Rebecca Engel
Florida gets filed under beaches and theme parks, and it has plenty of both. But the state also has cold, clear springs you can float down, a coast where rockets still launch, a river of grass full of alligators, and a chain of islands that ends at a brick fort in the middle of the sea.
This Florida travel guide rounds up 21 bucket list places that are worth planning a whole trip around. They’re listed in route order, starting on the Panhandle and working down to the very end of the Keys, so you can follow the whole thing or pick the stretch that fits your time.
1. Walk The Sugar White Sand At Pensacola Beach
The Panhandle’s beaches don’t look like the rest of Florida’s. The sand is almost pure quartz, so it’s bright white and squeaks under your feet, and the water right off the shore turns a clear emerald green on a calm day.
Pensacola Beach sits on a long barrier island, and it’s the easiest place to see it. Walk out on the fishing pier for the view back along the coast, then keep going east toward the quieter stretch of Gulf Islands National Seashore, where there are no buildings at all.
It’s also a good first stop because Pensacola is where Florida starts if you’re driving in from the west. The drive to the next stop on this list is about an hour and a half.
2. Bike Scenic Highway 30A Through Seaside And Rosemary Beach
Scenic Highway 30A runs along the coast between Destin and Panama City Beach, linking a string of small beach towns that each have their own look. A paved bike path, the Timpoochee Trail, follows it for most of the way.
Seaside is the one most people recognize. Its pastel cottages and white picket fences were the setting for The Truman Show, and the town center is packed with food trucks and little shops. Rosemary Beach, farther east, feels more like a European village, with brick paths and narrow walkways between the houses.
Rent a bike, ride between two or three towns, and stop at every beach access you pass. If you’re spending more time nearby, there’s a whole post on free and cheap things to do in Destin Florida, just to the west.
3. Take The River Boat Tour At Wakulla Springs
Wakulla Springs, just south of Tallahassee, is one of the largest and deepest freshwater springs in the world. The river that flows out of it looks almost untouched, with cypress trees, hanging moss, and wildlife on every bank.
The best way to see it is the guided river boat tour, which runs about 45 minutes and leaves roughly every hour. Expect alligators sunning on logs, turtles, wading birds, and in the cooler months, manatees. Parts of Creature From The Black Lagoon were filmed here, and it still looks the part.
Book the boat ahead of time, since reservations are required. On a hot day, save time for the roped off swimming area at the spring itself, which stays cold all year.
4. Tube Down The Ichetucknee River
Floating down a spring fed river on an inner tube is about as Florida as a summer day gets, and the Ichetucknee is the classic place to do it. The water is so clear you can see every fish and every blade of eelgrass below you.
The full run from the north entrance takes a few hours and is only open for tubing from the Friday before Memorial Day through Labor Day. The rest of the year, shorter sections are still open, and paddling is allowed.
Get there early on summer weekends. The park limits how many people it lets in, and once it’s full it closes the gates, even to people with tube rentals waiting.
5. Meet The Civil War Garrison At Fort Clinch On Amelia Island
Amelia Island sits in the far northeast corner of Florida, and its northern tip is covered by Fort Clinch State Park. The brick fort there dates to the 1800s and is one of the best preserved in the country.
What makes it memorable is the people inside. Reenactors dressed as Union soldiers go about their daily routine, and on the first weekend of each month a larger garrison turns out for drills and cannon demonstrations.
The fort itself closes at 5 p.m., so go in the afternoon and then drive into Fernandina Beach for dinner. The historic downtown is small, walkable, and a lot quieter than the beach towns farther south.
6. Walk The Coquina Walls Of The Castillo De San Marcos In St. Augustine
St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the United States, and the Castillo de San Marcos is its centerpiece. The Spanish started building it in 1672, making it the oldest masonry fort in the continental US.
It’s built from coquina, a soft stone made of crushed shells, which absorbed cannonballs instead of shattering. Walk up to the gun deck for views over the bay, and check the schedule, since cannon firing demonstrations usually run on weekends.
Leave time for the old town afterward. St. George Street is touristy but fun, and the side streets around it are full of old buildings, courtyards, and quiet corners that are easy to miss.
7. Watch A Rocket Launch On The Space Coast
Florida’s Space Coast is one of the few places on Earth where you can plan a vacation around watching a rocket leave the planet. Launches from Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center happen so often now that there’s a decent chance one lands during your trip.
Check a launch schedule a few weeks out and keep an eye on it, because dates slide often. The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex sells viewing tickets for many launches, and its closest spot is only a few miles from the pad. Public parks along the water in Titusville are a popular free option too.
Even without a launch, the visitor complex is worth a full day. Standing under the Saturn V rocket and the space shuttle Atlantis gives you a sense of scale that no photo manages.
8. Paddle Through Glowing Water In The Indian River Lagoon
Just a few miles from the launch pads, the Indian River Lagoon does something that seems made up. On a dark summer night, every paddle stroke and every fish darting under your kayak lights up the water in a bright blue green glow.
