Free weekends at National Parks

| July 16, 2009
Everglades National Park. Photo by National Park Service.

Everglades National Park. Photo by National Park Service.

The National Park Service is offering three free weekends at U.S. national parks this summer, including this weekend, July 18-19, and Aug. 15-16. The park service will offer free admission to the parks that normally charge an admission fee.

In Florida, those parks are:

Canaveral National Seashore (one of the most beautiful beaches in Florida).
Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, in St. Augustine.
Dry Tortugas National Park, 70 miles west of Key West.
Gulf Islands National Seashore, at the Mississippi-Florida border.
Everglades National Park, south of Miami. If you go, wear plenty of mosquito repellant.

During the free weekends, park concessionaires at Everglades National Park also are offering a buy one get one half price deal for Shark Valley Tram Tours. Call 305-221-8455 for information.

Florida’s other national parks are always free. They are:
Big Cypress National Preserve, Ochopee.
Biscayne National Park, Miami.
De Soto National Memorial, Bradenton.
Fort Caroline National Memorial and the Timucuan Preserve, Jacksonville.
Fort Matanzas National Monument, St. Augustine.
Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, stretching from North Carolina to Jacksonville.
Timucuan Ecological & Historic Preserve, Jacksonville.

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Category: Jacksonville and Northeast, Key West, Miami, St. Augustine

About the Author ()

Teresa Mears is a publisher, writer and editor who was raised to be frugal. She was downsized last summer after nearly 30 years as an editor at newspapers ranging in size from the Portland (Tenn.) Leader to The Los Angeles Times and The Miami Herald, where she worked most recently. She moved to Florida in 1980 because it was the only place she could get a job during that recession and has lived in South Florida since 1985, in Miami, Hollywood and Fort Pierce. She also has lived on Florida’s Gulf Coast, in St. Petersburg and Inverness.

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