Hike Bike Paddle Camp Florida with authors Sandra Friend and John Keatley as your guides
Our top destinations for paddling in Florida, based on personal experience
Surrounding one of Florida’s most picturesque first magnitude springs, Alexander Springs Recreation Area provides visitors with many options to enjoy the spring and the woodlands around the spring basin.
If you’ve wanted to see bioluminescence while paddling in Florida, this is your put-in spot. Bairs Cove offers an easy launch into the Indian River Lagoon and access to a sheltered cove along Haulover Canal.
You hear them well before you can see them: a burble of water that rises to a roar as you approach the Big Shoals of the Suwannee River, Florida’s largest series of rapids complete with hydraulics and holes and Class III whitewater at certain times of year.
Blackwater River State Park is the gateway to thousands of acres of public lands stretching northward to the Alabama border.
Blue Spring State Park is well acclaimed for being the best place in Florida to see manatees in the wild, and we don’t mean a dozen or two. Upwards of 200 crowd spring run each winter.
History and natural beauty meet under a dense oak canopy at the ruins of one of Florida’s oldest sugar mills
From Faver-Dykes State Park, you can easily explore the estuaries of the Matanzas River. Shaded by oak hammocks along Pellicer Creek, this peaceful park offers camping, hiking and biking trails, and some of the best paddling along this coast.
Cradling a collection of spectacular springs in a forested glen along the Santa Fe River, Gilchrist Blue Springs State Park is Florida’s newest state park and one of the finest places to experience a spring up close.
Grayton Beach State Park protects one in a chain of rare coastal dune lakes with freshwater mere yards from the Gulf of Mexico. Nature trails introduce you to the rugged barrier island dunes and the pine flatwoods around the lake.
Water in motion: the Hillsborough rapids foam and froth over limestone boulders beneath grand cypress trees in Class II rapids. One of Florida’s oldest state parks, Hillsborough River State Park showcases this masterpiece of nature from an overlook and trail system built by the Civilian Conservation Corps.
A swimming hole as a work of natural art, the deep gash in the earth that is Ichetucknee Spring glows an unearthly robin’s-egg blue, cradled in a limestone bowl within a leafy glen.
The original seat of Dade County, settled in 1836, lies in limestone ruins swaddled in a tropical forest within sight of US 1, but offshore. Indian Key takes a little planning to visit, but is well worth the journey.
