Hike Bike Paddle Camp Florida with authors Sandra Friend and John Keatley as your guides
A suburb of Tampa, Brandon provides a gateway to public lands in rural east Hillsborough County and along the Alafia River basin
Alafia River State Park lets you launch on a Florida downhill while mountain biking the rugged terrain of a reforested open pit mine.
An easy loop at Alderman’s Ford Park, the Nature Trail slips behind the nature center for a walk in under ancient trees along the river’s floodplain corridor
Alderman’s Ford Preserve offers a surprising treat for a Central Florida hike: whitewater, showcasing the Alafia River churning as it winds through a deeply eroded channel
With its natural waterfront on Tampa Bay, Apollo Beach Nature Preserve is a perfect place for birders, not beachgoers, a place to launch a kayak and scan the skies for osprey.
E.G. Simmons Park in Ruskin offers a campground along with its beaches and mazy mangrove-lined waterways for paddlers and anglers along Tampa Bay.
Meandering over hilly terrain past numerous scenic overlooks, the Singing Bluffs Trail at Edward Medard Conservation Park provides great birding among documented nesting bird colonies.
Eureka Springs Park includes what remains of a tropical botanical garden established in 1938 around springs that fed a lush floodplain forest along Six Mile Creek
Hike rolling sandhills and rugged terrain sloping towards scenic views of the Alafia River and Little Fishhawk Creek near Lithia Springs.
An easy-going 2.8-mile loop trail explores the south tract of Fishhawk Creek Preserve providing a glimpse of a few natural and endangered Florida habitats.
Protecting uplands immediately east of Tampa Bay, Golden Aster Scrub Nature Preserve immerses hikers within oak scrub habitat along a sandy loop trail.
Creating a 5.2 mile loop on the west side of Golden Aster Scrub Nature Preserve, the Red and Yellow Trails reveal a diversity of habitats.
In the Little Manatee River watershed, the 579 Trailhead offers access to a pair of loop trails across palmetto prairies and shady oak hammocks.
