Hike Bike Paddle Camp Florida with authors Sandra Friend and John Keatley as your guides
Only 30 minutes from downtown Orlando, Apopka has interesting hikes in public lands along the Wekiva River basin and its tributaries, as well as the chain of lakes connecting to Lake Apopka
INTERACTIVE MAP
A walk in the park at Wekiwa Springs State Park doesn’t have to be a long one. Here’s a way to sample the park’s highlights and habitats along its trails.
For families in the know, Kelly Park is a favorite destination for tubing, the southernmost tubing run in Florida. But it also has some great hiking trails where you will probably see wildlife.
As I discovered later, bear sightings are common at Kelly Park. But this bear certainly surprised me at the end of my research hike for Five Star Trails Orlando.
Tubing down Rock Springs Run is why most folks show up at Kelly Park, but the Kelly Loop Trail is a nice dry way to see the waterway and wildlife.
At Lake Lotus Park in Altamonte Springs, the 1.7-mile trail system along Lake Lotus and the Little Wekiva River floodplain provides a great respite from surrounding suburbia.
On the Western Addition trails at Kelly Park, explore scrub and oak hammock habitats where the remains of a spring-fed lake can be seen.
With more than 12 miles of hiking through the heart of Florida black bear territory, Rock Springs Run State Reserve gets you into the wild outside Orlando.
You have a better-than-average chance of spotting a Florida black bear at Rock Springs Run State Reserve, a vast wilderness area in the Wekiva River basin. This is the one park where we’ve seen the most evidence of our native Florida black bear.
Leading 3.5 miles into a 2,500-acre floodplain forest where the Wekiva River and Little Wekiva River meet, the Sabal Point Sanctuary trail in Longwood is a simple one but quite beautiful.
A 1.3-mile nature trail at Trimble Park near Mount Dora offers a family-friendly outdoor adventure beneath ancient oaks and cypresses along the shorelines of two lakes
A 10.2-mile loop through landscapes both vast and intimate, the Wekiwa Springs Hiking Trail shows off the best of nature at Wekiwa Springs State Park.
A massive wilderness area on the edge of the Orlando metro, Wekiwa Springs State Park is centered on a first-magnitude spring that bubbles through fissures to pour forth a river lined with jungle-like vegetation.
