Is there any good hiking in flat Florida? Absolutely, say the co-authors of a new statewide hiking guide that encompasses more than 1,000 Sunshine State trails.
Florida Hikes founder Sandra Friend teamed up with Central Florida-based writer Chris Stevens to craft “Hiker’s Guide to the Sunshine State,” a guidebook with footpaths from the Panhandle to the Keys. Each listing was meticulously researched, hiked and rated by the pair, who fanned out across the state and spent years exploring.
A lot has changed since the first edition came out in 2005 with around 580 hikes, Friend said. This second edition ($29.95 from University Press of Florida) has double the trails, focusing on 46 cities, towns and metros across the state with high concentrations of trails.
“There were some real surprises this time around. There are so many new public lands and new trails since I worked on the initial one. There were places I’ve never been,” she said. “Having the Florida Hikes website, now 20 years old, gave me a basis on what was worth checking into again to make sure it was still interesting.”
While Florida Hikes still serves as a trusted online resource, many outdoor enthusiasts will find a benefit from holding a paperback guide with more than 400 pages of hiking suggestions and maps divided by region. Each chapter notes recommended hikes, featured trails, pet-friendly excursions and accessible hikes, plus campgrounds in the area to utilize as base camps.
“There are so many unique hikes across the state, they are hard to compare,” Stevens said. “I do tend to like the Panhandle and South Florida. Once you get to know the difference between ecosystems and how different everything is, it’s really hard to pick favorites. Travel the whole state if you can.”
All the hikes were rated, and the lowest-ranked ones were dropped from the list, leaving a final selection curated for quality outdoor excursions. Now 20 years older than when the first edition came out, Friend gave a different kind of consideration to trails she once thought were lackluster.
“When I worked on the first book, I was very picky back then about not including places that were what I called at the time ‘driveway trails.’ These were a forest road or a two-track, things that I thought were boring,” she said. “Now that I’m older and wiser, I realize they work for people my age. They’re a lot more comfortable to hike.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, interest in going outdoors and hiking skyrocketed along with traffic on the Florida Hikes website, allowing Friend to hire contract workers like Stevens. The pair also worked together on the fifth edition of “The Florida Trail Guide.”
Friend is now turning her attention to fiction writing after publishing this book, her final hiking guide. She is passing the torch to Stevens, who is frequently joined on adventures by his wife, Chelsey, and their 2-year-old son, Torrey. Both of them appear on the cover of the guidebook.
“I’m incredibly honored and grateful to Sandra for having that faith in me and taking me under her wing to teach me the ropes and stuff with this. I was always interested in writing, but never thought it never thought I’d be here today,” Stevens said. “I think it’s an incredible resource for people, and then having the books and everything else helps get people outdoors.”
Stevens said that’s what it might take to help save wild Florida, which is increasingly threatened by the kind of sprawling development both authors saw during their research.
“What hit me hard was how much of Florida’s farmland and ranchland has been turned into subdivisions,” Friend said, with Stevens adding: “You have to get out into nature in order to appreciate it. To save these wild spaces, and to perhaps slow the development and have public appreciation for these lands, you have to get out and hike them.”
In an era when most everything is digital, Friend and Stevens take pride in doing everything without using AI or secondary sources.
“Florida Hikes is 100% researched in person by real people,” Friend said. “It has never been crowdsourced in any way.”
To order “Hiker’s Guide to the Sunshine State,” visit floridapress.org or bookshop.org. For more outdoor destinations and guides, visit floridahikes.com.
