Hike Bike Paddle Camp Florida with authors Sandra Friend and John Keatley as your guides
Public campgrounds in outdoorsy settings that accommodate campers, trailers, and RVs for longer stays
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.
An immersion into vast pine flatwoods that includes scrambles over ancient dunes, the East Loop at Jonathan Dickinson State Park provides both day hikers and backpackers a delightful getaway.
An urban wilderness area preserving a patch of tropical forest, Easterlin Park has the 0.9-mile Habitat Restoration Nature Trail looping around a lake and campground.
In its 1.5 million acres sweeping across South Florida, Everglades National Park offers outdoor experiences ranging from accessible boardwalks and paved trails to rugged adventures in harsh wilderness.
Geology is the focus of Falling Waters State Park, which sits atop a tall ridge. The cascade plunges more than 70 feet into a cylindrical sinkhole lined with ferns and mosses, and the observation platform is about a third of the way down.
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.
A dip into Florida’s only show cave at Florida Caverns State Park brings on an instant sense of cool. Opened in Marianna in the 1930s by the hardworking Civilian Conservation Corps, the tour route wraps through more than a dozen rooms with their own distinct and colorful landscapes.
8.6 miles. Dive deep into the world’s largest sand pine scrub forest on this hike through the Big Scrub.
Paralleling a segment of the Cross Florida Barge Canal, the Buckman Lock to Rodman Dam hike on of the Florida Trail sticks to a high berm for most of the 5.3 miles.
Providing a 20.5 mile loop for backpacking amid open pine savannas and prairies, the Florida Trail at Bull Creek WMA is a popular destination.
The oldest section of the Florida Trail runs 11 miles between between Clearwater Lake and Alexander Springs in the Ocala National Forest, showcasing longleaf pine forests and scrub
A pleasant ramble on bluffs above the Withlacoochee River, the Croom River Trail segment of the Florida Trail tunnels through oak hammocks and slips around cypress swamps along its 6.3-mile journey.
