Three days on Amelia Island means the two-day core — Fort Clinch and downtown, then the marsh and the south end — plus one day for a trip off the island: the Cumberland Island ferry from St Marys, or the Talbot Islands and Kingsley Plantation to the south.
A 1,400-acre state park on Amelia Island's northern tip holding a well-preserved masonry fort begun in 1847, two beaches, a fishing pier, a mile-long oak-canopy entrance drive, campgrounds and trails. The island's single best half-day out.
Two hundred undeveloped acres at the island's southern tip on Nassau Sound: beach, dune, marsh and maritime forest, with no buildings and no lifeguards. The only Florida state park offering guided horseback riding on the beach.
Amelia Island's west side is a maze of tidal creeks and salt marsh feeding the Amelia River, with guided kayak and paddleboard trips running from downtown Fernandina Beach and the south end. Tide timing matters more than fitness here.
Details unconfirmed
The 50-block downtown historic district on Amelia Island's river side, centred on Centre Street between 8th Street and the Fernandina Harbor Marina. Victorian storefronts, the island's densest concentration of restaurants and bars, and the Amelia Island Museum of History.
Details unconfirmed
About 300 acres of salt marsh, tidal creek and maritime hammock threaded with flat crushed-shell trails between Atlantic Avenue and Jasmine Street in Fernandina Beach. The island's best free wildlife walk, and reliably good for alligators and wading birds.
Details unconfirmed
Nassau County's largest south-end beach park, off Fletcher Avenue near Sadler Road's southern reach. Big free lot, restrooms, outdoor showers, picnic pavilions and a long boardwalk over the dunes — the south end's answer to Main Beach, usually with more room.
Details unconfirmed
A small oceanfront community on Amelia Island's south end, founded in 1935 by the Afro-American Life Insurance Company as a beach where Black Floridians could swim during segregation. Home to NaNa, the tallest dune in Florida, and the A.L. Lewis Museum.
Details unconfirmed
Two beaches inside Fort Clinch State Park at Amelia Island's northern tip: Atlantic surf on the east side and calmer water by the jetties on the north, plus a fishing pier looking across Cumberland Sound to Georgia. Inside the park entry fee.
Details unconfirmed
A Nassau County beach park at American Beach on the island's south end, with a free lot, restrooms, picnic pavilions and a dune walkover. The practical parking and facilities for anyone visiting American Beach and the NaNa dune.
The Nassau County mainland immediately west of Amelia Island, across the Shave Bridge: the island's supermarkets, chain retail, big-box stores and the I-95 interchange, plus the route to Jacksonville airport and the Cumberland Island ferry.
Details unconfirmed
Off this map Yulee and the Mainland
Two days covers Amelia Island itself. The third day is the interesting one, because it is a genuine choice rather than a continuation.
Do the weekend plan: north end and downtown on day one — Fort Clinch, Old Town, Centre Street, sunset over the river — and the water and the south end on day two, with a marsh kayak trip in the morning and American Beach, Peters Point or the state park after.
That leaves day three.
The strongest option if you like walking and wild places. Cumberland Island National Seashore is a barrier island immediately north across Cumberland Sound, in Georgia — eighteen miles of undeveloped beach, maritime forest, the ruins of the Carnegie estate at Dungeness, and famously, wild horses.
The practicalities decide whether it works for you:
Worth every bit of the logistics. This is the best day trip in northeast Florida or southeast Georgia.
The southbound alternative, and easier: everything is within forty minutes and there is no ferry.
Big Talbot Island State Park has Boneyard Beach — a stretch of shoreline littered with the bleached skeletons of fallen live oaks, one of the most photographed coastal landscapes in Florida. Little Talbot Island State Park has a long undeveloped barrier beach and trails.
Fort George Island and Kingsley Plantation, in the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, hold the surviving plantation house and, more importantly, the row of tabby slave cabins — one of the most direct pieces of interpretation of slavery anywhere in Florida. It is a hard, necessary visit.
This option pairs well with a stop in Jacksonville on the way back if the weather turns.
Legitimate, and the right answer for some trips. What the third day buys you if you spend it here:
The Fort Clinch bike trail — six miles of off-road riding through maritime hammock, plus the shorter walking trails.
A full slow beach day at Amelia Island State Park: shelling, the George Crady Bridge pier, and nobody around.
Beach horseback riding — the only Florida state park that permits it. Guided, reservation-only, sells out in spring and autumn, so book before you travel.
Golf, concentrated on the south-end resort courses.
A boat tour or a fishing charter from the Fernandina Harbor Marina — the river, the marsh and Cumberland Sound from the water, with dolphins near-guaranteed.
The Egans Creek Greenway at first light, properly, rather than as a half-hour stop.
First visit, decent weather, you like walking → Cumberland Island.
Travelling with children, or you would rather not commit to a ferry schedule → the Talbot Islands and Kingsley Plantation.
You came here to relax and the beach is the point → stay on the island, and spend the day at the southern tip.
Cumberland ferry first — it constrains everything else. Then horseback riding if you want it, then the kayak trip, then Saturday dinner.
If you have four, do Cumberland and the Talbots, and keep the fourth for the island. Five and you should be thinking about a boat charter and a day in Jacksonville or St Augustine, which is about ninety minutes south and a completely different kind of Florida history.
Part of Things to do on Amelia Island.