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Florida has one of the larger state park systems in the country and a dozen or so carry a full day on their own.
On the coast: Bahia Honda in the Keys, Fort De Soto in Pinellas County, Honeymoon Island and Caladesi in the same county, Fort Clinch in Nassau with its 1847 brick fort, Anastasia in St Johns, Sebastian Inlet in Brevard, Lovers Key in Lee, Grayton Beach and Topsail Hill in Walton, and St Joseph Peninsula in Gulf County. Inland: Myakka River in Sarasota County, Highlands Hammock in Highlands, Wakulla Springs and Ichetucknee for the water, Silver Springs in Marion, Florida Caverns in Jackson County for the only public cave tour in the state, and Torreya in Liberty County for the one piece of Florida with real hills.
Monroe County. Sandspur, Loggerhead and Calusa are the three beaches, and the sand here is real sand rather than the thin cover most of the Keys have, because of the way the current works through Bahia Honda Channel.
Open the guide →Pinellas County. 1,136 acres across five connected islands at the mouth of Tampa Bay, the largest park Pinellas County runs and one that takes more than 2.7 million visits a year. North Beach and East Beach give almost three miles of white sand with swim centers and food concessions.
Open the guide →Pinellas County. The Tocobaga lived here first. The island was called Hog Island until the hurricane of 1921 cut it in two and made Caladesi Island out of the southern half. In the late 1930s Clinton Washburn bought the northern piece, and a conversation with an editor at Life magazine gave him the idea that made the name.
Open the guide →Pinellas County. Caladesi and Honeymoon Island were one six-mile barrier island until a hurricane cut Hurricane Pass through it in 1921 and made two. In 1985 Hurricane Elena filled Dunedin Pass at the other end, joining Caladesi to Clearwater Beach, so the island can now be walked to from the south, though there is still no road.
Open the guide →Nassau County. It was named for General Duncan Lamont Clinch of the Seminole wars. No shot was ever fired at it in anger. Confederate troops held it briefly in 1861 and pulled out in 1862, and Union forces walked back in without a fight, which is the whole of its combat record and a large part of why so much of it survives.
Open the guide →St. Johns County. The park covers 1,700 acres just across the bridge from downtown St. Augustine and takes in four miles of Atlantic beach, reached by boardwalk over the dunes. It was established in 1949.
Open the guide →Brevard County. Sebastian Inlet State Park sits on the A1A barrier island south of Melbourne Beach, either side of the inlet itself. Surfers come for the breaks known as First Peak and Monster Hole, the jetties that cut into the Atlantic are used for fishing, and the calmer Indian River Lagoon side is where the kayaking is.
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 →Walton County. Nearly 2,000 acres of white quartz sand, dune and coastal forest, and the beach is regularly named one of the best in the United States. Western Lake, 100 acres of it, is one of three coastal dune lakes inside the park, a kind of lake found in only two states and four countries.
Open the guide →Walton County. The dunes here are the tall ones, high enough that the park is named for them, and they are left alone rather than walked over. Two coastal dune lakes, Campbell Lake and Morris Lake, sit behind the beach holding fresh water that mixes with salt when the sand bar breaks.
Open the guide →Gulf County. This park takes up the St. Joseph Peninsula at Cape San Blas, near Port St. Joe, a strip of sand with the Gulf of Mexico on one side and St. Joseph Bay on the other.
Open the guide →Sarasota County. The Civilian Conservation Corps laid this park out in the 1930s and it opened in 1941, which makes it one of the oldest and by far the largest of Florida's state parks.
Open the guide →Highlands County. Highlands Hammock opened in 1931, among the first state parks Florida had. Margaret Roebling, widow of the engineer who built the Brooklyn Bridge, saw the land while wintering here and bought it to keep it.
Open the guide →Jackson County. The tour goes through more than a dozen rooms, past rimstone pools, soda straws, sparkling calcite, helictites and the folded formation cavers call cave bacon. Fat Man's Squeeze, the Wedding Room and the Cathedral are the named stops.
Open the guide →Liberty County. This does not look like Florida. Logan Hill, the high point, stands some three hundred feet above the river, and between it and the water the ground falls away in steephead ravines cut by seeping groundwater, holding plants more usually found in the Appalachians.
Open the guide →Camping on the sand itself is not permitted in Florida, but a number of parks put you a short walk behind the dune, and those sites book out months ahead.
By car, through one of three entrances in three different cities, which do not connect to each other inside the park: the Homestead entrance, which leads down the main park road to Flamingo on the coast; the Miami entrance at Shark Valley, with trails, an observation tower and tram tours; and the Everglades City entrance on the Gulf coast, for boat tours and the mangrove waterways.
By ferry, seaplane, private boat or a permitted charter: the park is about 70 miles west of Key West and no road or bridge reaches it.
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