Hike Bike Paddle Camp Florida with authors Sandra Friend and John Keatley as your guides
While Tampa is a large city along the north shore of Tampa Bay, it has many natural lands protecting its water supply, providing outdoor recreation opportunities
INTERACTIVE MAP
One of the few saving graces of former phosphate mines is that they provide awesome air for mountain bikers in Florida, and Alafia River State Park is one of the rare places where you can launch on a Florida downhill.
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.
Protecting a windswept shoreline and a variety of habitats on a barrier island, Caladesi Island State Park is one of the gems of the Florida State Parks system
On the Island Trail, discover how virgin pines and mangrove swamps define the wild side of Caladesi Island, a slender barrier island north of Clearwater Beach
Directly across Tampa Bay from St. Petersburg, two loop trails in Cockroach Bay Nature Preserve navigate restored wetlands and a lookout point known as Mount Cockroach.
A short drive from downtown Tampa, Cypress Creek Nature Preserve is an interesting window into a gradient of ecosystems along a tributary of the Hillsborough River.
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.
Now an urban forest in the heart of Pinellas County, Eagle Lake Park is the legacy of the Taylor family, early citrus growers who helped to found Largo
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
