Gumbo Limbo

The Gumbo Limbo trail is a great place for those wishing to explore a tropical hammock -- not the thing you lay in, but one of the many wooded knolls rising from the park's marshes. The trail, which is a .4-mile loop, winds through a forest of peeling gumbo-limbo trees that lean and grow far across the trail. Interpretive signs explain some of the weirder looking plants and trees. Swiss-cheese holes in the limestone, called solution holes, line the trail and allow water to pass through and dissolve. There is an overlook that lets visitors peak directly into one of these odd spaces. After crossing over the wide solution hole that holds an entire marsh, you emerge from the forest facing the parking lot and the visitor center.