Beyond the Bowl: Wekiwa’s Trails and Campsites
The swimming hole is the famous acre of a 7,000-acre park. The rest — sandhill trails, Sand Lake, family campsites and canoe-in primitive spots — is where Wekiwa Springs residents actually spend their park.
1 minute read
Most visitors to Wekiwa Springs State Park see perhaps five of its 7,000 acres: the spring bowl and the grass above it. The residents of Wekiwa Springs, who live beside the park, know the other 6,995 — and they are the better half of the argument for the place.
The trail country
The park’s trails run for miles through the ecosystems the spring’s watershed needs: longleaf sandhill on the high ground, hardwood hammock along the runs, floodplain forest by the river. Hikers, trail runners and mountain bikers share a network that ranges from short loops near the spring to long routes out toward Sand Lake, the park’s fishing lake. This is Great Florida Birding and Wildlife Trail country — the birding is serious, and the black bears that occasionally close a trail are a reminder that the wilderness is not a theme.
Sleeping in it
Camping comes in the park’s several registers: a family campground with proper sites, primitive campsites for walkers, and canoe-in sites on the river for paddlers — a night on the Wekiva, a few miles and a whole world from the subdivisions. For a community whose other hubs in this magazine lead with restaurants, Wekiwa Springs’ distinction is this: its best evening out is a campsite, and its best table is a picnic bench above a 72-degree spring.
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