Florida Backpacking Trips

Backpacking trips describe an overnight, or longer, stay in the wilds.

Along the Florida Trail through the Big Cypress National Preserve

Along the Florida Trail through the Big Cypress National Preserve

Florida backpacking trips are unique because Florida is unique. Think of backpacking and, for many of us, images of mountain trails and scenic vistas come to mind. The damp, wooded gentleness of the Smokies, peaks rounded with great age, and the rugged grandeur of the younger Rockies attract untold numbers of U.S. trail walkers each year.

Click here to tell us about YOUR best Florida backpacking trip.

Anyone who considers mountains to be an essential part of the backpacking mix is apt to overlook the natural beauty of Florida backpacking trips. Seeing this beauty requires a different eye--a knowing eye--which, for example, looks out from within a cypress dome and sees not a dark, ominous pond filled with creepy, crawly creatures and eerie draping moss, but the magnificence of grand old trees adorned with epiphytes, and set gracefully in obsidian-colored, life-sustaining water.

Breaking the silence now and then, a barred owl gives his familiar call, which to us southerners sounds like "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?" Or a pileated woodpecker interrupts the peace with his cheeky cry. Or a big bull gator growls and shakes nearby. The observer, oriented to Florida's beauty, is rewarded with a rich and unique outdoor experience, while the confirmed mountain hiker wonders what there is to see and just wants to get the heck out of there.

If you're not yet a Florida hiker, you're in for a real treat. If you're already a Florida hiker, attuned to this state's own brand of wild beauty, you know what I'm talking about.

In either case, FloridaAdventuring.com wants to help you make backpacking memories in the Sunshine State.

Just select a trip, and away you go.

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Ocala National Forest - Lake Delancey to Juniper Springs. Follow the best of the Florida Trail on a backpacking trip through the Ocala National Forest and the Juniper Prairie Wilderness.

Across the Big Cypress - Concho Billy Trail to Monument Lake Campground Explore cross-country and on foot this 729,000-acre federal preserve. Some of the wildest country east of the Mississippi.

Myakka River State Park Imagine the cattlemen of days gone by as you trek through this "land remembered," the Florida dry prairie.

Have a Favorite Florida Backpacking Trip to Share?

We Sunshine State ground pounders all have our favorite or most memorable Florida backpacking trip. My favorite trip of all was to wild and wooly Big Cypress. What's yours? Tell us all about it here. Aspiring minds want to know.

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