It’s easy to drive the Sunshine State on interstates, but exciting new discoveries await motorcoach travelers who seek the forgotten hamlets of Florida’s West coast. Try the slow lane, U.S. 98, and find a Florida that time forgot. Our route begins at Tallahassee and ends north of Tampa-St. Petersburg, where traffic gets so heavy it’s best to hop on I-75 for the rest of the journey southward.

The story begins deep in the mists of history, when early peoples settled on the spot now known as Crystal River. After 1492, Europeans settled Florida’s coasts. Then came railroads, interstate highways and the dredging of deep-water ports. The heyday of the area known as the Big Bend was over. Still today, it remains uncrowded and remote.

Leaving Tallahassee

Starting from Tallahassee, our first detour off U.S. 98 takes us south to St. Marks and Apalachee Bay. San Marcos de Apalache Historic State Park is open only Thursday through Monday, a pleasant place to stroll historic sites that date back to 1528. Spanish soldiers fortified the site only a few decades after Columbus’ first voyage. Once a strategic stronghold, it is today just a quiet backwater suitable for bird watching and picnicking. There are no campsites here, nor in Edward Ball State Park, where a $6 boat tour takes you into a primeval jungle where Tarzan movies were filmed eons ago.

The entire Gulf of Mexico coastline here is the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, a living showcase of waterfowl and other wetlands denizens. S.R. 59 is another of the many long, one-way highway fingers that are the only way through the swamps to the Gulf. Stop at the Visitor Center south of Newport and, if you have time, drive out to the Indian mound at Pelican Point.

Southbound again on U.S. 98, we cross the Aucilla River and take another one-way road toward the Gulf, this time to overnight at Econofina State Park. Fishing, bird watching and hunting are unparalleled in this wilderness but quiet, outback life is not for everyone. When civilization calls, get back on U.S. 98 for the trip to Perry. Here you can provision in a sizeable supermarket, see a 13-acre cracker homestead dating to the early 1800s and spend an hour at the quaint Forestry Museum.

Returning to the Gulf, find Steinhatchee (steen-hat-chee). It’s a tiny dot on the map but nostalgia seekers and photographers love its sun-baked, old-Florida authenticity. Once a fishing village, it turned to tourism after new net laws put commercial fishermen out of business. Some of them had been making a living from the sea for generations. Now they operate quirky, colorful marinas, bait shops, and seafood restaurants.

The Suwannee River is one of West Florida’s least known recreational resources. Everyone knows its name, but its fame centers farther upstream in North-Central Florida, where Stephen Foster State Park and Suwannee River State Park are found. As we cross the Suwannee near its mouth here on the left coast, we can visit Fanning Springs and Manatee Springs State Park before taking another long causeway out to the Cedar Keys.

Abundant cedar trees plus an important salt industry made Cedar Key a vital crossroads in early Florida. Union and Confederate armies fought over the settlement, eager to control salt supplies that were the only way to preserve meat for hungry armies. The state’s first railroad traveled across the state, from here to Fernandina Beach on the Atlantic coast. The South lost the war, all the cedar trees

Today it’s a sleepy, worlds-end island where travelers come to view incredible sunsets, feast on fresh seafood, see a couple of small museums, and shop artsy boutiques and galleries.

went to pencil factories, refrigeration replaced salt as a preservative, and a devastating hurricane flattened what was left of the community. Today it’s a sleepy, worlds-end island where travelers come to view incredible sunsets, feast on fresh seafood, see a couple of small museums, and shop artsy boutiques and galleries. Take a site in the RV campground and let the island work its spell. Explore a sprinkling of islands offshore. Get out your easel and paints. Go fishing, clamming, crabbing. Keep binoculars handy for wildlife sightings. Walk barefoot on brown sugar sands.

Making your way back to U.S. 98 you’ll still be in an uncrowded, wilderness wetland, the home of Goethe State Forest, Gulf Hammock Wildlife Management Area, the Waccasassa River, and Waccasassa Bay State Preserve. With a small boat you could explore forever in tiny creeks that thread this area, alive with fish and alight with bird life.

U.S. 98 now brings you to Crystal River, where you’ll need at least a day to explore the Indian mounds and more time still to scuba dive clear waters, fish, look for manatees, canoe and swim in sweetwater springs. Six mounds make up a 14-acre ceremonial complex that was built centuries ago by pre-Columbian tribes. Excavations have revealed much about people who lived here, so don’t miss the displays in the Visitor Center. In the bay, fresh water boils up into the saltwater Gulf. Because the springs stay the same temperature all year, warm water-seeking manatees are observed here during cold snaps.

Returning to the mainland you’re in a still-unspoiled area that is the home of Homosassa Springs, Withlachoochee State Forest, and Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge. Admission is free to Yulee Sugar Mill Ruins Historic State Park. David Levy Yulee ran a 5,100-acre sugar plantation and mill here between 1851 and 1864, then lost it all. As a Confederate senator, Yulee was imprisoned after the war but he lived to rebuild his fortune and earn the title “father of Florida’s railroads”. Live mermaids still swim at Weeki

Admission is free to Yulee Sugar Mill Ruins Historic State Park. David Levy Yulee ran a 5,100-acre sugar plantation and mill here between 1851 and 1864, then lost it all. As a Confederate senator, Yulee was imprisoned after the war but he lived to rebuild his fortune and earn the title “father of Florida’s railroads.

Wachee Springs, and the adjacent water park is open seasonally. One of Florida’s oldest tourist attractions, the underwater theater is just south of the spot where U.S. 98 and U.S. 19 split. That’s the point where travelers have the option of continuing south along beachfront communities or taking the interstate south to Fort Myers and Naples.

Traveling these “blue highways” you’ll see why this stretch of the Gulf Coast is known by sailors as the long, lonely leg. In traveling the high road, which in many places is just a causeway that seems to float over miles of hazy wetland, you’ve seen a part of Florida where time stands still.