The glow comes from tiny plankton, and the season usually runs from late spring into early fall, with the brightest nights in July and August. In the cooler months, glowing comb jellies take over, which is a different and softer show.
Go with a guided night tour out of Titusville or Cocoa Beach, and pick a date close to the new moon. Moonlight washes out the glow, so the darker the night, the better it gets.
9. Stay For The Fireworks At Magic Kingdom
A Florida bucket list without Walt Disney World would be a strange list. Magic Kingdom is the park most people picture, and the nighttime show over Cinderella Castle is the moment most people remember.
The current show, Happily Ever After, mixes fireworks with lasers and projections that cover the castle and run all the way down Main Street. Grab a spot on Main Street or in front of the castle at least half an hour before it starts, since the good views fill in fast.
Check the calendar before you buy tickets. On some fall and winter nights, the park closes early for separately ticketed holiday parties. If theme parks aren’t your thing, there’s also a list of things to do in Orlando Florida that aren’t theme parks.
10. Swim With Manatees In Crystal River
Crystal River, on the Gulf side north of Tampa, is one of the only places in the country where you’re allowed to get in the water with wild manatees. In winter, hundreds of them crowd into the warm springs of Kings Bay to escape the colder Gulf.
The legal way to do it is on a licensed swim tour, where you float quietly at the surface and let the manatees come to you. Touching them, chasing them, or diving down on them is against the rules, and the guides take that seriously.
Plan this one for winter, roughly November through March, when the manatees gather. Three Sisters Springs itself closes to swimming during that season to give them space, but the boardwalk there stays open and has some of the best views of them from above.
11. Watch The Live Mermaid Show At Weeki Wachee Springs
Weeki Wachee has been putting on live mermaid shows since 1947, and it’s one of the most wonderfully odd things you can see in Florida. The performers swim in a spring, breathing through air hoses, while the audience watches through glass in an underwater theater.
It’s a state park now, but it still has all its old roadside attraction charm. Shows run a few times a day, with more on weekends, and the times can change, so check before you go.
After the show, rent a kayak and paddle the Weeki Wachee River. The water is gin clear, and there’s a good chance of seeing manatees along the way.
12. Catch Sunset On Clearwater Beach
Clearwater Beach regularly shows up on lists of the best beaches in the country, and it earns it. The sand is soft and white, the water is shallow and calm, and the beach is wide enough that it rarely feels crowded.
Florida’s Gulf Coast faces west, so this is where you come for sunsets over the water. Pier 60 turns into a nightly party around sundown, with street performers, artists, and crowds gathering to watch the sun go down.
Spend the day on the sand, then walk out on the pier as the light starts to change. It’s a simple plan and one of the best evenings on this list.
13. See The Huge Canvases At The Dalí Museum In St. Petersburg
It surprises a lot of people that the largest collection of Salvador Dalí’s work outside of Spain is in St. Petersburg, Florida. The museum holds more than 2,000 pieces, from his early paintings to the giant surrealist works he’s known for.
The biggest canvases are the reason to go. Paintings like The Hallucinogenic Toreador stretch more than 13 feet tall, and they’re full of hidden images that shift the longer you look. The building itself is worth seeing too, with a glass bubble bursting out of its concrete walls and a spiral staircase inside.
The guided tours included with admission are the best way in, since so much of Dalí’s work only makes sense once someone points out what you’re looking at. Afterward, walk the St. Pete waterfront, which is only a few blocks away.
14. Sink Your Toes Into The White Sand On Siesta Key
Siesta Key’s sand is famous for a reason. It’s made almost entirely of fine quartz, so it stays cool enough to walk on even in the middle of summer and feels closer to powdered sugar than to normal beach sand.
Siesta Beach, the main public beach, is huge, with lifeguards, free parking, and calm water that’s easy for swimming. It gets busy, but it’s wide enough to find space.
Stay into the evening on a Sunday if you can. A drum circle gathers on the sand near sunset, and it’s a fun, relaxed way to end a beach day.
15. Hunt For Shells On Sanibel Island
Sanibel is known as one of the best shelling beaches in North America. The island curves east to west instead of north to south, so it catches shells that wash in from the Gulf, and some mornings the tide line is piled with them.
Go early, right after low tide, when the beaches haven’t been picked over yet. Bowman’s Beach and the beaches near the lighthouse are good places to start, and people bent over scanning the sand are so common here that the posture has its own name, the Sanibel stoop.
Only take empty shells. Collecting any shell with a live animal inside is against the law here. The island was hit hard by hurricanes in recent years, but the beaches and bike paths have reopened, and the shells never stopped coming.
16. Ride The Shark Valley Tram Through The Everglades
The Everglades is often called a river of grass, a huge, shallow, slow moving sheet of water covered in sawgrass. It’s also the only place in the world where alligators and crocodiles live side by side.
