Biking (and alligator spotting!) through the beautiful Lake Louisa State Park in Clermont, FL

Coming across the Florida State Parks website was one of the best things we’ve done since arriving in Florida! We have found some beautiful destinations there that are probably considered hidden gems! When you think about taking a vacation in Florida, you probably think about escaping the snow and sitting on the ocean somewhere in the middle of winter. Right? Well, don’t discredit the state parks that Florida has to offer!

Virtual Junior Ranger

We were led to the Florida State Parks website when I read about the Virtual Junior Ranger program that they offer. Aliyah spent a few of her homeschooling days completing that program, including fire safety and wild animals, as well as learning about the different state parks that Florida has. With each activity she completed, she completed badges and learned tons. She was quite engaged through it. Find it here if you want to get your kiddo involved.

One of the components of the program was that she had to navigate around the Florida State Park website: www.floridastateparks.org and pick a few different state parks to read up on. Fast forward to today and we’ve now been to three that she researched!

Silver Springs State Park

The first one we went to was the gorgeous, breathtaking Silver Springs State Park in Ocala, FL – yes, the manatee one! Read up on our experience here. This was such a beautiful place to visit and spend a day kayaking.

Wekiwa State Park

The next state park we went to was Wekiwa. Another gorgeous destination with a big swimming spot (with a trench underwater at a natural spring) as well as hiking trails that made if feel like you were hiking through a jungle! Take a brief look at this park here:

Both of those were beautiful places that you should definitely check out if you visit central Florida. Today, though, we went to a different state park: Lake Louisa State Park.

Lake Louisa State Park

Lake Louisa State Park is one we have driven by a dozen times since arriving in Clermont almost two months ago. It was one we kept saying, “We should go there.” It is about five miles from the campground and what intrigued me was that it had paved trails to bike on. In the past two months, we have only been biking around the campground, not on any trails. We wanted a chance to go out in the open, go a little faster, and let that fresh air blow on us. And that’s what we got!

This park has walking trails, biking trails, and a paved road throughout. There were many people out biking and walking on this beautiful Florida day. Who could blame them? It was a gorgeous day, especially after the cold, wet weather we had most of the week.

A camping area

What I wasn’t aware of at this park was the camping they offered. One section had just cabins looking out over a lake (there were a few lakes in the park, but Lake Louisa was the main one). There was also a separate section which was a campground within itself. It had room for tents, popups, travel trailers, fifth-wheels, and motorhomes. However, unlike most RV parks, this state park had wooded, spacious sites. They had full hook-ups and sewer, which many state parks we’ve seen don’t have. No roughing it here if you don’t want to! We will definitely be looking into a stay here!

They also had these cool tents to stay at. However, with the alligator we saw nearby, I’m not sure I’d be into that much roughin’ it!

This park had actually paved bike trails, rather the road throughout had bike lanes on the outside that you could bike on. There was plenty of room and never did we feel like any cars going by were crowding us.

There were many different parking areas at trailheads for people to park, as well as spots for us to get out and look at the water and use the restrooms. Super convenient as many parks aren’t that well equipped.

A gator?

What did most of the signs say? Watch for gators! We see that sign everywhere and usually, we are disappointed not to come up on any. We had seen a few swimming at Silver Springs State Park, but that was it. But we weren’t disappointed today! On one of the wooden piers we walked out on, we spotted an alligator on a log in the weeds. It was cool (mostly because it was at a safe distance)!

That is enough to keep me out of the water though! Again, cool to see from a distance!

As we made our way around the park, we made it to Lake Louisa. There was quite a large parking lot there and then a short boardwalk out to the beach. It was quite beautiful and all of the warm white sand made me want to sit there all day!

We covered all of the paved trails of the park today and according to my MapMyRide app, we biked a total of 11.85 miles. If we weren’t on our Lectric bikes, we probably wouldn’t have biked the whole park, and the kids wouldn’t have hung in there either.