Wait! Florida does Fall?

Travel

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Florida does beaches.

Florida does palm trees.

Florida does December afternoons when your friends back home are scraping ice off the windshield while you contemplate ordering another grouper sandwich.

But fall foliage?

Apparently, Florida has been holding out on us.

Head north—particularly into the Panhandle—from late October through November and parts of the Sunshine State turn decidedly un-Florida. Sugar maples, sweetgums, hickories and sourwoods begin trading green for red, orange and gold. Florida State Parks itself recommends several of its northernmost parks for traditional autumn color, with the show typically arriving around mid-November. 

Which raises an intriguing possibility.

What if leaf season doesn’t have to end when New England’s does?

Start at Torreya

If you’re doing this once, I’d start at Torreya State Park, about an hour west of Tallahassee.

This isn’t the Florida most of us picture.

High bluffs rise over the Apalachicola River. Steep ravines cut through the forest. Hardwood trees cover terrain that can feel more like the Appalachian foothills than the famously flat Sunshine State. And those elevation changes give you something especially valuable during foliage season: actual vistas across the color. 

Then keep going.

At Three Rivers State Park, near the Georgia line, hardwoods surround Lake Seminole, where the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers converge. It’s quieter, watery and wonderfully removed—the sort of place where autumn involves a fishing pier instead of a traffic jam. 

And Florida has another autumn trick.

Bald cypress.

Along rivers and wetlands, their soft green needles turn copper and bronze before dropping for winter. See them from a kayak and suddenly “Florida fall foliage” stops sounding like a punchline. 

Florida’s Second Autumn

There’s something appealing about the timing.

By the time much of the Northeast has surrendered its leaves, North Florida can still be approaching its autumn show.

So imagine the road trip differently.

Don’t chase fall north.

Let it move south.

Pack hiking shoes instead of flip-flops. Trade Miami for Tallahassee. Find the Apalachicola River instead of the Atlantic.

And if you want to make the trip even stranger, stop at Falling Waters State Park, where Florida’s tallest waterfall drops more than 70 feet into a 100-foot-deep sinkhole before disappearing underground. Its flow depends on recent rainfall, but the landscape alone hardly resembles the Florida of postcards. 

Beaches can wait.

For a few weeks each year, Florida does something almost nobody gives it credit for.

It does fall.