The 57 mile free demo section follows the Florida Trail along the Eastern side of Lake Okeechobee.

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Full Florida Trail in one convenient purchase. This is a 30% savings over buying the sections separately.

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At the southern terminus of the Florida Trail, experience America’s answer to the Amazon. You slosh through the middle of the sawgrass savannas and cypress strands of Big Cypress National Preserve. This wild, wet wilderness cradles pockets of rainforest-like beauty amid open prairies and haunting wizened cypress. As a result this is the most remote and difficult portion of the Florida Trail. This seasonal section takes some swamp walking savvy. Once on dry land, your feet will take a pounding. More than any other part of Florida, South Florida has been radically reshaped by human activity.  The Everglades were drained more than a century ago for agriculture. The trail passes through the sovereign nation of the Big Cypress Seminole Reservation alongside its roads. It then continues up a series of levees feeding agricultural interests all the way to Lake Okeechobee.

Lake Okeechobee is the second largest lake entirely inside the United States. It provides a sense of perspective to your hike, no matter whether you choose to hike east or west around it. The Florida Trail circles it atop a 35-foot-tall dike built before our lifetimes. The tall dike is there to protect the lake communities from its angry spillover during hurricanes. Overlooking the cradle of sugar cane farming and ranching in South Florida, its views are worth savoring in all directions.

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The Ocean to Lake Hiking Trail is one of the more beautiful and difficult backpacking routes in South Florida. The trail is a surprising introduction to wild spaces that you wouldn’t expect on this heavily populated coast. The spur trail was created and maintained by the Loxahatchee Chapter of the Florida Trail Association. It is routed through the North Everglades Natural Area, public lands between Lake Okeechobee and Hobe Sound Beach. It touches agricultural lands at its western extent, and an upscale beach community along the Atlantic Ocean. The trail also passes a well-groomed county park near Jupiter. But along the rest of the hike, roaming across vast prairies, climbing giant dunes, and wading through cypress strands. It’s hard to imagine over a million people live in the West Palm Beach metro nearby.

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The Central Florida part of the trail is defined by the floodplain of two major rivers. The rivers are the south-flowing Kissimmee and the north-flowing St. Johns. The Central Florida section crosses the heart of cattle country, traversing public lands where free-range cattle roam. Along the Kissimmee River basin, vast prairies and pastures stretch out for miles beyond the more intimate palm and oak hammocks along the ancient shoreline. This is Florida’s big sky country where stargazing is ideal. Especially in the backcountry of Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park and Three Lakes WMA. The trail crosses a private conservancy and ranch, Forever Florida. Then meets the dark swamps of Bull Creek WMA atop a legacy of historic railroad causeways. A 30-mile gap in the trail through vast Deseret Ranch is bridged by a roadwalk to Tosohatchee WMA. The region’s most botanically diverse preserve.

St. Johns River

The trail zigzags through a maze of palm hammocks along the St. Johns River basin. Then makes its way to the bluffs of the scenic Econlockhatchee River before it hits a wall of suburbia in the Orlando metro. Here, hikers follow the only protected corridor of public land. The trail follows the paved Cross Seminole Trail and Seminole Wekiva Trail. This is near well-established suburbs and brand-new urban development. Reaching the Wekiva River, it’s time to take to the woods again, here in bear country. It’s an enjoyable immersion in pine flatwoods, scrub, and hardwood forests along a sweep of public lands connecting to the Ocala National Forest.

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With its oldest segments built throughout Withlacoochee State Forest in the 1970s, the Western Corridor of the Florida Trail is one of two options for circling around the Orlando metro area. For a thru-hiker, connecting northbound to it takes a significant investment in walking along bike paths, sidewalks, and road shoulders for nearly 70 miles. For day hikers and backpackers, there is plenty to explore without ever setting foot on pavement. Loop hikes abound in the Green Swamp, Richloam, Croom, and Citrus sections, including Florida’s longest backpacking loop on a single piece of public land, 39 miles on the rugged Citrus Hiking Trail. The Florida Trail roughly follows the northerly flow of the Withlacoochee River, which rises from the Green Swamp, on its journey towards the Gulf of Mexico. Whenever it parts ways with the river, the land is rolling hills, high and dry and topped with pines.

St. Johns River

In the riverside community of Dunnellon, the trail leaves the Withlacoochee’s side for the final time. It makes a diagonal across the Ocala Ridge along a mile-wide swath of forests and fields called the Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway, a permanently protected landscape that was once slated to be a cross-Florida canal. Reaching the swamp forests of the St. Johns River basin at Marshall Swamp, it parallels the Ocklawaha River northward for a stretch into the western side of the Ocala National Forest. A final segment of footpath bridges swamp forests with scrub forests as the Florida Trail leads hikers to the east-west junction at the top of the loop around Central Florida, not far from The 88 Store, a popular backwoods watering hole.

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The oldest section of the Florida Trail, this sweep of trail between the Ocala National Forest and the Osceola National Forest was the first to be completed and the first to be traversed by backpackers in the 1970s. It began in October 1966, when the initial blazes were painted near Clearwater Lake, an act commemorated by a state historic marker at the south end of this section. The Ocala National Forest protects the world’s largest contiguous sand pine scrub forest, which remains high and dry when other portions of the Florida Trail are soggy. Offering 72 unbroken miles of well-worn footpath through sandhills, prairies, pine flatwoods, and the Big Scrub, the Ocala is a compelling backpacking destination.

