Hike Bike Paddle Camp Florida with authors Sandra Friend and John Keatley as your guides
Best places in Florida to enjoy the outdoors, including parks, beaches, springs, campgrounds, gardens, nature centers, museums, and natural attractions.
Outdoor recreation
A community park in Welaka, 40 Acre Park is a great stop for birding, with little-used trails that ramble around a series of wetlands once used in the fish hatchery
Paved trails wind through the woods at A.D. Barnes Park, a Miami city park, where a tiny slice of native pine rocklands survives.
Along busy US 19 in Tarpon Springs, hugs the western shore of Lake Tarpon, offering plenty of picnic pavilions along a boardwalk following the cypress-lined shore.
Beneath a dense canopy of cabbage palms and live oaks, the remains of a 19th century plantation rise from the forest floor at Addison Blockhouse State Park.
Set in a 60-acre cypress dome on the Big Cypress Seminole Reservation, the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki museum of Seminole culture provides an introduction to the tropical outdoors of natural South Florida’s swamps in which the Seminole Tribe has lived for more than a century.
Alafia River State Park lets you launch on a Florida downhill while mountain biking the rugged terrain of a reforested open pit mine.
Straddling the confluence of the North and South Prong of the Alafia River, Alderman’s Ford Conservation Park provides immersion into lush riverine forests.
Surrounding one of Florida’s most picturesque first magnitude springs, Alexander Springs is a prime destination for a summer swim or snorkel
Featuring a dense slope forest along Hogtown Creek with old-growth trees and rare wildflowers along Appalachian-style ravines, this is a scenic hike in the heart of Gainesville
In late winter, azaleas create ribbons of bright color beneath the live oak canopy across the grounds of Maclay Gardens, a series of formal gardens along the hillsides sweeping down to Lake Hall.
At Charlotte Harbor Environmental Center, Alligator Creek Preserve offers two gentle loop trails where freshwater and saltwater habitats meet
In the city once called Alligator, first home of the University of Florida and named for a great chief of the Seminoles, Alligator Lake has long been a gathering place. Established as a park in 2002, hiking and bicycling are now its primary focus.
