Hidden Spots
Hidden corners, springs, trails, and islands across the Florida nobody Instagrams.
Bahia Honda — The Best Beach in the Florida Keys (Yes, Better Than the Famous Ones)
Mile marker 37, between Marathon and Big Pine Key. A state park with two beaches that consistently get rated among the best in the U.S., a destroyed 1912 railroad bridge you can hike, and snorkel reef that's accessible from shore. Most Keys traffic drives past.
Ichetucknee Springs in Winter — When the Tubing Crowd Leaves and the Springs Open Up
From November to April the tube concession is closed and the river belongs to paddlers, divers, and exactly one manatee herd. The Blue Hole alone is reason enough to drive here from anywhere.
The Everglades Back Country — A Day Trip Most Floridians Never Take
There's the Everglades you've heard about — the airboats, the gift shop, the boardwalk with the alligator at the end. And there's the Everglades you walk into, 90 minutes from where the buses turn around. The second one is the one worth your day.
Devil's Den — Diving a Prehistoric Submerged Cave That Sits in a Pasture
It looks like a hole in a Williston cow pasture. You climb down into it on a wooden staircase. At the bottom is a 72°F freshwater dome that's been collecting fossils for ten thousand years. It is one of the strangest dive sites in the United States.
Camping at Dry Tortugas — Seventy Miles Off the Mainland, No Cell Service, Bring Water
There are ten tent sites on a small island reachable only by ferry or seaplane, surrounded by a 19th-century brick fortress and one of the most intact reef systems in the Caribbean. It's the most remote place in the continental U.S. you can sleep without backpacking. Here's how it actually works.