Hike Bike Paddle Camp Florida with authors Sandra Friend and John Keatley as your guides
Articles about travel and the outdoors. You’ll find a larger selection of articles on our Trails & Travel website.
Saying goodbye to my trusty 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee, which hit a quarter-million miles this spring after countless trails and travels together throughout the state of Florida.
Although John is a native Floridian, our research trip to South Florida became an opportunity for him to see many natural “firsts” in Florida that most people have on their life lists.
At Spanish Point, scents hang heavy in the morning air: a moonflower in the act of closing for the day, the sweetness of citrus blossoms, the purple morning-glory clambering over mangroves, the brush of salt breezes.
Where’s the best place on Sanibel to look for sea shells? It all depends on recent currents and storm deposits. We found a bountiful shell bank at Blind Pass Beach, where Sanibel and Captiva meet.
Way down under the Withlacoochee State Forest, there’s a whole other world waiting to be explored in its caves.
A morning of exploration allowed us to experience the not-quite-open-yet Good Neighbor Trail and its historic context during our visit to Brooksville this September.
It’s blueberry season in Florida! April is the month when it’s time to visit a commercial grower and start picking. We did just that at our local berry farm, Ever After Farms.
One of Marion County’s finest parks, Carney Island preserves a peninsula jutting out into Lake Weir near Ocklawaha. As I discovered by leading a hike there, the beach at Lemon Point is a destination not just for hikers but boaters too.
The magic is floral at EPCOT each spring when Walt Disney World trots out the International Flower & Garden Show with its thousands of blooms.
It’s Florida’s roughest, wettest, weirdest backpacking trip, best tackled with friends. Along this 30 mile stretch of the Florida Trail in the heart of Big Cypress National Preserve, immersing in the swamp is the point of the hike. Sandra tackled it as the final stretch of her multi-year 1,110-mile section hike of the Florida Trail, end-to-end.
Biking, paddling, and even a bit of hiking were in the plans as we explored Florida’s Adventure Coast – Hernando County – for activities we could enjoy during warm weather.
Florida settled into my soul like a fine mist during my childhood, thanks to my father’s dreams. In the late 1950s, he came to stay with family in West Palm Beach to recuperate from major life changes he’d experienced, from the loss of his father to his mother’s remarriage and his dream of college slipping away.
