When you think of a Florida vacation, lounging on a white sand beach or visiting the Most Magical Place on Earth (aka Disney World) probably comes to mind. Many probably over look southern Florida or only stay within the city limits of Miami or Key West, but the region is home to three US National Parks!

Visiting all three Florida National Parks in one trip like we did will take you to remote places, through fascinating underwater biospheres and you’re guaranteed to see an abundance of wildlife. Planning a multi-park itinerary across these distinct subtropical ecosystems requires a little bit of research and advance booking, but it’s totally doable!

Here’s how we visited Dry Tortugas, Everglades and Biscayne National Park in one trip!

Dry Tortugas National Park

Dry Tortugas National Park is one of the most remote National Parks in the United States. Located 70 miles off the coast of Key West, Florida and just 20 miles from Cuba, this park can be challenging to visit! It’s also one of the least visited parks and has a daily cap of how many people can be on the island at once.

There are a few options to get to the park. The most cost effective (and the one we chose) is the Yankee Freedom Ferry. Your round trip fare includes breakfast (bagel, cereal, fruit), lunch (sandwiches from Jersey Mike’s) and admission to the park. Fares are $220 per person and the boat ride does take about 2 1/2 hours one way.

Some other options for getting to the park include chartering a seaplane (very expensive) or arriving by private boat. You can also camp on the island, but be mindful that you will have to bring everything yourself and there’s no running water on the island so it will take quite a bit of preparation for that.

You’ll get about four hours on the island once you arrive! I started my time with a little self exploration of the fort, which I definitely recommend doing. I especially enjoyed walking along the top of Fort Jefferson because it gives you an amazing view of the islands and you can also watch the seaplanes bringing people to the park.

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After lunch, I spent the rest of the time snorkeling along the moat wall. There you’ll find all kinds of fish, maybe a sea turtle and other marine life! You can bring your own snorkel gear, but they do provide it on the island so I’d suggest packing light unless you really want to use your own gear.

Biscayne National Park

A short drive from Miami, Biscayne National Park is 95% underwater! While the park is free to enter, if you don’t pre-book your tours and excursions, there won’t be much to see beyond the short trail at the visitor’s center. We spent about a day and a half here and stayed in Homestead, which is a great base location for exploring this park as well as the Everglades.

Our first day, we did a half day snorkel tour which took us out on the bay and to a few neat spots were we could snorkel near the mangroves. It was a little windy that day, so we weren’t able to go out to the reef, which was a bummer since the reef here is the third largest living coral reef system in the world. I can only imagine the fish and sea life we could see there!

Along the mangroves, we got to see spiny lobsters, a wide variety of fish, a sea cucumber and some huge shells with creatures in them. Someone in our boat said they saw a nurse shark as well. The snorkel tour did not include your own gear, so you could rent that or bring your own. There are a variety of tour types, but our excursion cost $115/person.

We went on a kayak adventure our second day in the park! This was the first time I had ever kayaked that I can remember and it took time to figure out the rhythm to get going in the water, but once I finally figured it out, it was a really enjoyable experience. Our guide took us to a few spots and talked about the ecology of the mangroves, then gave us some time on our own to go explore. The water is very shallow, so it’s pretty easy to get around the area of the bay and the kayaks leave right from the visitor’s center, so you don’t have to travel far for this experience.

Most people shared a kayak, but we had a few groups (including ours) with an odd number of people, so I got my own. I kind of preferred that because I could go at my own pace, take photos along the way and didn’t have to try to figure out how to paddle in tandem with another person. Kayaking the mangroves cost $39/person and lasted about two hours.

Everglades National Park

After our kayak experience at Biscayne, we had the whole afternoon to explore Everglades National Park. We had been to this park before, but since it was so close, we decided to go back and spend the rest of the day there. This trip, our wildlife encounters were much different!

The Anhinga Trail was packed with alligators when we were there in 2014, however this time we saw none. We made it our first and last stop at this end of the park and I hoped by evening time they would start coming out, but all we were able to spot were lots of birds, some insects, a snake and a few turtles in the water.

The mosquitos were getting pretty bad by this point, so make sure you pack your bug spray!

We continued on to Flamingo Point, where we were met with a fun surprise: a large group of manatees in the marina.

This was the first time I had seen manatees in the wild and it was such a wonderful thing to watch them playing in the water and just having a great time. They’re very social creatures and I’ve heard they will often come right up to people who are out swimming. What a fun experience.

Since the Everglades National Park does span so much acreage, we were not able to visit any of the other sides of the park so if you are re-creating this trip, I would suggest spending another couple days and possibly staying closer to Miami, then continuing on to see Big Cypress National Reserve and the part of the Everglades that’s near Marco Island on the Gulf side.

We traveled to the parks in early June of 2026. During our previous trip in March of 2014, we had booked a trip to Dry Tortugas and the weather was just too windy. I recommend trying May or June when the weather is calmer!

I hope this has been helpful when you go to plan your Florida National Parks vacation! Be sure to check out my vlog from Key West and Dry Tortugas and subscribe to my YouTube channel for more vlogs that are coming soon from this trip!