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Places to go in Treasure Coast.

Vero Beach, Stuart, Sebastian, Hobe Sound. 5 places worth the drive in this corner of Florida.

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Jonathan Dickinson State Park Forests

Jonathan Dickinson State Park

Hobe Sound, FL · Treasure Coast

Climb the wooden tower atop Hobe Mountain, an 86-foot ancient dune that counts as the highest natural point in South Florida, and the sand pine scrub rolls out to the Atlantic in every direction. Down at the river, the Loxahatchee was Florida's first federally designated Wild and Scenic River, and you can paddle it upstream to Trapper Nelson's 1930s homestead deep in the cypress. Across 11,500 acres you get scrub jays, river-swamp boardwalks, and the Camp Murphy mountain-bike trails on old World War II Army roads.

Blowing Rocks Preserve Beaches

Blowing Rocks Preserve

Hobe Sound, FL · Treasure Coast

On the Atlantic side of Jupiter Island, the largest limestone outcropping on Florida's east coast runs jagged along the sand, a 125,000-year-old wall of coquina shot through with holes and fossil shells. When the seas run rough at high tide, waves drive up through those holes and plumes of saltwater fan fifty feet into the air, the show that earned the place its name. The Nature Conservancy has kept all 73 acres wild since 1969, so you trade beach umbrellas and condos for a hammock trail, dune grass, and a stretch of empty shore where loggerheads still come ashore to nest.

Bathtub Reef Beach Beaches

Bathtub Reef Beach

Stuart, FL · Treasure Coast

At the wild south tip of Hutchinson Island, where the road runs out near the St. Lucie Inlet, an offshore Sabellariid worm reef arcs across the shallows like a low stone wall, built grain by grain by tube-dwelling sea worms. At low tide it tames the Atlantic into a calm, clear lagoon over honeycombed reef rock, with sea oats nodding on the rebuilt dunes and more than 500 marine creatures, sea turtles among them, working the water just offshore. Come early for the solitude: rust-dark rock, a splashing reef line, and a wide empty horizon with no resort wall in sight.

Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge Beaches

Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge

Hobe Sound, FL · Treasure Coast

This is the longest unbroken stretch of wild Atlantic shoreline left in southeast Florida: more than three miles of coarse, shell-flecked sand on Jupiter Island with no condos, no shops, and no lifeguards behind it, just a wall of sea oats and scrub holding the dunes. A single small lot, a boardwalk over the dune, and the open run of beach and sky are the whole of it, and on a warm Saturday you might share all those miles with a handful of surfers and a fisherman or two. From May into October it becomes one of the busiest sea turtle nesting beaches in the Southeast, the morning sand crossed with the slow tractor-tread of loggerheads that hauled out in the dark.

Vero Beach Beaches

Vero Beach

Vero Beach, FL · Treasure Coast

This is the Treasure Coast at its most easygoing: a barrier-island beach town where Ocean Drive's low-slung shops and cafes sit a sandal's walk from the wide Atlantic sand. The 450-foot boardwalk at Humiston Beach spills families onto soft swimmable surf with lifeguards on the flags, and the dune-backed shoreline is part of one of the busiest loggerhead and green sea-turtle nesting coasts in the hemisphere. Come for the kite-flying afternoons and the gentle waves; stay for the Saturday farmers market and a slow stroll back up the strip.