Photo: Christopher Hollis / Public domain
Four miles of white Gulf sand wrap this barrier island off Dunedin, where the water runs pale green and shells pile up along the wilder north beach. Inland, the Osprey Trail winds through one of Florida's last virgin slash pine stands, with nesting ospreys overhead and gopher tortoises lumbering across the path. Catch the passenger ferry from the causeway to undeveloped Caladesi Island next door, or stay for a sunset that drops straight into the Gulf.
Curated guides that feature Honeymoon Island State Park.
26 placesFlorida's park service runs about 175 state parks, and these are the ones worth planning a trip around. Wild barrier islands and sugar-sand beaches, deep springs and dark caverns, 19th-century forts and prairies where bison still roam, from the Panhandle's emerald coast to the coral reefs of the Keys. The definitive short list, not the whole directory.
20 placesFlorida has more coastline than any state but Alaska, and it spends it well. This is the definitive run: the sugar-white quartz of the Panhandle's Emerald Coast, the shell-strewn Gulf islands you reach by boat, the surf and skyline of the Atlantic, and the impossible turquoise of the Keys. Some you drive to and park; some take a ferry and a plan. All of them earn it. The best beaches in Florida, coast to coast.
