Hiking

Big Talbot has the strangest beach in Florida. The island is eroding, and as the bluff retreats it drops entire live oaks and cedars onto the sand below, where salt and sun bleach them white. The result is a shoreline of enormous pale driftwood skeletons, some still rooted, arranged along the tideline - it looks like nowhere else in the state and photographs extraordinarily well. Getting down means a short trail from the roadside parking and a scramble at the end. This is a walking and looking beach, not a swimming one: the water has current and there are no lifeguards.

Guánica is the largest and best preserved subtropical dry forest anywhere, and it is a startling contrast to El Yunque three hours east: cactus, thorn scrub, bare limestone and relentless sun instead of rain and tree ferns. It holds bird species found nowhere else on the island. Several trails run from the road down to the coast, ending at small empty beaches; the Ballena trail is a straightforward option with children. There is no water and almost no shade on the trails, which is the thing to plan around - start early and carry more water than seems necessary.

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.

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.

Florida does not really do rapids, which is why the small run of Class II water on the Hillsborough draws people from across the state. You can watch it from a suspension footbridge without getting in a boat. Canoe and kayak rentals run a calmer stretch upstream through cypress and oak, with alligators and turtles as standard. The park is one of Florida’s original Civilian Conservation Corps builds from the 1930s and the stonework shows it. Do not come here to swim: the park’s pool has been closed since 2022 and there are no current plans to reopen it, and the river itself is not a swimming river. Parts of the trail network, including a section of the Rapids Trail, have also been closed - ring the park before building a day around any one of them. The shaded campground is good.

Honeymoon Island is the accessible half of the pair - you drive straight onto it, park next to the sand, and the water is shallow and calm enough for small children. Shelling here is unusually good, especially after a winter front pushes material up the beach. The Osprey Trail runs through one of the last virgin slash pine stands on the coast and has active nests visible from the path most of the spring. There is a separate dog beach at the south end where dogs swim off-lead, which is rare in Florida state parks. The ferry to Caladesi leaves from here.

A crystal-clear artesian spring that wells up from a deep underwater cave system, long one of the most photographed swimming holes in Texas. Swimming has been closed since 2022 - a multi-year drought and heavy pumping from the Middle Trinity Aquifer have dropped the flow too low to be safe, and Hays County has suspended the swim season until further notice with no date to reopen. What is open is the rest of the natural area: about three miles of trail across 81 acres, a quarter-mile walk down to the well itself, and an overlook where you can still see straight into the mouth of the cave. Free, no reservation, and far quieter than it used to be.

The Loxahatchee was the first river in Florida designated Wild and Scenic, and the upper stretch running through Jonathan Dickinson is genuinely wild - cypress, sabal palm, alligators and no development. Canoes and kayaks rent at the river camp, and a narrated boat tour runs upstream to Trapper Nelson’s homestead, the cabin of a man who lived off this river for decades and became a local legend. Away from the water, Hobe Mountain is an ancient dune with a tower on top, and at 86 feet it counts as one of the higher points in south Florida - the view runs to the Atlantic.

Long Key’s canoe trail winds through a shallow tidal lagoon where the mangrove tunnels are close enough to touch on both sides and the water is often under two feet deep. It is a quiet, sheltered paddle with herons and small sharks in the shallows, and the reason to come. Bring your own boat: there are no rentals here and the dockage was removed. Be realistic about the rest of the park before you plan a day around it. Hurricane Irma in 2017 and Ian in 2022 took the oceanfront campground and the beach with it, and there are no plans to rebuild - only a few walk-up primitive sites remain, and as of mid-2026 those and the Golden Orb Trail are closed for construction. What is open is the lagoon, a nature trail and waterfront picnic tables.

A staircase of waterfall-fed pools dropping through the Kipahulu district of Haleakala National Park all the way to the sea. Swimming in the pools is prohibited - flash flooding funnels down this gulch with almost no warning and a rockslide closed the pools outright - so treat this as a viewpoint, not a swim stop. The half-mile Kuloa Point Trail loops from the visitor center out over the pools and the ocean cliffs, and the four-mile round-trip Pipiwai Trail climbs past a bamboo forest to 400-foot Waimoku Falls. It is the far end of the Road to Hana, so budget the drive.

