Family

Canaveral is the longest stretch of undeveloped coast left in Florida, protected because it borders the Kennedy Space Center. Standing on the sand with nothing built in either direction is a rare thing on the Atlantic side of this state. Loggerhead, green and leatherback turtles all nest here, and the park runs guided night walks in June and July that are worth planning a trip around. Mosquito Lagoon behind the dunes is famous for paddling and fishing. Facilities are minimal, the beach can close entirely for launches, and the surf is real Atlantic surf rather than Gulf calm.

San Cristóbal is bigger than El Morro and less visited, which makes it the better of the two if your children want space to roam. It covers twenty-seven acres of layered defences built to protect San Juan from land attack, connected by tunnels that are open to walk. The detail that lands with most visitors is in a small dungeon room, where someone imprisoned here centuries ago drew ships on the wall in charcoal - they are still there. Rangers give talks through the day. The same ticket covers El Morro, so most families do both, though not usually on the same day with young kids.

El Morro guards the entrance to San Juan Bay and has done since the sixteenth century. Six levels of ramps, tunnels, gun positions and the round garitas that appear on every Puerto Rico souvenir make it genuinely fun to explore rather than merely educational - children treat it as a castle, which it is. The enormous green esplanade in front of it is where San Juan families come to fly kites on windy afternoons, and vendors sell them at the gate. Your ticket also covers Castillo San Cristóbal a mile away, the larger of the two. Shade is limited on the upper levels.

Fort Christiansvaern is the bright yellow Danish fort on the Christiansted waterfront, and it is small enough to see properly with children in under an hour - ramparts, cannon, the powder magazine, and the punishment cells below. The surrounding historic site includes the old Danish customs house, scale house and West India Company warehouse, where enslaved people were sold, and the interpretation does not avoid that. Around it Christiansted itself is compact and walkable with arcaded streets and a boardwalk. Boats to Buck Island leave from the harbour here, which makes it easy to combine.

Cinnamon Bay is a long stretch of sand inside the national park with more room to spread out than Trunk or Maho, and enough wave action to be fun for children without being rough. A small cay sits offshore within easy snorkelling range for stronger swimmers. Behind the beach a short self-guided trail loops through the ruins of a Danish sugar plantation, with the mill and estate house walls standing in the bush - a genuinely interesting half hour that puts the island’s colonial history somewhere children will actually encounter it. Watersports rentals and a campground operate on site.

Clearwater Marine Aquarium is a rehabilitation facility that happens to admit visitors, and the difference from a conventional aquarium is the point: the animals are rescues, many are non-releasable because of their injuries, and the medical work happens in front of you. It became widely known as the home of Winter, the dolphin fitted with a prosthetic tail, whose story became the film Dolphin Tale. There are turtle and otter habitats, presentations through the day and a boat tour on the bay. It is the obvious answer to a rainy day or a red tide on this coast.

Coki is a small beach with an outsized reputation underwater. Rocky points at both ends hold coral and the fish life is dense and close in - blue tang, sergeant majors, parrotfish, squirrelfish - starting only a few metres from the sand in water shallow enough for a child to stand. That combination of easy access and real reef is uncommon. It is compact and gets crowded on cruise days, and there is persistent, insistent vending on the beach that some visitors find wearing. Feeding fish is discouraged. Coral World Ocean Park is immediately next door.

Coral World’s centrepiece is an observatory tower built down into the reef offshore, so you descend a spiral staircase and look out through windows at wild fish and coral in open water rather than a tank. Around it are touch pools with starfish and urchins, a sea turtle pool, a shark tank and a nature trail with lorikeets. Paid add-ons include a sea lion encounter and a Sea Trek helmet walk on the seabed for older children. It works well as a wet-weather or rough-sea alternative, and it sits directly beside Coki Beach so the two combine into a full day.

Crash Boat takes its name from the rescue boats once stationed here for the airbase. The pier has largely collapsed, and the pilings left standing under the water have grown coral and sponge and now hold dense fish life - sergeant majors, snapper, wrasse - in water shallow enough to free-dive. That structure is why it snorkels better than the plain sand beaches nearby. The beach itself is colourful with fishing boats and busy with local families at weekends, and there are food kiosks. Conditions matter: winter north swells make the west coast rough and murky.

Curry Hammock has the calmest paddling water in the Keys - a shallow protected bay where the bottom is visible the whole way and there is nowhere for a novice to get into trouble. Boats are available at the launch, but not from the park - a third-party self-serve kiosk runs on a QR code and a smartphone, so have signal and a card. The beach is small and rarely crowded, which is the trade for it being less spectacular than Bahia Honda. In autumn the park hosts a raptor migration count, and on a good October day thousands of hawks and falcons funnel down the Keys directly overhead. The campground is one of the harder Florida reservations to get.

