Joshua Lawrence Kinser - Moon Florida Gulf Coast: Best Beaches, Scenic Drives, Everglades Adventures

: The diversity of the landscape, from beaches to pine forests to freshwater lakes, means you can find your own best place to sleep under the stars.

At the southwestern tip of Floridas Gulf Coast, Naples is full of upscale resorts, high-end restaurants, cultural amenities, and more golf courses per capita than anywhere on the Gulf Coast. Marco Island, just south, similarly boasts resort hotels and condos rising on a long crescent of white-sand beach. Everglades City provides a paddlers and outdoors enthusiasts paradise at one end of the Everglades backcountry, linked to Flamingo via the famous Wilderness Waterway route.

Fort Myers is the largest and oldest city in southwest Florida, set on the banks of the Caloosahatchee River. Sanibel Island is a casual low-rise beach town with just enough to do (visit the J. N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge and the Bailey-Matthews Shell Museum) to keep the whole family entertained. Theres less to do on neighboring Captiva Island, and thats just the way residents and visitors like it. The superlatives heaped on it include exclusive, romantic, and tranquil.

Sarasota has been recognized as Floridas cultural capital, home to a professional symphony, a ballet, and an opera. There are theaters, art galleries, the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, and the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall. A chain of narrow barrier islands sits offshore to the west. Lido and St. Armands Keys are fairly urban extensions of downtown Sarasota, connected by a causeway. Destinations in their own right, Longboat Key to the north is lined with upscale resort hotels and condominiums, and Siesta Key to the south is a more casual and fun low-rise beach getaway.

Busch Gardens, Ybor City, the Florida Aquarium, professional football and ice hockeynotice I didnt mention the beach? Tampa fronts Tampa Bay,