Ask 1stFlorida
Florida's tubing runs are spring-fed, so the water is clear and cool, around seventy degrees, in August as much as in March.
Ichetucknee Springs State Park in Columbia County is the classic. Tubes put in at Dampier's Landing at the south entrance, the float to the last take-out takes forty-five minutes to an hour, and food, drinks, coolers and anything disposable stay on shore. The Rainbow River at Dunnellon in Marion County is the long one, about four hours from K.P. Hole Park, which rents tubes with a ride back. Blue Spring State Park in Volusia County has a short float in seventy-two degree water, and at Madison Blue Spring State Park you bring your own tube. In the Panhandle, Coldwater Creek near Milton and the Chipola River near Altha, with a small set of rapids called Look and Tremble, make a longer day of it.
Columbia County. Ichetucknee Springs State Park lies about four miles northwest of Fort White, and the state park service gives its size as 2,669 acres. Eight major springs rise inside the park and join to form the Ichetucknee River, which runs six miles to the Santa Fe.
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 →Volusia County. About 102 million gallons of water come out of it every day at a steady seventy-three degrees. That warmth is the whole point in winter. When the river drops below the mid-sixties, manatees move into the spring run to keep from dying of cold, and from November through March the park closes the water to swimmers, divers and paddlers so the animals are left alone.
Open the guide →Madison County. The basin is about eighty-two feet across and twenty-five feet deep, and a run of roughly a hundred feet carries the water down to the river. That single spring supplies close to a quarter of the Withlacoochee's flow, which gives some idea of the volume: a first-magnitude spring moves at least two thousand eight hundred liters every second.
Open the guide →Calhoun County. The Chipola River begins in Jackson County where Marshall Creek meets Cowarts Creek, and runs 92.5 miles south to join the Apalachicola. It is a spring river rather than a rain river, and that is what makes it different from most water in the panhandle.
Open the guide →Florida has more first-magnitude springs than anywhere else on earth, and most of them run at about seventy-two degrees every day of the year, so they are cold in August and warm in January.
Read the answer →The surf is on the Atlantic side. The Gulf is flat most of the year and only breaks in a storm.
You want steady side-on wind and shallow, flat water, which means the sound and bay sides rather than the open ocean.
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.
Have a different question? Ask 1stFlorida →