Hike Bike Paddle Camp Florida with authors Sandra Friend and John Keatley as your guides
Florida may not have a lot of elevation gain, but these hikes will have you scrambling up and down hills, which can be a lot of fun.
In northern Walton County, Lakewood Park hides an unexpected draw that attracts thousands of visitors each year: Britton Hill, Florida’s high point at 345 feet.
Atop the highest point on the Florida Peninsula stands a monument to an immigrant who lived the American Dream and decided that his legacy would be to preserve this high point: Bok Tower Gardens.
A place of beauty that morphed from phosphate pits to botanical attraction over the course of a century, Rainbow Springs State Park cradles one of Florida’s most beautiful first-magnitude springs and the river it creates in a wrap of shady forests and gardens.
A steeply sloped ravine. Tunnels of azaleas. Bubbling springs. Two swaying suspension bridges. That’s what makes the loop at Ravine Gardens State Park so much fun.
Known best for its hillsides of blooming azaleas each February, Ravine Gardens State Park melds historic planted public gardens with the intriguing setting of a deep steephead ravine above the St. Johns River in Palatka.
A beauty spot with extreme elevation changes, the ravine at Gold Head Branch State Park is best explored along the Ridge and Ravine Trails that guide you into and around the bottom of the ravine
As the site of a significant Spanish mission, weird karst geology, and an array of Appalachian plants and trees that simply don’t creep much farther south, San Felasco Hammock Preserve State Park is a passive preserve that most visitors only get to know a corner of.
Hugging the state line with Georgia at Lake Seminole – the reservoir created by the dam where the Flint and Chattahoochee Rivers form the Apalachicola – Three Rivers State Park is a prime getaway for anglers.
One of the most rugged hikes in Florida, the Torreya Hiking Trail treats you to an scenic landscape of bluffs and ravines to 300 feet above the Apalachicola River.
Perched on a high bluff above the Apalachicola River, Torreya State Park is one of Florida’s original state parks developed by the Civilian Conservations Corps in the 1930s. It’s a destination that fulfills many interests, with botanical wonders, geologic anomolies, and historic sites including earthworks from the Civil War and the Gregory House, a plantation home from 1849.
