Honeymoon Island: Ospreys, Shells, and Old-Florida Beaches
Just off Dunedin, Honeymoon Island is one of Florida’s most popular state parks, with undeveloped beaches, a rare virgin pine forest, and one of the densest osprey populations in the state.
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Hillsborough River State Park: Where Flat Florida Gets Rapids
Near Tampa, one of Florida’s oldest state parks hides a genuine surprise: a stretch of churning rapids on the Hillsborough River, something the famously flat state is not supposed to have.
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Lovers Key: The Once-Secret Islands of Southwest Florida
A cluster of undeveloped barrier islands near Fort Myers Beach, Lovers Key was once reachable only by boat, a quiet hideaway of shells, dolphins, and manatees.
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Grayton Beach: The 30A Park With a Rare Coastal Dune Lake
On the Panhandle’s scenic 30A, Grayton Beach pairs sugar-white sand and emerald water with a coastal dune lake, a landform found in only a handful of places on Earth.
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St. George Island: The Quiet Panhandle Beach Time Forgot
No high-rises, no traffic lights, just miles of white sand, a historic lighthouse, and some of the emptiest beaches in Florida. Meet St. George Island.
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Falling Waters: The Park With Florida’s Tallest Waterfall
Most people do not think of waterfalls in flat Florida, but near Chipley the ground drops away and a stream plunges 73 feet into a deep sinkhole.
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Lignumvitae Key: A Lost Tropical Jungle in the Florida Keys
Reachable only by boat, this small island off Islamorada preserves one of the last virgin tropical hardwood forests in the United States, a glimpse of the Keys before development.
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Highlands Hammock: One of Florida’s First and Wildest State Parks
Near Sebring sits one of Florida’s oldest state parks, where a thousand-year-old oak, a cypress-swamp catwalk, and ancient hammock survive almost exactly as they were a century ago.
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Myakka River State Park: A Hog Ranch That Became Florida’s First Wild and Scenic River
The Florida Legislature named a 34-mile stretch of the Myakka the state’s first Wild and Scenic River in 1985. Before that, the valley was a cattle and swine ranch that the CCC spent the 1930s turning into a park.
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The Wild Monkeys Who Took Over Silver Springs
A boat operator released a handful of monkeys onto a Silver Springs island in the 1930s. He did not know they could swim. Today hundreds of wild rhesus macaques roam the riverbanks near Ocala.
