First Place, Outdoor Book (First Edition, 2019. Second Edition, 2022). Florida Outdoor Writers Association
“Feature packed with easy navigation. Well supported with quality photos and maps. Essential information without unnecessary fluff. Concise and complete, truly a hiker’s friend for exploring scenic Florida on foot.” say the judges.
Discover the best of the Florida Trail with our full color guidebook, Florida Trail Hikes, which presents the top day hikes, overnighters, and section hikes along the Florida Trail.
After twenty years of exploring every nook and cranny of our statewide National Scenic Trail, we selected our picks for hikes that put the “scenic” in our National Scenic Trail.
Now published by the University Press of Florida, our third edition is open for pre-orders. Order before April 30 and use the code AU424 for a $5.95 discount off the cover price.
A full-color guidebook, it has been fully updated, with some hikes expanded and others replaced. One of several favorites we’ve added to this edition is the popular Econfina Creek section.
We provide step-by-step hiking details and maps for fifty distinct hiking destinations across Florida. Each chapter includes multiple options to extend or shrink your mileage for the hike. A handful are a few miles long, short enough for families with small children. A few are on paved surfaces suitable for wheelchairs and open to cyclists. But most of the hikes in the book are footpaths of 5 to 14 miles. They include some of the best loop hikes you’ll find along the Florida Trail. We made up a few loops of our own while researching connecting trails.
Yes, we’ve hiked every step you’ll find in this guide, along with all the rest of the miles of the Florida Trail. Most of the hikes are dog-friendly. We note when they are not. Expect a variety of habitats and scenery ranging from rocky bluffs with river rapid views to tropical forests, dunes, colorful swamps, and vast prairies.
As the longtime authors of The Florida Trail Guide, we assure you this is a very different book, a more traditional hiking guidebook with narratives and trail maps to scale. But along with fifty chapters on specific hikes, we slip in nine overviews of the most scenic Florida Trail sections, which range from 38 to 77 miles. Each overview has trip planning basics including the locations of trailheads, campsites, and the scenic highlights of each section.
Stay a While
For each region covered by the guide, we provide Base Camps. In these outdoor-friendly communities (some of them official Florida Trail Gateway Communities) we list campgrounds, hotels, motels, and B&Bs we’ve been to ourselves. We also include suggestions for great restaurants and interesting things to do other than hike, from canoe outfitters to art galleries to local museums. Plan your next road trip with your non-hiking partner with ease!
Find your Way
Our book is organized to make it easy to find hikes by their locations in Florida. Seven regions – South Florida, Central Florida, Central Florida West, Ocala Northeast, Suwannee Big Bend, Eastern Panhandle, and Western Panhandle – mirror the layout of the trail in our Florida Trail app with FarOut.
Within each region we provide an overview map that shows where the hikes in that particular region are located. Each hike then has its own map showing you how to follow the trail and what you’ll see along it. There are 179 color maps and illustrations throughout the book. Of course, directions to the trail from the nearest major road are included, as well as GPS coordinates to the trailheads mentioned for the hike.
While there is a Table of Contents, by using our index you can also find hikes by city, trail section, or region, as well as by topics of interest like backpacking, cabin camping, state parks, waterfalls, and historic sites.