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The trails at Lovers Key wind through shady maritime hammocks before emerging onto the beach, where lucky explorers might spot a manatee or a pod of dolphins.

From mid-November to March, hundreds of manatees congregate in the spring run to seek shelter from the cold. It’s a truly unforgettable sight to see so many of these iconic animals in one place.

Legend has it that the waters of Rainbow Springs possess magical healing powers. While the legends may not be true, a swim in the crystal-clear spring will make your heart soar.

St. Andrews State Park is the perfect place for snorkeling. Grab a mask and enter a world of underwater vistas, colorful fish and graceful rays!

Although sinkholes are common in Florida, Devil’s Millhopper is unique because it is one of the few places in Florida where more than 100 feet of geologic rock layers are exposed. The park is also unique because it is an important and beautiful example of how ecosystems develop in response to geological features. 

Gardens are places where the spontaneity of nature and the order of design balance to create living art. The gardens within Florida State Parks are some of the best treasures of the state.

Florida’s wild places are time machines to a Florida before development. Scattered throughout the state, they represent the original Florida, places of discovery and where you can reconnect with yourself.

Experience Florida as it was before interstates, high-rises and air conditioning. Florida State Parks preserve and share the story of the state and its people through many historic and cultural sites.

Florida is truly a place where land and water interweaves to form a diverse and dynamic natural fabric. Numerous rivers course through the landscape, and lakes of varying sizes can be found in all regions.

Silver Springs offers one of Florida’s premier views of clear groundwater flowing to land surface and an excellent example of the connection between rocks and water over geologic time. More than 30 springs that have been documented in the upper part of the Silver River.  These springs emerge from ancient limestone formations that frame the upper part of Floridan aquifer system, which underlies the entire state of Florida.

O’Leno State Park is one of the few places in Florida where a river disappears underground and reappears a few miles away.  Within the park, the Santa Fe River flows underground via Santa Fe River Sink, becoming part of the Floridan aquifer system. 

Rock Bluff is a steep, tall limestone bluff within Torreya State Park that has been exposed by erosional activity of the Apalachicola River.  As this large river moves across the landscape, it erodes the underlying rocks creating the broad valley it occupies, which is called a floodplain. 

Falling Waters State Park is the only place in Florida where visitors can see a 70-foot-tall waterfall!  When there is sufficient rainfall in the area, surface water flows down a small stream channel and over the rim of a large, circular depression and cascades some 70 feet before disappearing into a cave.

The Windley Key Fossil Reef Geological State Park provides a beautiful exposure of a geological unit known as the Key Largo Limestone.  Fossil corals and other ancient marine life are preserved in these rocks and record a unique part of Florida’s geologic history.

Wakulla Spring is located in a region known as the Woodville Karst Plain because the area contains numerous springs, sinkholes, and submerged cave systems formed by the dissolving of limestone over thousands to millions of years. 

One of the world's rarest and oldest known trees grows among the bluffs and ravines of Gadsden and Liberty Counties. The Florida Torreya was discovered here in around 1835 by Hardy Bryan Croom, an early botanist.