De Leon Springs pairs a circular walled swimming basin with something no other Florida spring has: a restaurant in the 1830s sugar mill where every table has its own griddle and you pour and flip your own pancakes from a jug of batter. Kids find this considerably more exciting than the spring. The wait for a table routinely exceeds an hour on weekends, so the usual order is to put your name down, swim while you wait, and eat after. The spring itself is a consistent 72 degrees with a dock and ladder entry rather than a beach.

Delnor-Wiggins solves the problem that makes beach days with small children hard: five parking areas spread along the mile of beach mean you are always within a short carry of the car, with restrooms and showers at each. The Gulf here is typically flat and shallow. The pass at the north end has a strong current and is not for swimming, but it is a good spot to watch boats and fish, and the observation tower gives a view over the mangroves. Loggerheads nest along this beach in summer. The lot fills by mid-morning in season.

El Yunque is the accessible rainforest: several of the best things in it are within a few hundred metres of the road, so a family with young children gets waterfalls, tree ferns and coqui frogs without a serious hike. La Coca Falls is visible from the roadside and Yokahu Tower gives a view over the canopy to the coast. Check the forest’s alerts page before you go, because the trail network is only partly open - La Mina Trail (and so La Mina Falls), Big Tree Trail and Bano de Oro are closed, and El Yunque Peak Trail runs only as far as Los Picachos. Entry on PR-191 is free and needs no reservation, but the corridor runs 8am to 5pm, parking is restricted to marked areas and fills early, and rideshare apps are not permitted to collect you. It rains most days; that is the point.

Florida’s highest waterfall is not what you would expect: a stream runs across flat ground, reaches the edge of a cylindrical sinkhole a hundred feet deep, and falls seventy-three feet into it. The water then vanishes into the aquifer, and its destination has never been established. A boardwalk and stairs descend to viewing platforms inside the sink. It is a short walk, well shaded, and genuinely strange. The fall depends entirely on rainfall - after a dry month it can be a trickle or nothing, so ask when you call. There is a small spring-fed lake for swimming and a campground.

Flamenco earns the superlatives. A mile-long horseshoe of white sand enclosing water that grades from clear to turquoise to deep blue, with a reef at the eastern end for snorkelling and surf gentle enough for children through most of the bay. The odd landmark is a rusting US Navy tank left on the sand from when Culebra was a bombing range, now covered in graffiti and universally photographed. Facilities exist - kiosks, restrooms, showers, camping - which is unusual for a beach this good. Getting there means the Culebra ferry from Ceiba or a small plane, and the ferry is the constraint.

Florida is riddled with caves but almost all of them are underwater; Florida Caverns is the one dry cave with public tours. Rangers lead groups through decorated rooms of stalactites, stalagmites, soda straws and flowstone, on a paved path with lighting, taking about forty-five minutes. It stays at 65 degrees, which in a Panhandle August is the main attraction. There are low sections that require ducking, so it is not stroller-friendly. Tour tickets are sold same-day on a first-come basis and sell out on holiday weekends. Above ground there are trails, a spring-fed swimming area and camping.

The Overseas Highway is 113 miles of two-lane road hopping 44 islands, and the standard family mistake is treating it as a drive to Key West. It isn’t. Key West is the least kid-friendly thing in the Keys, and the best parts are the stops you pass at 55mph on your way to it. So this runs the other way round: three days, never more than about 40 miles between beds, and Key West as an afternoon rather than a destination. Mile markers count down as you go south, which is how everything here is addressed. ...

Fort Clinch is one of the best preserved nineteenth-century masonry forts in the country, and unusually you can walk almost all of it - the ramparts, the galleries, the kitchen, the bunk rooms. Rangers in period uniform staff it daily and stay in character, which children find either fascinating or unnerving. The beach below the fort is a well-known spot for finding fossilised shark teeth, especially at low tide near the jetty. Two campgrounds sit in the park, one on the Atlantic and one under a canopy of live oak and Spanish moss. The road in through the maritime forest is worth the drive on its own.

Fort De Soto regularly turns up on best-beach-in-America lists, but the reason it belongs on a family list is North Beach’s lagoon - a shallow protected pool separated from the Gulf by a sandbar, where the water is warm, still and waist-deep a long way out. There is a genuine fort to climb over with its original mortars, seven miles of paved trail, a two-mile canoe trail through mangroves, and a large dog park with its own dog beach. The campground sits on the water. It is a county park, so entry is cheap.

Key West is short on good beaches and this is the one locals use. The water drops off quickly compared to Bahia Honda, which makes it less suited to toddlers but much better for snorkelling - the rocky edges hold parrotfish, sergeant majors and the occasional small barracuda within a short swim of the sand. Behind the beach sits the Civil War fort itself, with the largest collection of seacoast cannon in the country and cool brick casemates that make a good hour out of the sun. Water shoes matter here; the entry is rocky.