Cueva Ventana is exactly one image: a cave mouth shaped like a window in the side of a limestone cliff, opening onto a green river valley several hundred feet below. Getting there means a guided walk of about twenty minutes through a section of cave that holds a substantial bat colony, with helmets and torches provided. The floor is uneven and slippery in places, which sets a realistic minimum around six. Guides explain the Taíno history and the geology on the way. It is genuinely worth the entry fee, and it takes about ninety minutes in total, so it combines well with the Camuy caves nearby.

Torreya sits on high bluffs above the Apalachicola, and the trails climb and drop through ravines that hold plant communities more typical of the Appalachians than the Gulf coast, including the endangered Torreya tree the park is named for. The loop trail has genuine elevation gain, which makes it the closest thing to real hiking in the state and a good choice for older children who find flat Florida trails dull. The Gregory House, an 1849 plantation house moved across the river piece by piece, sits on the bluff edge and is open for guided tours on a fixed schedule - once a day midweek, twice at weekends - so check the times before building a day around it. The trails reopened after Hurricane Michael flattened much of the canopy in 2018, and the regrowth is visible along them. It is remote; bring what you need.

Wekiwa is the closest real spring to Orlando, which is both its appeal and its problem - it regularly hits capacity and closes the gate by mid-morning on summer weekends. The swimming basin is large, has a shallow shelf for small children and a deeper end with a dock, and the water sits at 72 degrees. Canoe and kayak rentals launch onto the Wekiva River, a slow blackwater run where alligators and otters are both common sights. It makes a genuine alternative to a theme park day for families already in Orlando.

There is a version of the Adirondacks that is 46 High Peaks, pre-dawn alpine starts, and a car full of gear. This is not that trip. This is the one where a five-year-old gets a summit view after twenty minutes of climbing, you drive to the top of the fifth-highest mountain in New York, and every single day ends with somebody in a lake. Three days, one base town, about a hundred miles of driving total, and roughly half the stops cost nothing. ...

A Forest Service campground in the Ouachita National Forest built around a small lake with a sandy swimming beach. The setting is classic national forest: tall pines, well-spaced sites, a lake loop trail kids can walk on their own, and no commercial development in sight. There is a separate equestrian camping area, so horse trailers do not end up parked next to family tents. Facilities are simpler than a state park, which keeps both the cost and the crowds down.

There is no drive-up campground at Enchanted Rock. Camping means walk-in tent sites a short distance from the parking area, plus primitive backcountry areas for families willing to carry everything in. The reward is enormous: the day-use line at the gate can close the park by mid-morning on a nice weekend, and campers are already inside. Sunrise and sunset on the granite dome with almost nobody else on it is a completely different experience from the midday crowd. Nights are dark enough that the Milky Way is visible.

A friendly, medium-sized state campground on a quiet lake just west of Long Lake village, with a sandy beach, a boat launch and a short trail up Owls Head Mountain nearby for families ready for a real climb. The lake is calm and shallow near shore, so young kids can wade a long way out. Long Lake village is a couple of minutes away with a beach, a diner and a float plane dock that kids find fascinating. It is a good middle option: real Adirondack quiet without being an hour from a grocery store.

A state campground between Lewey Lake and Indian Lake in the central Adirondacks, with a swimming beach, a boat launch and direct access to trails heading into the Siamese Ponds Wilderness. Because it sits between two bodies of water, you get a sheltered small lake for kids to paddle and a big one for fishing and boating, without moving the car. The setting under Snowy Mountain is dramatic and the campground rarely feels as packed as the Lake George area. Cell service is essentially nonexistent, which some families count as a feature.

Lost Maples is where Texas gets a real autumn, and staying overnight in November is the only way to beat the day-trip traffic that backs up FM 187 on fall weekends. The developed campground has water-and-electric sites along the Sabinal River near the entrance, with primitive hike-in sites farther back for families with older kids. Mornings on the East Trail before the crowds arrive are the payoff. The park caps daily entries during peak foliage, so a campsite is effectively your guaranteed way in.