The National Parklands of Florida’s Atlantic Coast
The popularity of public land in North America is undoubtedly, in no small part, thanks to the advent of our national parks. While I can’t say they were my introduction to public land, they did help reignite my love of the outdoors, and helped foster my love of public land and my passion for their protection, expansion, and stewardship. This is the introduction of a series where I am discussing my endeavor to visit every current unit of the National Park System.
When I say “national park,” I am not simply referring to the 63 current places with the title “National Park.” These “Capital NP” parks, while tremendously cool in their own right, are only a small portion of the total number of units managed by the National Park Service. Many of these protect resources with historic value, such as National Historical Sites or Parks, some are National Battlefields or National Military Parks. Others protect natural resources but have not been designated as National Parks by an act of congress. These include National Lakeshores, Seashores, Monuments, and Preserves. In total, there are 429 parks, and two years ago, I made it my goal to get to all of them. At the time of this writing, I have visited 78. I keep a collector’s edition Passport to Your National Parks, which I stamp each visit and write a small note about what I did during my visit. If you want to learn more about the National Park System and the designations thereof, you can do so here.
My Collector’s Edition Passport to Your National Parks sitting in my coffee table next to my Carlsbad Caverns National Park mug.
I should also indicate what I define as a visit. Technically, a visit can simply mean walking in, stamping your book, and leaving, but that would be a pretty underwhelming way to visit public lands. So, my definition is a little more rigorous. I define a visit as engaging in an activity that is typically associated with that park. At some small historical sites, that might simply be walking around the exhibits in the visitor center and taking a stroll around the grounds. At others, that might be hiking a trail or taking a scenic loop drive around the park. In some particularly unique parks, such as Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site in Washington, DC, that involves something out of the ordinary like watching a performance of A Christmas Carol in December, 2022. I recall a small child kicking the back of my balcony seat during the play, and I whispered to my then-girlfriend “I’d rather have John Wilkes Booth back there at this point.”
At any rate, I think this journey has been valuable for me in a lot of ways. For one, making an effort to get out and see the sites associated with the nation’s history has been a great educational opportunity for me. For two, this challenge of actually doing something at each park has been a great way for me to learn new outdoor skills. Fishing for native Brookies at Shenandoah or Cutthroats in Yellowstone was a ton of fun and I’d like to go back and do both again. Caving in Carlsbad Caverns, crawling through tight squeezes into the Hall of the White Giant sparked within me a love of caves that I never knew I had, and I’ve invested in some caving equipment and have plans to go on caving trips with some of my friends because of that experience. Since these skills I’m learning are all tangentially associated with my day job (which I won’t reveal for reasons I’ve discussed in the past), it has been well worth the effort of getting to learn them. While I don’t necessarily think parks are the end-all-be-all of what public land is all about by any stretch, I think running the gauntlet of the national parks and making a game out of it, as the Passport to Your National Parks program has done, can really help incentivize someone to go out and see places they might not otherwise visit. I can’t speak for everyone, but it has certainly made me a better and more well-rounded outdoorsman.
One of my first and still favorite trips to get out to a far-away park that I might never have visited otherwise was a trip to Florida’s Atlantic Coast in November of 2022. I was living in Virginia at the time, and I had booked my girlfriend at the time and myself a trip to Orlando to visit Universal Studios for her birthday. Since we’re both outdoorsy people, we decided to extend the trip and use a combination of Uber and rental cars to make our way up the coast afterward, stopping at parks along the way, and flying out of Jacksonville to end our trip. All-in-all, that would include five parks along the Atlantic Coast; Canaveral National Seashore, Fort Matanzas National Monument, Fort Caroline National Memorial, Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, and Timucuan Ecological and Historical Preserve.
On the first day of our trip, we arrived in Orlando and were immediately disgusted with the place. I will never go back. However, we did enjoy our outing to Universal Studios. I’m not, and never have been, a fan of Harry Potter, and I dislike JK Rowling with great intensity, but I did enjoy that portion of the park a lot. Butter Beer is pretty good, sort of like a butterscotch cream soda. Like any good American tourist, I ordered a few overpriced shots of rum to add to mine despite it being mid-day at a theme park because I was on vacation, goddamn it.
The author doing the most fun activity there is at Universal Studios.
After we left that place, we took an Uber to Edgewater and stayed there for two days. We visited Canaveral NS as well as Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, which is managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as part of their own fantastic system that protects vitally important wildlife habitat. They also have their own passport program, the Blue Goose Passport. We also took some time to swim at nearby New Smyrna Beach, which we later found out leads the nation in shark attacks. From the living room of the place we rented, I went as a guest on an episode of the sports podcast Highly Disputed, hosted weekly by my friends Dylan Bishop and Ryan Stickel.
Canaveral NS is a long stretch of coastline with the ocean on one side and Mosquito Lagoon on the other. We drove in and stopped at the visitor center, and then set out to walk the two trails in the park. The first trail was an accessible boardwalk that was built to provide an elevated view of the area, and we were treated to spectacular views all along the way. We also saw a few hundred anoles, both Green and Brown. Seriously, these things are like Florida’s squirrels. They’re everywhere.
A view from the boardwalk at Canaveral National Seashore.
After that, we hiked a second trail where we found one of the most scenic picnic spots I’ve ever been treated to, and we drove to the end of the road.
