Favorite Places to Explore Nature in Pensacola, Florida

Today’s guest post is part of the “Favorite Places to Explore Nature” series and comes from family travel blogger, Jennifer of Two Kids and a Map. I always enjoy reading what she & her kids are up to and am excited she’s sharing her favorite places to explore nearby nature.

Pensacola, Florida has so many different kinds of places to enjoy and explore nature – from the beaches to the farms. We love to visit the hiking trails and beaches, and explore parks.

Best Place to See Carnivorous Plants
The Yellow Marsh Preserve State Park is home to thousands of carnivorous pitcher plants. The pitcher plant “eats” insects that crawl into its long tube-like flower (which looks like a pitcher, hence the name!). They can be found in many parts of Florida, but the largest concentration of pitcher plants is in Northwest Florida.

If you go, you’ll be mucking around in the overgrown grass, so be sure to wear tennis shoes. The walk to the pitcher plants is very easy so just about any child can enjoy. If you want a longer walk, explore Tarkiln Bayou State Park. This walk is a paved, 1-mile loop where you can also look for the pitcher plant.

Best Place to Look for Ghost Crabs
Ft. Pickens is part of the Gulf Islands National Seashore. You can explore the fort, which helped defend Pensacola Bay and the naval yard. It was finished in the 1830s and was used until the 1940s.

There are miles of seashore to explore as well. Around dusk and through the night, these ghost crabs come out and scurry across the streets and sand dunes. If you are patient and keep your eyes peeled, you will see more of them than you can count!

Best Place to Help Endangered and Rescued Wildlife
The Wildlife Sanctuary of Northwest Florida is a refuge for injured animals. They protect them, nurse them back to health, and if deemed ready, release them back into the wild.

There are baby raccoons, bald eagles, owls, brown pelicans and much more. The sanctuary is open for tours and the cost varies depending on group size. If your tour is free, bring something to donate. Our favorite donation is peanut butter. My kids love the fact that they like peanut butter and the animals do, too!

Best Place for a Nature Walk
My kids are still on the young side, so when we look for a nature walk, we like to find one that has lots of nature to see and not a lot of walking! We are starting to venture further along the trails, but our favorite nature walk is the Edward Ball Nature Trail, located on the University of West Florida campus.

It is a short loop on a boardwalk that travels over water and through wooded areas. You will almost always spy turtles and supposedly there is an alligator or two living in the area. We haven’t seen the alligator since I was in college (way before my kids came along), but we always hunt for it.

Best Place to Pick Blueberries
One of our favorite outdoor summer activities is to pick blueberries. We usually go three or four times a season and I just hope that the power won’t go out on my freezer once it is stocked!

A & N Blueberry Farm is our favorite local farm. The blueberry bushes are huge and the juicy, plump blueberries are within reach of little hands. I usually find my daughter hiding in the bushes with a fistful of blueberries!

Best Place to Play
Pensacola has so many parks that it is hard to choose one to visit. Bayview Park is one of the parks that we frequent the most often. Bayview Park has lots of playground equipment that will keep the kids busy for hours, tons of trees for shady picnics, a view of the water and sidewalks for bike rides.

Jennifer Close loves to explore and take new adventures with her family down the street, across the country and around the world. She writes about her adventures on her family travel blog, Two Kids and a Map, and about exploring Pensacola at Pensacola with Kids.