Shark Valley, on the Miami side of Everglades National Park, is the easiest place to see it. A two hour guided tram tour follows a 15 mile loop, with a naturalist pointing out wildlife and a stop at an observation tower with views across the whole landscape.
You’ll almost certainly see alligators, often right next to the road. Book the tram ahead from November through April, which is both the busy season and the best time for wildlife, since the dry weather pulls animals toward the water.
17. Walk The Art Deco District On South Beach
Miami Beach’s Art Deco Historic District holds hundreds of buildings from the 1930s and 1940s, painted in soft pastels and trimmed with neon. It’s one of the largest collections of Art Deco architecture anywhere.
Ocean Drive is the famous stretch, facing the beach and the lifeguard stands. Walk it in the late afternoon, then again after dark when the neon comes on and the whole street lights up.
For the history behind the buildings, the Miami Design Preservation League runs walking tours that start from the Art Deco Welcome Center. Then head a block over to the sand, since South Beach is right there.
18. Snorkel The Reef At John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park
The Florida Keys sit next to the only living coral barrier reef in the continental United States, and John Pennekamp in Key Largo was the country’s first undersea park. Most of it is underwater, which is exactly the point.
Snorkel tours leave from the park and head out to the reef, where the water is often clear and full of tropical fish. One of the most popular stops is Key Largo Dry Rocks, home to Christ Of The Abyss, a bronze statue standing in about 25 feet of water.
Pick a calm day if you can, since wind makes both the boat ride and the visibility worse. If you’d rather stay dry, glass bottom boat tours go out to the same reef.
19. Drive The Seven Mile Bridge On The Overseas Highway
The Overseas Highway runs more than 100 miles from the mainland to Key West, hopping from island to island over dozens of bridges. The Seven Mile Bridge near Marathon is the one everyone waits for, with nothing but blue water on both sides.
Right next to it is the old Seven Mile Bridge, part of the railroad Henry Flagler built to Key West in the early 1900s. A restored 2.2 mile section is open to people walking and biking, and it ends at tiny Pigeon Key.
Drive the new bridge, then come back and walk or bike the old one. The view from the old span, looking at cars crossing the water beside you, is one of the best in the Keys.
20. Toast The Sunset At Mallory Square In Key West
Key West is the end of the road, the southernmost city in the continental US, and it has a personality all its own. Every evening, it throws a party just to watch the sun go down.
The Sunset Celebration at Mallory Square draws a crowd to the waterfront along with street performers, musicians, and food carts. When the sun finally drops into the water, the whole square cheers.
Spend the rest of your time on foot or by bike. Duval Street, the Southernmost Point buoy, and Ernest Hemingway’s old house with its many six toed cats are all close together in the old part of town.
21. Take The Ferry To Fort Jefferson In Dry Tortugas National Park
About 70 miles past Key West, a massive brick fort sits alone on a tiny island surrounded by turquoise water. Fort Jefferson is the heart of Dry Tortugas National Park, one of the most remote national parks in the country.
The Yankee Freedom ferry leaves Key West early in the morning and takes about two and a half hours each way, with roughly four hours on the island. That’s enough time to walk the fort, snorkel along its outer walls, and eat lunch on the beach. A seaplane is the only other way out, and it costs a lot more.
Book well ahead, since the ferry sells out, especially in winter and spring. It’s a long day and not a cheap one, but it’s the kind of place that makes a whole Florida trip feel like it ended somewhere special.
How To Plan Your Trip With This Florida Travel Guide
Florida is bigger than it looks on a map. Driving every stop in order, from Pensacola to Key West, adds up to roughly 25 to 30 hours behind the wheel, so very few people do it in one trip.
The easiest way is to split it into regions. The Panhandle and the north, from Pensacola to St. Augustine, make a good week. Central Florida pairs the Space Coast, Disney, and the Gulf Coast springs. The Gulf beaches from Clearwater down to Sanibel work as their own trip, and Miami, the Everglades, and the Keys make a classic road trip by themselves.
Timing matters more for some stops than others. Manatee swims in Crystal River are a winter thing, the glowing water in the Indian River Lagoon peaks in summer, and the full Ichetucknee tubing run only opens between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Hurricane season runs from June through November, so watch the forecast if you’re traveling then.
Book the stops with limits early. The Dry Tortugas ferry, the Wakulla boat tour, rocket launch tickets, and the Shark Valley tram in winter all fill up well ahead.
Final Thoughts
Florida has a lot more range than its reputation suggests. In one state you can float a cold spring, watch a rocket launch, swim next to a manatee, ride through a swamp full of alligators, and end up on a fort in the middle of the sea.
Use this Florida travel guide to pick the region that fits your next trip, then save the rest for the one after that. Most people who start working through a Florida bucket list find it takes more than one visit.
