SE Stations for a beach excursion?

[AmtrakWPK]

Wendy and I have Florida railpasses, so the train part of the trip is already paid for, at least inside Florida. We have had good luck with one beach destination - Deerfield in SE Florida. 91 gets down there usually at a decent afternoon time, 92 goes past northbound at a reasonable time, and there is a public bus stop almost right at the station, goes right out to the beach, and there's a Comfort Inn literally 50 feet from the bus stop, a short block from the beach, and it's a nice beach, clean and not too crowded. We kind of made a game out of finding someplace to go (for overnight) by train where we would not have to rent a car and would not have to walk more than 100 feet or so at any one point. That Comfort Inn was reasonable, too, booked through the internet, something like $62 per night as I recall. And there are several good local places to eat within a five minute walk.

We are wondering what other beach destination stations might offer the same relative convenience. Jesup? SAV? CHS is a pretty long way from the beach, as is JAX. We have taken the local bus from JAX to downtown for dinner, and then back, on one of the nights P002 was running late (I almost said VERY late, but then I considered P001's recent performance....) I have also wondered about PNS, but the arrival time is awfully late (or worse, depending how late P001 is running) and the departure to return is awfully early if P002 actually was close to on time - and the one time we took it to NOL and back, it was actually a few minutes EARLY (gasp!!) into NOL, and was only an hour or so late leaving NOL on the return trip, actually arriving at WPK (brace yourselves!!) about 5 minutes EARLY. I clearly missed a huge opportunity by not buying a Lotto ticket that day. Tsk....

Anyway, what have other folks found as to stations that are good for beach sojourns? What kind of experiences have y'all had? Jesup and SAV would be ok for us because they are frequently on RailSale. We've been driving over to Daytona once or twice a week for past couple of weeks and just that short trip (hour each way, approx) burns a good bit of $$$ in gas when you do it often enough.

 

[battalion51]

Just throwing this one out there, but what about taking the Thruway service to St. Pete and then taking local bus to St. Pete Beach or Sarasota. Also, as a side note, why not try driving to Titusville from WPK, I think of it as being closer to Metro Orlando than Daytona.

 

[engine999]

Just throwing this one out there, but what about taking the Thruway service to St. Pete and then taking local bus to St. Pete Beach or Sarasota. Also, as a side note, why not try driving to Titusville from WPK, I think of it as being closer to Metro Orlando than Daytona.

Titusville is closer to south orl area. You can take 528 there but its still a good hour drive. WPk on the east side of ORl is faster ti drive north East to daytona then south to 528 and then onto titusville. Overall aftert local driving time it probably comes out about the same, so its personal choice.

 

[AmtrakWPK]

We're actually in Casselberry, so we take 17-92 - 427 - 46 to 415 out of Sanford, thru Osteen and then to either New Smyrna or Port Orange to So. Daytona. That's much closer in time and a bit closer in distance to us than Tico etc. And we're driving away from Orlando Metro instead of through or past it. Wendy did use the railpass for the thruway bus back from Ft. Myers once when she went down to Naples to take care of her Dad after he had some surgery. I drove down and dropped her off, she took the bus back to ORL, then the train to WPK.

Sure wouldn't be much of a train excursion, though, which is a very big part of the reason to go, for us. I wish the greyhound from Miami to the Keys was included on the railpass. Unfortunately it's not. <_<

The times we've taken the train and then gone to the Keys, we've rented a car. We are both certified Scuba divers and really love it around Marathon and Bahia Honda.