did you know there's a place in Florida where you can visit a classic underground cave with stalagmites and everything or that there's a place where you can literally step onto Cuban soil without doing any paperwork or even needing a passport or that Florida is home to the biggest herd of wild bison east of the Mississippi River today we're going to visit all these and more while sharing some lesser known places around Florida that we think definitely deserve a little bit more love and are worth a visit here's 10 places in Florida that you probably didn't know existed hiding way up the northern part of the Florida Panhandle is what I think might be the coolest and most unique State Park in Florida Florida Caverns State Park most people probably associate caves with more Rocky and hilly terrain and definitely don't expect to find a cave like this here in flat and swampy Florida but this place really does exist I promise I've been here I can vouch for it it's in Mariana Florida that's roughly about an hour north of Panama City Beach and it's it's not too far off of Interstate 10 so it's not a bad little side trip if you're passing through this area and looking for something kind of cool and interesting to do while you're on a road trip it has all those classic cave features like stag mites and stag tights and all kinds of incredible features that are highlighted by some really dramatic lighting it's hard to believe you're even in Florida when you're down here looking at this stuff the park does have guided cave tours that are a lot of fun and really interesting tickets for that are 15 bucks and last about an hour I think that's a really good deal honestly we did go on this tour earlier in the year and really did love it we did a whole video review of our visit here and I'll put a link to that in the description here if you want to see some more details on this place well worth checking these caves out I really think this is a really good spot well worth visiting next we're going to go from the Panhandle all the way down to the very Tippy tip of the Florida Keys to Fort Jefferson and dry taruga National Park and yeah I know Dry Tortugas is a national park which isn't exactly some secret place it's in the same list of places like Grand Canyon and yose that each see millions of visitors a year and Fort Jefferson that sits out here is the largest brick structure in the Western Hemisphere so yeah not exactly subtle but I am often surprised by the number of people I talked to who've never even heard of it and had no idea there was this massive Fortress sitting on a remote island about 70 Mi west of Key West that's still considered part of the State of Florida construction started on this fort back in 1846 and it was intended to be a strategic Fort to defend the Gulf of Mexico but 16 million bricks later it was really never even officially completed or ever used for that purpose it was used as a prison during the Civil War for a little bit but other than that this place really never got used as a defense Fort Dry Tortugas is not surprisingly one of the least visited national parks in the country it's just really out of the way it's a pain and expensive to get out here to visit you need to either take a boat or sea plane from Key West there are trips and tours that do go out here and a day trip Excursion on board a ferry will set you back at least 200 bucks or you can Charter a private boat too I'll leave links in the description on how you get here if this place is on your bucket list the water out here looks like the Caribbean and the snorkeling here is excellent next we're going to head from the National Park to another state park eggot Key State Park now Fort Jefferson isn't the only Old Fort sitting on a remote island that you need a boat to visit but this one is a lot more accessible for most folks and it's a lot easier to reach so if you're looking for one that's easier to reach even if it's a lot smaller eggmon key is a Florida State Park that sits right at the mouth of Tampa Bay not far from St Petersburg and you can get out here by taking a ferry from nearby Fort doto Park or you can take your own boat or even kayak out here if you're feeling extra motivated a lot of boat and shipping traffic through here though so just keep your head on a swivel if you do decide to do that and once out here you'll find the old room ruins and remains of a Spanish American war for a still functioning Lighthouse that was built way back in 1858 and lots of wildlife since this little island is a National Wildlife Refuge the island is home to lots of local birds and has a big population of gopher tortoises there's some pretty good snorkeling out here too and some great views of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and all the shipping traffic and cruise ships that are going in and out of the bay really cool place for a day trip the ferry from Fort tooto is $45 for adults and $25 for kids if you've ever driven on Interstate 75 near Gainesville you might have noticed that the highway Cuts right through a wide expanse of Swampy Prairie for a couple of miles that's Payne's Prairie State Park and while the name might be familiar to some people what most people are absolutely shocked to learn is that this park is home to wild horses and even a herd of wild bison the horses have been here for generations and are believed to be descendants of horses that were brought here centuries ago by Spanish explorers but the Bison living here were actually reintroduced to the park in the 1970s after some research found that bison probably actually once lived here hundreds of years ago and this park would be a great place for them to live to spot them you do have to have a little bit of good luck because this park is enormous but a great spot to try your luck is from the observation tower at The Visitor Center during our visit here we did spot them we could see the Bison up there roaming around in the Prairie it was really really cool to see something like that when you really would only expect to see something like that way out west another really unique natural attraction near Gainesville Devil's mil Hopper geological state park is home to one of the widest and deepest sink holes in the state sink holes are unfortunately everywhere in the state but what makes this one special is that it's 500 ft across that plunges 120 ft down over a cliff and that's a really unexpected site here in Florida you can go down into the S Cole and a long and winding staircase where a miniature rainforest thrives in kind of a microclimate down here and the further down you go the older the exposed rocks in the walls of Devil's Mill Hopper get the rock layers at the top were exposed about 5 million years ago while the rocks at the bottom are an estimated 34 million years old fossils and sharks teeth are embedded all along the walls of the sinkhole too and geologists have learned a lot about Florida's geological history by studying this place this place is