Trails around Daytona Beach, the most well-known strand of sand in America, showcase both oceanfront natural lands and wilderness areas along the estuaries and pine woods to the west of the coast.
Blue Spring State Park
If you’ve never seen manatees by the dozens, let alone a hundred or more, there’s no better place in Florida to watch these gentle giants drift past than near Deland along the boardwalk at Blue Spring State Park, paralleling the length of Blue Spring Run to the St. Johns River. This short, easy trail offers [...]
Bluffton Nature Trail
South of Astor along the St. Johns River, the Bluffton Recreation Area in Lake George State Forest paints a picture of Florida’s prehistoric past. As botanist William Bartram canoed the St. Johns River in 1773, he noted massive mounds of snail shells piled up on its shorelines. These middens, prehistoric garbage heaps, spoke to civilizations [...]
Bulow Creek Trail
The essence of primordial Florida still echoes through Bulow Hammock, a dark and mysterious place running like a ribbon of the “Land of the Lost” trapped between the flow of traffic on Interstate 95 and the sluggish quiet of Bulow Creek, a freshwater outlet just a mile or two from the Atlantic Ocean. The Bulow [...]
Florida Trail, Alexander Springs to Farles Lake
Get acquainted with Big Scrub on this 8.4-mile stretch of the Florida Trail in the Ocala National Forest as it rises through longleaf pine forests to meet the world’s largest sand pine scrub, punctuated by a variety of ponds and prairies. Connecting a first-magnitude spring with one of the more beautiful lakes in the Ocala [...]
Hontoon Island State Park – Indian Mound Nature Trail
There are many public lands on islands in Florida, but Hontoon Island State Park is one of the few surrounded by fresh water and accessible via a free ferryboat. For more than three thousand years, the Timucua lived on this deeply forested island, sharing the lush palm hammocks and pine flatwoods with deer, otters, and [...]
Ponce Preserve
Just south of Daytona Beach, Ponce Preserve protects a cross-section of barrier island habitats in a 40-acre ribbon between the Atlantic Ocean and the Halifax River at Ponce Inlet. Home of the Green Mound, a particularly significant archeological site, it’s also nature’s last stand on the barrier island where auto racing was born. Thanks to [...]
Smyrna Dunes Park
As the wind whips across a broad, sweeping peninsula reaching out towards Ponce Inlet, you can hear the squawks of shorebirds and the rustle of gopher tortoises intermingle with engines gunning and dogs barking. At New Smyrna Beach, Smyrna Dunes Park is one of those rare places where most recreational users are accommodated. The 2-mile [...]
St. Francis Trail
One of Central Florida’s most scenic and easy-to-follow day hikes, the St. Francis Trail traverses the southeasternmost corner of the Ocala National Forest to lead you through what was once farms, fields, and a bustling commercial center on the St. Johns River. It’s hard to believe, as you walk under bowers of live oaks and [...]
Wild Persimmon Trail
Was De Leon Springs the Fountain of Youth? History relates that when he sailed to Florida in 1513, he “ascended a large river, passing through two small rivers and three lakes, whence we came to a great boiling spring which the Indians call ‘Healing Waters’.” The waters bubbling forth into Spring Garden Run have been [...]
