing we did, it would have justified the drive.