The Florida Department of Environmental Protection offers free admission to all state parks on Thursday, Nov. 11, in honor of Veterans Day.\n<\/p>\n
There are a number of state parks in the area that offer a variety of day-use experiences from hiking steep sandhills on the Lake Wales Ridge to walking along a boardwalk in a cypress swamp. Some also include campgrounds.\n<\/p>\n
If you happen to be in an area without a lot of urban light pollution and a clear night sky, Veterans Day also coincides with the peak time for the Taurid meteor shower.\n<\/p>\n
Area state parks include:\n<\/p>\n
Highlands Hammock State Park 5931 Hammock Road, Sebring, was constructed by the workers employed by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Depression. Facilities include a museum honoring the CCC, boardwalk, hiking trails and a campground.\n<\/p>\n
Lake Kissimmee State Park, 14248 Camp Mack Road, Lake Wales, features a 19th<\/sup> century cow camp commemorating the days of Florida’s open range, hiking trails, a marina that provides access to Lake Kissimmee and Lake Rosalie and a campground.\n<\/p>\n Colt Creek State Park, 16000 State Road 471, Lakeland, contains hiking and horseback trails, an artificial lake for fishing and kayaking and a campground.\n<\/p>\n Payne Creek Historic State Park, 888 Lake Branch Road, Bowling Green, contains hiking trail, a boat ramp and a museum.\n<\/p>\n Allen David Broussard Catfish Creek Preserve State Park, 4335 Firetower Road, Haines City contains a network of trails for hiking and horseback riding.\n<\/p>\n Lake June in Winter Scrub State Park, 630 Daffodil St., Lake Placid, contains hiking trails.\n<\/p>\n Lake Louisa State Park, 7305 U.S. 27 Clermont, contains hiking, mountain bike and equestrian trails, campgrounds, bicycle and kayak rentals and cabins.\n<\/p>\n If you visit state parks often, consider getting an annual pass. Veterans receive a 25 percent discount.\n<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Florida Department of Environmental Protection offers free admission to all state parks on Thursday, Nov. 11, in honor of Veterans Day. There are a number of state parks in the area that offer a variety of day-use experiences from hiking steep sandhills on the Lake Wales Ridge to walking along a boardwalk in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gci"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1743"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1744,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1743\/revisions\/1744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}