Hell's Bay Trail

Hell's Bay Trail is one of the more dramatic-sounding routes in Everglades National Park — a canoe and kayak trail that winds through a labyrinthine maze of mangrove tunnels and open bays in the park's backcountry. The name reputedly comes from old-timers who called it hell to get in and hell to get out. This is a water trail, not a hiking path, and navigating it requires careful attention to the marked poles that guide paddlers through the dense mangrove network. The reward is extraordinary solitude and the chance to experience a mangrove ecosystem from the water's surface — with birds nesting overhead and fish darting below the kayak.