A gorgeous picnic spot at Canaveral National Seashore.
Canaveral NS has five numbered boardwalks along the sides of the road. We stopped at Boardwalk 3 and watched some Plovers and other shorebirds foraging through the sand and surf. We also watched some people surf fishing, which looked like a lot of fun, and is something I would like to get back to Florida at some point and do myself. After about 20 minutes of walking along the beach and the boardwalk, we went back to the car and continued driving. When we got to Boardwalk 4, we saw a sign that read, in large letters, “WARNING: YOU MAY ENCOUNTER NUDE SUNBATHERS AT BOARDWALK 5.”
“Oh no.” we both said, but we continued driving because we wanted to get to the end of the road, and we can’t say we weren’t warned. Besides, I believe deeply in personal freedom, and overall, I think it’s great that people have that option if that’s what they want to do even if it’s not my cup of tea, personally. We just decided we wouldn’t look when we got there. We pretty much forgot about that warning right away when we saw a pair of Gopher Tortoises grazing along the side of the road. Those little guys are everywhere down there, and as a herpetologist whose primary research focus has been on turtles, it was awesome to experience.
I had the benefit of needing to focus on the road as we passed Boardwalk 5, so my eyes were spared. Piper, however, was not so lucky. As her need to look around at the scenery in that moment got the best of her eyes, so did a pair of elderly jugs.
The lesson taken from this? If you go to a park and see a warning, either heed that warning or prepare to face dire consequences. However, it is a hilarious memory that we still bring up to this day, and just goes to show that you really have no way of knowing what you’ll encounter at a park until you go. Overall, Canaveral was an awesome place that remains one of my favorite parks I’ve ever visited to date. I can’t recommend a visit enough.
At Merritt Island NWR, we were treated to an absolutely delightful experience that truly capped off this part of the trip. Within only a few minutes of our arrival, we saw a hawk swoop down and snag a Pygmy Rattlesnake off the road right in front of our car. I wish we had been able to get a video of it, but I was driving and neither of us could have ever expected that to happen. We also saw tons more Gopher Tortoises, an armadillo, a few Scrub Jays, and some hogs from a distance. There’s also a manatee observation deck, which was easily the best part of the entire experience. There is a video on my TikTok account of that spot.
Sunset at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.
After that incredible two-day experience, we took an Uber up the coast to St. Augustine. While this sounded like a good idea on paper, it backfired when I realized I now had to carry my bag full of four days’ worth of supplies on my back around all day because I had no hotel room to keep it in. Nevertheless, we had a lot of fun; we walked the grounds of Fort Matanzas NM, and saw the Fort from a distance. We unfortunately were not going to be able to make the ferry ride out to see it up close because there wasn’t one that worked with our schedule, but we made sure to walk the nature trail, which was gorgeous. We also saw a bobcat while we sat under huge live oaks in the parking lot while we waited on our next Uber ride. After that, we toured through a 17th century fort at Castillo de San Marcos NM. I looked very strange carrying my giant bag around the fort, but I didn’t care as long as we were enjoying ourselves. We listened to one of the rangers giving a program on the deep history of the fort as we looked out over the water from the top. Once we’d walked around the whole fort and read through each exhibit, we called one last Uber to take us to our last destination: Jacksonville.
Castillo de San Marcos National Monument
Once we arrived in Jacksonville, we got a rental car and made our way to Timucuan Ecological and Historical Preserve, which is a weird designation, but the park is considered to be one of the 19 National Preserves. Within Timucuan is a separate NPS unit, Fort Caroline National Memorial. It’s a pretty unique memorial, it preserves and interprets the near-forgotten French attempt to establish a permanent colony in Florida. It didn’t go well for them, as most of them ended up being executed by the Spanish at Fort Matanzas (Matanzas is Spanish for Slaughter). While we were there, we also saw a weird shirtless guy doing pushups in the fort while his wife filmed. No clue what that was about.
We decided to leave at that point, and we went to the Theodore Roosevelt Area of the preserve and went for a hike through a gorgeous hardwood forest decorated with Spanish Moss. We hiked to an observation tower and climbed to the top, which gave us a stunning view of the wetlands around us. Along the way, we used Seek and iNaturalist to identify and read about the various plants we were seeing along the way. This is a great habit to get into, as this knowledge can often prove useful later down the line, especially if you are pursuing a career in the outdoors.
The Theodore Roosevelt Area of Timucuan Ecological and Historical Preserve.
We finished our hike and got back to the car, then drove to the airport, where we departed for home. After five days, we were exhausted, but very happy with our trip. It was a great way to make this not just a vacation, but also a learning experience for both of us, as well as a retreat into nature. Obviously, we didn’t do everything there was to do, but we had a great time and added fuel to the fire of our love for all things outdoors. Our fee dollars for accessing these public lands will help pay for the resources needed to preserve them for our children and grandchildren to enjoy, and will go toward protecting vital wildlife habitat and historical sites alike. So, if you’ve got a day off coming up soon, get out and go to a park somewhere. Spend some time being active in the outdoors. Even if you’re not doing the type of activity you might normally do like hunting, fishing, kayaking, or rock climbing, getting out and being active will get you into better shape and will, over time, make you a better outdoorsman or woman. Enjoy your time out there, and take advantage of the public lands that we all own.
