Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Other unforgettable rivers include: the Atlantic Coast's 'Wild and Scenic' Loxahatchee
River; Orlando's 'Wild and Scenic' Wekiva River; and the Tampa region's placid Hillsbor-
ough River and the alligator-packed Myakka River.
You'll tell your grandchildren about kayaking Everglades National Park; Hell's Bay pad-
dling trail is heavenly. The nearby 10,000 Islands are just as amazing, and nothing beats
sleeping in the Everglades in a 'chickee' (a wooden platform raised above the waterline). A
truly great Florida adventure - indeed, one of the most unique wilderness experiences in
North America - is paddling through the mangrove ecosystem that fringes the entirety of
the southern Florida coast.
And don't forget the coasts. You'll kick yourself if you don't kayak Miami's Bill Baggs
Cape Florida State Park; Tampa Bay's Caladesi Island; Sanibel Island's JN 'Ding' Darling
National Wildlife Refuge; and the Big Bend's Cedar Key. There's even an entire 'blueway'
- a collection of charted streams and rivers - within Lee County in southwest Florida.
On Florida's Atlantic Coast, more mangroves, water birds, dolphins and manatees await
at Canaveral National Seashore, particularly Mosquito Lagoon, and also seek out Indian
River Lagoon. Big and Little Talbot Islands provide more intercoastal magic.
Diving & Snorkeling
For diving and snorkeling, most already know about Florida's superlative coral reefs and
wreck diving, but northern Florida is also known as the 'Cave Diving Capital of the US.'
The peninsula's limestone has more holes than Swiss cheese, and most are burbling goblets
of diamond-clear (if chilly) water.
Many diving spots line the Suwannee River: try
Peacock Springs State Park
(
www.floridastateparks.org/peacocksprings
)
, one of the continent's largest underwater cave
Springs State Park. Another fun dive is Blue Spring State Park, near Orlando. Note that
you need to be cavern certified to dive a spring (an open-water certification won't do), and
solo diving is usually not allowed. But local dive shops can help with both. One place that
offers certification courses is Vortex Spring.
Every Florida spring has prime snorkeling. At times, the clarity of the water is discon-
certing, as if you were floating on air; every creature and school of fish all the way to the
bottom feels just out of reach, so that, as William Bartram once wrote, 'the trout swims by
the very nose of the alligator and laughs in his face.'
