Hike Bike Paddle Camp Florida with authors Sandra Friend and John Keatley as your guides
Hiking, biking, paddling, camping, and other outdoor recreation near the city of St. Cloud. Once the heart of frontier Florida, St. Cloud is a bustling community to the east of Kissimmee with an expansive lakefront on East Lake Toho.
.St. Cloud
Don’t believe people when they say there are no seasons in Florida. We always look forward to the change of color in Florida’s floodplains, even if they happen in December.
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.
150.4 miles. The Orlando section of the Florida Trail spans from the Ocala National Forest south through the prairies of Osceola County, encompassing the eastern suburbs of the Orlando metro.
Alternating between moss-draped oak hammocks and the wide open prairies that characterize this part of Florida, the Florida Trail loop at Prairie Lakes provides one of Central Florida’s oldest and most scenic hiking destinations.
At Three Lakes WMA / Prairie Lakes Unit, the Florida Trail traverses one of the largest expanses of open prairie in the Southeast, the Kissimmee Prairie.
241 miles. With segments linking Withlacoochee State Forest and the Cross Florida Greenway, the Western Corridor provides access to wild spaces north of Tampa.
Hugging the eastern shore of Lake Lizzie, Lake Lizzie Conservation Area encompasses more than a thousand acres along several lakes set among a vast mosaic of prairies, pine flatwoods, and scrub forest. Hikers, cyclists, and equestrians can explore the extensive trail network.
In the most accessible corner of the thousand acres that make up Lake Lizzie Conservation Area in St. Cloud, the Marsh Loop is an easy 1.7 mile hiking-only loop.
Ancient live oaks provide a tightly knit canopy over the 0.9-mile trail system at Lake Runnymede Conservation Area, a 43 acre urban preserve.
A live oak tree more than 200 years old is the centerpiece of Split Oak Forest, a 2,000-acre prairie and scrub preserve near Orlando, home to families of sandhill cranes.
The 2.2-mile Sunset Ranch Trail at the Prairie Lakes Unit of Three Lakes WMA provides an easy day hike for birding near Lake Marian.
Vast pine savannas and pitcher plant bogs await at one of the toughest loop trails in the Orlando area a 7.5-mile challenge at Triple N Ranch WMA.