Ocala National Forest

As the Florida Trail curves its way from the Ocala National Forest, it touches on centuries of Florida’s history. You can see British colonial period atop the dikes at Rice Creek. And the Civil War cannons through the pine forests at Olustee. The trail connects an array of public lands. The trail continues on with walks on backroads and a stroll down a former rail line. Now the Palatka-Lake Butler Trail, it’s an introduction to a different pace of life.

Some of the trail’s day hike gems are found here. This includes the loop around an ancient floodplain forest at Rice Creek Conservation Area; the bluffs above Etoniah Ravine, which drop more than 40 feet to the creek in Etoniah Creek State Forest; and the rolling sandhills that cradle crystal-clear lakes at Gold Head Branch State Park and Camp Blanding. In Osceola National Forest, it’s always on the soggy side, but the bogs are rich with colorful wildflowers.

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Containing three of the Florida Trail’s most scenic destinations – the Suwannee River, Aucilla Sinks, and St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge – this region sweeps west from Lake City to south of Tallahassee. Hugging the rugged bluffs of the Suwannee River, the first half of this section is a delightful mix of challenging terrain with river views and outstanding geological wonders: deep sinkholes, hundreds of springs, stretches of rapids, and several serious-sized waterfalls. When water levels are low, it’s possible to camp on the river’s white sand beaches. A big gap lies between beauty spots with the loss of a long-standing route through private timberlands; thru-hikers must follow a 48.4 mile roadwalk to connect the Suwannee and Aucilla Rivers.

Like the Suwannee, the Aucilla River has high rocky bluffs topped with dense forests, and even a stretch of showy rapids. However, this river vanishes underground, and the trail traces its route along the surface around jagged rocky sinkholes, crossing numerous natural bridges. At St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, the Florida Trail reaches Florida’s coastline. In the Big Bend, beaches are rare; marshes stretch as far as the eye can see out to the Gulf of Mexico. Traversing coastal forests and levees for more than 40 miles, the trail offers the rare opportunity to backpack across a National Wildlife Refuge with designated camping and a river that must be crossed by hailing a boat.

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In the Apalachicola National Forest, the Florida Trail traverses some of the wettest, wildest swamp forests in Florida, including the legendary Bradwell Bay.  Known for its botanical beauty, particularly for its pitcher plant bogs and terrestrial orchids, the Apalachicola is often soggy underfoot, alternating between pine flatwoods, sandhills, and swamps, with the Sopchoppy River bluffs a dry counterpoint of unusual geology. Until the late 1970s, when the first thru-hikers decided to push it farther, the Florida Trail ended at Camel Lake.

As it heads west into the Central Time Zone, the trail is a patchwork of beauty spots sewn together with rural roadwalk connectors. Among the shorter stretches are the paved Blountstown Greenway, which walks right through railroad history in this river community, and the Altha Trail, leading to the Look & Tremble Rapids of the Chipola River. North of Panama City Beach along one of our favorite overnighters, Econfina Creek, the Florida Trail begins to take on a different tone, with steep climbs, high bluffs, sidehill, and colorful springs. In Pine Log State Forest, it hugs close to creek drainages and cypress-lined lakes along the Choctawhatchee River basin. On the west side of this mighty river, a conservation easement through Nokuse Plantation leads hikers into stands of tall longleaf pine, deeply carved ravines, and haunting gum swamps along a footpath stretching 28 miles.

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Standing in the middle of an ancient magnolia-beech forest, you wonder how it survived the passage of time. Thank Theodore Roosevelt, who in 1909 created Choctawhatchee National Forest. While the national forest evaporated with the onset of World War II, the forests that weren’t of commercial use were spared in the conversion to Eglin Air Force Base. The Florida Trail traverses deeply folded terrain as it stays close to the northern edge of this military reservation’s borders, providing one of the most challenging and satisfying sections of the trail for backpackers, including the trail’s steepest climbs and highest elevations.

On the western side of Crestview, the Yellow River Ravines offer a rugged trek through steepheads and bayheads on the north side of this wild river. One final section inside Eglin Air Force Base meanders through sandhills and steepheads around Weaver Creek to East Bay. Following sidewalks and a causeway to Santa Rosa Island, the Seashore section – the final 30 miles of the Florida Trail, or your starting miles if headed southbound – offer salt breezes, sunshine, and a walk on the beaches of Gulf Islands National Seashore, with one designated opportunity to camp in the dunes before trail’s end at Fort Pickens, the northern terminus.

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An official connector to the Florida National Scenic Trail, the Blackwater section takes a blue-blazed branch of the Florida Trail up to the Alabama State Line. It links up with the Alabama Hiking Trail – also part of the greater Eastern Continental Trail – which in turn leads to the Pinhoti Trail and the Appalachian Trail. Traversing Florida’s largest state forest, 190,000 acres of pine flatwoods and clayhills along the scenic Blackwater River and its tributaries, this beautiful section of the trail walks you through Atlantic white cedar swamps and hills topped with longleaf pine forests, pitcher plant bogs, and along the scenic shorelines of the river and its tributaries.

Partly established along the route Andrew Jackson took when leading a military raid on Spanish-held Pensacola in 1818, the Florida Trail utilizes parts of three hiking trails to reach Alabama: the Juniper Creek Trail, the Jackson Red Ground Trail, and the Wiregrass Trail. Two trail shelters, a relative rarity along the Florida Trail, are among the many locations where backpackers can camp for the night.

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