Take one adventuresome author, add one outdoorsy guy, spend a few months together on the Appalachian Trail, and you get us: Sandra Friend and John Keatley (aka JK & Navigator), your hosts to the grand adventure that is Florida’s outdoors.
Between us, we’ve hiked and biked over 20,000 miles, toured by motorcycle and sailboat, explored waterways by kayak and SUP, slogged through swamps and scrambled up mountains, met presidents and worked with astronauts. We hike, camp, backpack, paddle, bike, and have explored Florida’s outdoors from our vintage VW camper.
As luck had it, we met while hiking the Florida Trail. We’ve been inseparable as an outdoors couple since our 2012 attempt at thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail.
Sandra has written 45 books, with over a dozen covering Florida’s natural areas and hiking. John started blogging in early 2012 and joined in on research and writing books after we returned from the Appalachian Trail. We also produced the original content for a very popular app by FarOut on the Florida Trail as well as several other apps.
John’s outdoor background includes sailing, diving, and extensive bike touring. He’s ridden numerous Safaris and two Cross-Florida rides in a day. He’s also grew up with Scouting. He became an Eagle Scout and the Lodge Chief of Tipisa Lodge, Order of the Arrow. He served as a camp counselor for several seasons at Camp La-No-Che in Central Florida.
We’re both members of the Outdoor Writers Association of America and the Society of American Travel Writers, where Sandra served on the Board of Directors for four years while Chair of the Freelance Council. We are life members of the Florida Trail Association and several other outdoor organizations.
Thanks for joining us! Our mission is to connect you with the outdoors, and by doing so, we hope that you fall in love with Florida’s natural places as much as we have, and will help conserve and protect them in the future.
Sandra Friend’s Bio
John Keatley’s Bio
About Florida Hikes
In February 2006, Sandra started Florida Hikes as a blog to share her favorite hikes, and dusted off her webmaster skills to bring it up to what it is today – a robust database of trails across Florida, from easy walks on boardwalks to backpacking trips on the Florida Trail. John’s eclectic outdoors background, a stress reliever during 33 years of working with both mechanics and astronauts on the Space Shuttle program, enabled us to greatly expand our reach.
With more than 5,000 miles of hiking trails to explore across two time zones, there are hikes in Florida for all ages, abilities, and interests.
In 2014, we expanded our mission to bring you a full array of easy outdoor recreation in Florida, including camping, cycling, and paddling, as well as information on our many parks throughout the state.
In 2019, we moved our articles on travels beyond Florida and our personal tales of outdoor adventures to their own website, Trails and Travel.
Information on this website is provided for your personal use. You’re welcome to email it, print it out, or link to it. Be sure to read the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
- If you wish to reuse any of the content on this site, please contact us about setting up a licensing agreement.
- We do not have an inventory of printed materials or maps to send out on the trails found on our website. Please contact the land manager for that trail directly for what you need.
- We have no interest in paid backlinks or guest posts on our site. Any pitches for either will be ignored. We work with a select number of freelance writers personally known to us.
- For more about Sandra’s writing background, please see her personal website.
The content on this site is fluid – that is, don’t be surprised to see it change. As we package up a group of hikes for use in a book, we may compress the level of detail provided on these pages. Or if we revisit a site, we may add more information.
If you’ve seen changes to a trail since we’ve last visited it or errors we should correct, please contact us. Thanks for stopping in!