Torreya State Park - Bristol (FL)

5 /5 Dave Witt: Really cool and interesting state park. The location is extremely unique especially for the state of Florida. It’s up on a 150 foot bluff with a great view of the adjacent Apalachicola river. There’s an easily accessible hiking trail maybe two miles at most in length, that’s shady and a little bit wet in spots. You can get down close to the river and you can access it from the viewpoint behind the old Gregory home. That’s located at the very end of the park. So I would just drive straight back to there and start working your way towards the front. There is a loop trail around the outside of the park. I didn’t do that and the campsites I couldn’t check out because they were destroyed last year in one of the hurricanes. Hopefully they’ll be repaired soon and open, this looks like a great place for a long weekend. So I just made a day trip out of it lots of cool plants and views. I highly recommend it. I’ve read somewhere that it’s great to visit in the fall when the leaves change color, because of Its overall height and vantage point it’s more like being up north than anywhere else in Florida. So hopefully I can get back an update this in the coming fall later this year.

5 /5 Amanda Rhodes: Such a beautiful state park. We just finished up a 3 day tent camping trip there. We were on site 16, which was perfect because there were neighbors only on one side and a big field leading out to the overlook on the other. Sites are really small. I made note of site 30 and 18 as the largest. There is no easy access to water for fishing. There are places to access the river by hiking but not easily as the trails are pretty advanced. There is a nice playground and horseshoe area a short walk from the campsites. The Gregory house does tours daily for $3 per person.

5 /5 Vicki A: Laid back and fun old Florida. Small dirt road campground with a CCC building in the middle - gave a vibe of 100 years ago. Seemed in the middle of the jungle! Peaceful and quiet camping. And we loved the 10 o’clock tour of the home the next morning. Fascinating to be able to be in a river plantation designed to be able to float during floods and to hear the history of the Florida frontier days. While the roads look a little iffy, we had no problems at all in the RV with a tow. We had to unhook as the site was back in, but with the flat dirt road unhooking and re-hooking the next morning was no problem. Some of the sites are narrow and some are quite roomy. The ranger was very helpful in finding the right spot for us (he was also very nice and extremely knowledgeable about the area and the park.) We chose a site with a very large side yard and enjoyed sitting outside once we thoroughly sprayed ourselves with bug spray. If you have children, I would inspect the site before allowing them to roam. Ours was lovely with thick foliage, but had a pretty steep and unexpected drop on a trail about 12 feet off of the side yard. It was a very peaceful and lovely place with several overlooks and picnic areas. We would camp here again. (They also offer yurts, and we noticed the yurt that was occupied seemed to have very happy campers!)

5 /5 Michael York: My family and I spent two nights here at the campground. The park is a great place to visit if you enjoy hiking and history. We hiked some of the trails including the Weeping Ridge to the waterfall- small by any standard but still really cool to see in Florida. Be careful, there are copperhead snakes; I nearly stepped on one. The trail to the Confederate earthworks was neat to see. If you are not into hiking or history, I would probably give this park a miss. Most of the trees were destroyed in the hurricane a few years ago, so it is lower brush still with some trees. There are tours given at the plantation house at 10AM on weekdays and other times on the weekend (sorry, I didnt catch those times). We really enjoyed it and it was a bargain at $3 a person.