The Florida Trail

Personal stories from hiking our National Scenic Trail in Florida

As an acknowledged national expert on the Florida Trail, our 1,400-mile National Scenic Trail in Florida, Sandra started writing books about the trail in 2003. Since 2012, we've collaborated on a very detailed and popular guidebook to the trail, The Florida Trail Guide, which is also available as a map-based interactive app from Guthook Guides. We've also produced a comprehensive photo-rich history of the first 50 years of the Florida Trail as a full-color coffee table book.

John's first hike on the Florida Trail was when it was shiny and new, just a few years after the first section was blazed through the Ocala National Forest in 1966. As a Boy Scout, he earned his 50-mile backpacking merit badge with a hike north from Camp La No Che to Hopkins Prairie. Around the same time, Sandra was roaming Florida with her parents, who took her on hikes at Juniper Springs and White Springs. She didn't know she was on the Florida Trail, but those were her first footsteps into Florida's wilds.

Sandra's section hiking of the Florida Trail started in 1999, when she took to the woods after the loss of her younger sister to cancer. In January 2019, she took her last big hike to connect all of those footsteps end-to-end across Florida, from the edge of the Everglades to the Alabama border. Meanwhile, John has also put in serious miles towards a section hike.

While our website FloridaHikes.com contains the most comprehensive amount of information about the Florida Trail you'll find online, we wanted to also share some of our more favorite personal accounts of hiking the Florida Trail with you here.

Crossing Big Cypress

It’s Florida’s roughest, wettest, weirdest backpacking trip, best done with friends. Sandra tackled it as the final piece of her 1,110-mile section hike of the Florida Trail, end-to-end.

Florida HikesSandra Friend

Crossing the Big Cypress Swamp

John’s 2013 hike across Big Cypress to lay down a GPS track for The Florida Trail Guide (and later, FarOut) was his first experience at backpacking with wet feet.

Florida HikesJohn Keatley

Circling Central Florida on the Florida Trail

East vs. West: which is best? I hiked both as a loop, so here’s a rundown of how the two corridors of the Florida Trail compare through Central Florida - and a little trail history.

Florida HikesSandra Friend

Following Juniper Creek

On the third day of the 2013 Panhandle Trace Hike, we followed the Juniper Creek section of the Florida Trail away from the wildfires that burned to the north, experiencing beauty and absurdity along the way.

Florida HikesJohn Keatley

Hiker Trash

When the title “Hiker Trash” gets bestowed on you by friends, it’s an honor - if you love to hike. When it shows up next to your face at random on the Internet, it’s kind of funny.

Florida HikesJohn Keatley

Hiking the Cross Seminole Trail

A hike along the Cross Seminole Trail - which the Florida Trail follows - through Oviedo and Winter Springs means an introduction to suburbia in the Orlando metro.

Florida HikesJohn Keatley

Hiking the urban not-so-wilds of Central Florida

JK learns what it’s like to hike the Florida Trail through the Orlando metro, following paved bike trails past McDonalds, over Interstate 4, and yes, even encountering deer.

Florida HikesJohn Keatley

Hiking to Marsh Point

At St. Marks NWR, Marsh Point captures the essence of Florida’s Gulf coastline. But hikers are missing it because the bridges are out.

Florida HikesSandra Friend

Okeechobee Wind

Atop the Herbert Hoover Dike, looming nearly forty feet above Lake Okeechobee, you expect wind - headwinds and tailwinds - as you hike the Florida Trail. A shallow basin of 730 square miles, the lake plays with the weather.

Florida HikesSandra Friend

On the Reservation

Leaving the wilds of the Big Cypress Swamp, the trail followed an old road for most of the distance. After a right hand turn on a large main road, I followed the blazes and other

Florida HikesJohn Keatley

Prairie Reflections

Walking the wilds of Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park means hours spent in blazing sun and a landscape that makes you feel inconsequential on this earth.

Florida HikesSandra Friend

What it’s like to hike the Big O Hike

Nine days of walking around Lake Okeechobee is a unique experience that can change your life. Learn what it felt like to join the Big O Hike in these three sets of journals to the day-by-day journey.

Florida HikesSandra Friend

Still Life, with Cows

Walking the whole Florida Trail means miles on pavement where the trail follows roads. On this lonely dead-end road in Basinger, your companions are cows.

Florida HikesSandra Friend

The Other Side of Farles Prairie

What’s it like to do trail research? Here’s a typical day out on the trail for us when we’re tracking down relocations of the Florida Trail or finding new trails to add to this website.

Florida HikesSandra Friend

The Rainbow Swamp

A perfect combination of cold weather, blue skies, and winter in a North Florida cypress swamp let us happen upon two instances of rainbow swamps on a hike in the Osecola Experimental Forest. Does that make a double rainbow?

Florida HikesSandra Friend

The Spirit of Place

Walking through the most ancient of Florida’s forests, the feeling that landscape has a spirit persists, especially when contrasted with places where habitat has been permanently destroyed.

Florida HikesSandra Friend

Two sides of the Yellow River

Hiking through the Yellow River Ravines section on the Panhandle Trace Hike was a new experience for us all, as it’s a newly opened segment of trail near Milton.

Florida HikesJohn Keatley