Did you know that there’s a place in Florida where you can visit classic underground cave with stalagmites and everything? Or that there’s a place you can literally step onto Cuban soil without doing any paperwork or even needing a passport? Or that Florida is home to the biggest herd of wild bison east of the Mississippi river?
Today we’re going to visit these and more while sharing some lesser known places around Florida that we think definitely deserve a little more love and are worth a visit.
Here’s Ten places in Florida you (probably) didn’t know existed!
Florida Caverns State Park
Hiding way up in the northern part of the Florida panhandle is what I think is our maybe coolest and most unique state park – Florida Caverns State Park.
Most people associate caves with more hilly and rocky terrain and definitely don’t expect to find a cave like this here in flat and swampy Florida. But this place really does exist!
It’s in Marriana, Florida, roughly about an hour north of Panama City Beach, and it’s not far from Interstate 10, so it’s not a bad little side trip if you’re passing through that area.
It has all of those classic cave features like stalagmites and stalactites, and all kinds of incredible features here highlighted by some really dramatic lighting. Hard to believe you’re even in Florida when you’re looking at this stuff.
The park has guided cave tours that are a lot of fun and really interesting. Tickets for that are $15 and last about an hour. We did go on this tour earlier in the year, and really did love it. I will put a link to the video review we did of these caves in the description if you want to see some more details on this place. Well worth checking it out!
Fort Jefferson / Dry Tortugas National Park
Yeah, i know. Dry Tortugas is a National Park, which isn’t exactly some secret place. It’s in the same list of places like the Grand Canyon and Yosemite that each see millions of visitors a year. And Fort Jefferson that sits out here is the largest brick structure in the western hemisphere. Not exactly subtle.
But I’m often surprised by the number of people I talk to who’ve never heard of it, and had no idea that there’s this massive fortress sitting on a remote island about 70 miles west of Key West that’s still considered part of the state of Florida.
Construction started on the fort in 1846, and it was intended to be a strategic fort to defend the Gulf of Mexico, but 16 million bricks later it was never really officially complete or ever used for that purpose.
Dry Tortugas is, not surprisingly, one of the least visited national parks in the country. It’s just really out of the way, difficult and expensive to get out here. To visit you need to either take a boat or seaplane from Key West. There are trips and tours that go out here, and a day trip excursion board a ferry will set you back at least $200. Or you can charter a private boat too. I’ll leave links in the description on how you can get here if this place is on your bucket list.
The water out here looks like the Caribbean and the snorkeling here is excellent.
Egmont Key State Park
But Fort Jefferson isn’t the only old fort sitting on a remote island you need a boat to visit. But this one is a lot more accessible for most folks. Looking for one that’s easier to reach, even if it’s a lot smaller? Egmont Key is a Florida State Park that sits right at the mouth of Tampa Bay, not far from St. Petersburg, and you can get out here by taking a Ferry from nearby Fort DeSoto park, or you can take your own boat or even kayak out here if you’re feeling extra motivated. Lot of boat and shipping traffic through here, so just keep your head on a swivel if you do decide to do that.
And one here, you’ll find the old ruins and remains of a Spanish American War fort, a still functioning lighthouse that was built in 1858, and lots of wildlife since this little island is a National Wildlife refuge. The island is home to lots of local birds and has a big population of gopher tortoise There’s some pretty good snorkeling out here too, and some great views of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge all the shipping traffic going in and out the bay. Really cool place for a day trip.
The ferry from Fort DeSoto is $45 for adults and $25 for kids.
Paynes Prairie
If you’ve ever drive on Interstate 75 near Gainesville, you might have noticed that the highway cuts right through a wide expanse of swampy prairie for a couple of miles. That’s Paynes Prarie State Park. And while the name might be familiar to some people, what most are absolutely shocked to learn is that the park is home to wild horses and even a herd of wild Bison. The horses have been here for generations, and are believed to be the descendents of horses brought here centuries ago by Spanish explorers. The Bison living here were actually reintroduced to the park in the 1970’s after some research found that Bison probably actually once lived here hundreds of years ago, and this park would be a great place for them.
You do have to have a little bit of good luck to spot them since this park is enormous, but a good spot to try your luck is from the observation tower at the visitors center.
Devils Millhopper
Another really unique natural attraction near Gainesville, Devil’s Millhopper Geological State Park is home to one of the widest and deepest dry sinkholes in the state. Sinkholes are everywhere in the state, but what makes this one special is that it’s 500 feet across that plunges 120 feet straight down over a cliff that’s a really unexpected site in Florida.
You can go down into the sinkhole on a long and winding staircase that takes you to a prehistoric setting where a miniature rainforest thrives in a microclimate down here. And further down you go, the older the rocks exposed in the walls of Devil’s Millhopper get. The rock layers at the top were exposed about 5 million years ago, while at at the bottom they’re an estimated 34 million years old. Fossils and sharks teeth are embedded all along the walls of the sinkhole too, and geologists have learned a lot about Florida’s geological history by studying this place. This place is kind of a like very, very miniaturized Florida version of the Grand Canyon.
