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Flat water and something to look at. The springs and spring runs are the clearest paddling in the state - Weeki Wachee in Hernando County, Rainbow Springs in Marion, and the Wekiva at Wekiva Island in Seminole County.
On the coast, Lovers Key in Lee County, Clam Pass in Collier, Robinson Preserve in Manatee County and Bunche Beach in Lee are all sheltered backwater with mangrove trails rather than open Gulf. Anclote River Park in Pasco County gives you a river mouth and an island offshore. Early morning is flattest almost everywhere, and on the spring runs it is also when the wildlife is moving.
Hernando County. Newton Perry, who had trained Navy frogmen, worked out how to breathe underwater from a free-flowing air hose instead of a tank, and in 1947 he built a theater into the limestone six feet below the surface with eighteen seats in it.
Open the guide →Marion County. The water comes up through many separate vents rather than one mouth, and it forms the Rainbow River. It was called Blue Spring until the 1930s, when the owners renamed it to sell it, and for forty years it ran as a roadside attraction with submarine boat tours and, in the 1950s, mermaid performances.
Open the guide →Seminole County. Wekiva Island sits at 1014 Miami Springs Drive in Longwood, about twenty minutes from downtown Orlando, on the Wekiva River, which carries a federal Wild and Scenic designation. The river is spring-fed, clear and slow, and the paddling is easy enough for families.
Open the guide →Lee County. The four are Lovers Key, Black Island, Inner Key and Long Key, and until 1965 the first of them could only be reached by boat, which is where the name came from.
Open the guide →Collier County. A 35-acre county park where a three-quarter-mile boardwalk runs out through mangroves and a lagoon to the sand. Walk it or ride the tram, which is free. Marine life, coastal birds and butterflies are visible from the boardwalk.
Open the guide →Manatee County. It was farmland before the county bought it, and the mangrove forest, salt marsh and tidal creeks here were engineered back into existence rather than simply fenced off, which makes it one of the larger restoration projects on this coast.
Open the guide →Lee County. 718 acres on San Carlos Bay at 18201 John Morris Road: sand, mangrove forest and salt flats, the tidal wetland this coast looked like before the exotic plants arrived. It is a Great Florida Birding Trail site and one of the best places in the county to watch shorebirds.
Open the guide →Pasco County. Thirty-one acres at 1119 Baillies Bluff Road in Holiday, open seven days a week from sunrise to sunset. Swimming with Gulf access, a boat ramp and a dock, with the ramps open around the clock for launching and retrieving only, and canoe and kayak access as well.
Open the guide →Three kinds of kayaking, and Florida has all three. Mangrove backwater: Ten Thousand Islands and the Gulf Coast side of Everglades National Park in Collier County, Lovers Key in Lee, Weedon Island Preserve in Pinellas, Robinson Preserve in Manatee County.
The only living coral barrier reef in the continental United States runs down the Keys, and John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park off Key Largo in Monroe County is where most people meet it.
Saltwater diving means the Keys and the reef: John Pennekamp in Monroe County, and Biscayne National Park in Miami-Dade, which is mostly water rather than land.
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