These beachfront communities on the southern ends of Okaloosa and Walton Counties include a string of natural lands protecting some of the world’s rarest lakes, the coastal dunes lakes. They are freshwater bodies that flush out to the sea sporadically. Large bays punctuate this coast, providing even more shoreline for hiking.
Deer Lake State Park
The coast of Walton County is home to rare coastal dune lakes, an ecosystem that only exists in Florida and in Australia and Africa, and you’ll find them at Deer Lake State Park. As the freshwater lakes become too full, they naturally spill over and flow into the Gulf of Mexico. At that time seawater [...]
Eden Gardens State Park – Tucker Bayou Trail
Best known for its antebellum mansion with one of the most extensive Louis XVI furniture collections in America, Eden Gardens State Park has its wild side, too. The Tucker Bayou Trail, recently relocated, starts and ends at the new Tucker Bayou picnic area down a side road off the new park entrance. This short, mazy [...]
Florida Trail, Eglin East
This segment of the Florida Trail near Destin is on a swath of public land with a long and storied history. Established concurrently with the Ocala National Forest in 1908, the Choctawhatchee National Forest protected a vast swath of old growth longleaf pine forest. In 1940, the Federal Government decided to make the area a [...]
Florida Trail, Eglin West
Bordered by the tangled floodplain forests of the Yellow River to the north, this 12-mile segment of the Florida Trail traverses high, dry sandhills topped with longleaf pine forest and planted pine, dropping in elevation as the trail descends towards the East Bay River. For most of its length, it’s never far from SR 87, [...]
Fred Gannon Rocky Bayou State Park
Hugging the shoreline of Rocky Bayou, an important aquatic preserve, Fred Gannon Rocky Bayou State Park near Niceville has one of the prettiest campgrounds in the Florida State Park system – well air-conditioned by a cross-flow of breezes between the bayou and Puddin’ Head Lake – and one of the most picturesque trail systems. The [...]
Garcon Point Trail
On a peninsula separating Blackwater Bay and East Bay, Garcon Point Preserve presents an open landscape of wind-swept prairies punctuated by oak hammocks and tall longleaf pines. The Western Gate Chapter of the Florida Trail Association constructed two trails to provide public access to this prime place to enjoy pitcher plant blooms in the spring, [...]
Grayton Beach State Park
Along the South Walton coast, Grayton Beach State Park preserves special treasures—not just a waterfront with emerald waves and sparkling sand, but a rare coastal dune lake with freshwater mere feet from the sea. The trail system introduces you to a coastal dune lake and its surrounding habitats. Start with the Barrier Dunes Nature Trail, [...]
Henderson Beach State Park
If you’ve spent any time at the beach, you know that sand collects around the dune grasses and builds up, forming larger dunes. At Henderson Beach State Park, one of the more immense dunes built up around an old military bunker, and it’s now the home of the Henderson Beach Nature Trail, a 3/4-mile pet-friendly [...]
Naval Live Oaks Preserve
Naval Live Oaks Preserve outside Pensacola was our nation’s first tree farm, established in 1828 by President John Quincy Adams to protect a significant coastal stand of live oaks for military use. In those days, our navy’s ships were made of wood, and Pensacola was a significant deep-water coastal port. Once a supply of live [...]
Pine Log State Forest
Mist rising off Sand Pond in morning—a must-see, making the cypress-lined lake ever so ghostly in the middle of Florida’s first state forest, Pine Log. From the Sand Pond trailhead, which starts near the campground, three hiking trails offer different looks at the diversity of this forest. A disconnected linear segment of the Florida Trail [...]
Topsail Hill Preserve State Park
A sweep of fragile dunes along a shore that’s vanished, over time, under the rush of development: Topsail Hill State Park is a very special place. Protecting more than 3 miles of oceanfront on the Gulf of Mexico – and the 1,600 acres of delicate scrub and pine flatwoods habitats that lie behind the dune [...]
Turkey Creek Nature Trail
A broad boardwalk trail that showcases a clear, healthy tannic stream draining the sandhills of Eglin Air Force Base, the Turkey Creek Nature Trail is a community park and gathering place where children are almost always at play, thanks to platforms that enable visitors to jump into the cool water for a swim or a [...]