It’s not far at all from the University of Florida campus so it’s another one on this list that may not be that widely known, but it’s easy to reach if you want to visit.
Kelly Park Rock Springs
This is the Orlando area. And this is Orlando. So is this.
But this is also Orlando. Ok, technically this is Apopka, a suburb just a short distance north of Orlando and an easy little way to escape all the theme park chaos and spend a day in natures very own lazy river tube ride.
Here you rent a tube and meander down one of the clearest, bluest natural spring fed rivers in Florida. Each trip down this lazy natural river is about 20 minutes, and takes you to a large spring fed pool where you can hang out and swim, or get out, walk your tube back up a short path and put back in for another run.
These clear springs aren’t exactly a big secret, and lots of people love to spend some hot days swimming in Florida springs, but I don’t think a lot of out of state visitors know just how easy it is to find one like this that’s so close to Orlando, where most of Florida’s visitors are going to be anyway.
Big Talbot State Park
Finding a quiet and secluded beach in Florida these days isn’t as easy as it used to be. And when you think of Florida beaches, a lot of the ones that come to mind first are the famous and busy beaches that attract lots of tourists. The ones that have bit hotels and high rises on them. Are usually overcrowded with people and can be really noisy.
The quiet and secluded beach you can have mostly to yourself still exists, you just need to know where to look. Big Talbot, up near Jacksonville is one such beach. But it also has some of the most unique beach scenery anywhere in Florida. While most of the beach is wide open and mostly free of people, one section of it called Driftwood Beach is covered in a forest of dead trees and driftwood that
have washed up on the sand. It makes this beach very unique for the state of Florida and a great spot for cool photo opportunities. Maybe you’re looking for a cool location for your garage bands album cover? I dunno, this could be the place.
USS Oriskany
Any scuba divers out there? Or maybe you’re thinking about getting certified and want to know where some of the coolest dive spots around Florida are?
There are lots of wrecks and artificial reefs to check out, but none of them can top the world’s largest artificial reef, the 44,000 ton, 888 foot aircraft carrier the USS Oriskany, that was sunk just off the coast of Pensacola after it was retired from service.
Affectionately called the Great Carrier Reef, the Orinasky’s final resting place is now in the Gulf of Mexico near Pensacola where the flight deck is at a depth of 145 feet, and the tower reaches up to a depth of 70 feet, making it accessible to recreational open water divers. The flight deck though is considered a more advanced dive. It used to be in slightly shallower water but a hurricane in 2008 pushed it just a bit deeper than it’s original spot. Little bit of a bummer since it’s now just a bit harder to reach for the average diver.
The reef is also a popular fishing spot when it doesn’t have divers on it and attracts lots of snapper, grouper, barracuda, and amberjack.
And if you’re a diver who’s interested in seeing the Great Carrier Reef in person, there are dive charters that leave out of Pensacola that can you take you there.
Hillsborough RIver Rapids
Hillsborough River State Park was one of the original six florida state parks. That number has grown to 175 parks today, but this one was chosen for one specific feature. It’s one of only two places in Florida with river rapids! The other one being a stretch of the Suwanee River at Big Shoals State Park in the northern part of the state.
Now let me manage expectations here. These aren’t going to be like raging rapids that you can take go on a rafting adventure or anything like that. The rapids are going to be more like a strong splashy current. But this is another place I put on the list because a lot of people are surprised to learn we have anywhere in Florida with even this level of rapids, and because it’s really easy to get here. This park is just off Interstate 75 near Tampa so it’s in reach of lots of people and easy to get here. This park is also really fun to explore, with lots of hiking trails and these cool suspension bridges to cross over. Good bass fishing and kayaking here too.
Jose Marti Park
Jose Marti Park is a tiny little postage stamp sized parcel of land in Tampa’s Ybor City neighborhood that serves as a memorial to Cuban hero Jose Marti. But this land is actually owned by Cuba, is considered Cuban soil, and is the one and only piece of land within the US that is considered foreign territory. Pretty crazy right! The specifics of how this land came to be owned by Cuba is a little beyond the scope of this video, and I do go into a little more detail on that in another video I did visiting here that I’ll link in the comments. But long story short, the land was donated to Pre-Castro Cuba by a group of Cuban freedom fighters who once owned the land and an old safehouse that once sat here. And now it’s a park that anybody can visit. No passport or paperwork required.
And when you’re here, and when you step through the gates here you are “technically” in the loosest sense of the word no longer in the US anymore but in Cuba. I’m not sure I would go so far as to actually tell people I was actually in Cuba or check it off my list of visited countries or whatever, but it is pretty cool little quirk of geography. .