kind of like a very very very miniaturized Florida version of the Grand Canyon and it's not too far at all from the University of Florida campus so this is another one of those places on this list that may not be that widely known but it's easy to reach if you want to go visit so this is Orlando and this is Orlando and so is this but this is also Orlando okay technically this is a popka a suburb just a short distance north of Orlando and it's an easy little way to escape all the theme park chaos and spend a day in Nature's very own Lazy River tube ride here at Rock Springs you can rent a tube and Meander down one of the clearest bluest natural Springfed rivers in Florida each trip down this natural lazy river is about 20 minutes and takes you to a large spring-fed pool where you can hang out and swim or you can get out walk and two back up a short path and put in for another run these Florida Clear Springs aren't exactly a big secret and a lot of people love to spend some hot days swimming in these Florida Springs but I don't think a lot of our out ofate visitors know just how easy it is to find one like this so close to Orlando where most of Florida's visitors are going to be anyway so maybe if you're coming out here and you want to spend a day at something that's kind of an alternative to a water park check out Rock Springs this is a really great spot and very popular with locals finding a quiet and secluded beach in Florida these days isn't quite as easy as it used to be and when you think of Florida beaches a lot of the ones that come to mind first are the famous and busy beaches that that attract a lot of tourists the ones that have the big hotels and highrises on them and are usually overcrowded with people and can be really noisy sometimes you don't want that you want that peace and quiet day at the beach that quiet and secluded beach that you can have mostly to yourself still exists you just need to know where to look big talit up near Jacksonville is one such Beach but it also has some of the most unique beach scenery anywhere in Florida While most of the beach is wide open and mostly free of people most of the time one section of it called Boneyard Beach is covered in a forest of dead trees and Driftwood that have washed up on the sand it makes this beach very unique for the State of Florida and a great spot for cool photo opportunities hey maybe you're looking for a cool location for your garage bands album cover I don't know this could be the place I just think this is a very unique beach with a lot of unique scenery that isn't very common in Florida so put this on the list big talit State Park up near Jacksonville do we have any Scuba divers out there or maybe you're thinking about getting certified and just want to know where some of the coolest dive spots around Florida are first there are lots of recks and artificial reefs to check out but none of them can top the world's largest artificial Reef the 44,000 ton 888t aircraft carrier the USS ariskin that was sunk just off the coast of Pensacola after it was retired from service in 2006 anything that could be considered toxic to the environment or dangerous to divers was removed from the ship then explosives were used to sink the mighty aircraft carrier to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico divers affectionately call this the great carrier reef and the riskin's final resting place is now in the Gulf of Mexico near Pensacola where the flight deck is at a depth of 145 ft and the tower reaches up to a depth of 70 ft making it accessible to recreational Open Water divers the flight deck though is considered a more advanced dive it used to be in slightly shallower wall water but a hurricane in 2008 pushed it just a bit deeper than its original spot that's a bit of a bummer since it's now just a little bit harder to reach for the average diver but definitely this is something that's going to be on a lot of divers bucket lists the reef is also a popular spot when it doesn't have divers on it and it attracts lots of Snapper grouper Barracuda and amberjack and if you're a diver who's interested in seeing the great carrier Reef in person there are lots of Dive Charters that leave out of Pensacola that can take you right there Hillsboro River State Park was one of the original six Florida state parks that number has grown to 175 Parks today but this one was chosen for one specific feature it's one of only two places in Florida with River Rapids the other one being a stretch of the Swani River at Big shol State Park in the northern part of the state now let me manage expectations here these aren't going to be like raging River Rapids that you can take a rafting Adventure on or anything like that the Rapids are going to be more like a strong splashy current but this is another place I put on the list because a lot of people are surprised to learn that we have Rapids anywhere in Florida and because it's really easy to get here this park is just off of Interstate 75 near Tampa so it's within reach of lots of people and it's really easy to get here and this is a great hiking Park too it's really fun to explore there's a lot of trails and it has these really cool suspension bridges to cross over good bass fishing and good kayaking here too but if you're G phobic there are also a lot of alligators in this park too so just be aware of that and finally this is one of my favorites just because I think it's just so interesting and cool Jose Marty Park is a tiny little postage stamp sized parcel of land in Tampa's eore City neighborhood it serves as a memorial to Cuban hero Jose Marty but this land is actually owned by Cuba it is owned by the Cuban government it is considered Cuban soil and it's the only piece of land within the US border that is considered foreign territory it's pretty crazy right the specifics of how this land came to be owned by Cuba is a little bit beyond the scope of this video and I do go into it a little bit more in detail on an other video I did while visiting here that I'll link to in the comments but long story short the land was donated to pre-castro Cuba by a group of Cuban Freedom Fighters who once owned the land here and now it's a park that anybody can visit no passport or paperwork required and when you're in this park and after you step through these Gates you are technically in the loosest sense of the word no longer in the US but in Cuba I'm in Florida I'm in Cuba I'm in Cuba I'm in Florida now I'm not sure I would go so far as to actually tell people I had visited Cuba or check that off my list of visited countries but it's a pretty cool little Quirk of geography so that's a list of 10 places that I think are pretty interesting that I don't think a lot of people knew even exist here in Florida let me know in the comments if you've been to any of these and which one is your favorite or maybe if there's one that I left off that I could put in a future video and 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