Nice and quiet. Great view of the lake…read more Lots of parking some picnic tables and pavilions.

Nice park overlooking the locks and lake and canal. Great views. Lots of places to park and take it…read moreall in. Extremely interesting watching the locks opeand close to let boats in and out. Places to sit and eat and enjoy. Not too exciting, but it is a park.

People who visit Lake Okeechobee for the first time might be surprised to find that you can't…read morereally see it from the road. The Hurricane of 1928 caused the lake's dike to fail, resulting in catastrophic flooding and the loss of life. There are several mass burial sites of hurricane victims in the area. To protect the people who live around the lake, in the 1930's the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began constructing the Herbert Hoover Dike to prevent future flooding disasters. The dike was completed in the 1960s and serves to protect the surrounding communities from lake overflow. Consequently you need to find access roads that take you up to the lake in order to see it. One such favorite scenic spot to see the largest fresh water lake in Florida is in Lake Okeechobee Park. Through the years this park has been known as Jaycee Park, Lock 7, Lakefront Park, and Parrott Avenue Wayside. The park has been officially renamed Clif J. Betts Jr. Lakeside Recreation Area for a county commissioner who helped guide planning for county parks before his death in 2011. The highlight of this park is a 400 foot fishing pier which I enjoyed for the views of the lake and the birds but which is loved by anglers who fish for large mouth bass and speckled perch. Other park amenities include paved parking, picnic tables, and restrooms with potable water. Hikers and cyclists can access to the Florida Trail/Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail on the dike up above the recreation area. To reach it use the entrance road or the paved path behind the restrooms. If you head east you can travel three miles to Taylor Creek and if you head west you can travel four miles to Okee-Tantie.

This is a great place for a walk. It was upsetting to see all the power plants omitting toxins and…read morepoisoning the people of Okeechobee in the background.

Another great Florida park! We decided to stop here again to enjoy the nice weather, and let the…read morekids burn off some energy. I'm impressed how clean parks are in Florida, not one scrap of liter to be found, after the kids grew tried of the playground, we decided to walk on a bit of the board walk! If you are in the area, please visit, it's very peaceful!

Park is clean and I like using their basketball courts. The walking path is also nice.read more

My husband and I stayed for two nights at the FAMILY Campground in the DuPuis Management Area in…read morelate March, 2025, and LOVED it. This is a free primitive campground (no hookups) managed by the South Florida Water Management District. While free, it does require a Special Use Application and License (which is also free). The Special Use License secures 1 of the 14 licenses available per day, and also gives you access to the gate code for entry; the camp host did check that we had one. The campground is far from traffic noise, and each site is large and picturesque. The family campground is for tent and pop-up camping only. No trailers, camper vans, truck campers, or RVs are permitted for camping. A maximum of two vehicles are allowed per campsite. While we have a Class B RV, we followed the rules and set up our tent for overnight camping. Each site offers a picnic table and fire ring. The Family Campground has clean composting toilets. A full-service bath house with hot showers and flushing toilets are available for use in the Equestrian Campground. The DuPuis Management area offers camping, picnicking, fishing, hiking, bicycling, geocaching, birdwatching, wildlife viewing, and hunting during specific seasons. We had only one issue -- and that was that our GPS took us to the wrong, locked entry gate but we figured it out.

Clean, quiet, horses/walking trails, feels remote, wonderful restrooms with hot showers and…read moreflushing toilets, amazingly free. Would stay again. Small town nearby.

Cool park! We drive by often and it's always something we've wanted to stop and check out. I had no…read moreidea this park is so huge! You could drive for 30 minutes and still not see everything! We stopped by on a weekday and the park was pretty and relaxing. Not too many people on the couple of trails we did. The observation tower is closed but they still have a nice boardwalk up to that area that makes for a great walk! It's pretty highly elevated for Florida - kind of impressive in person! Entry is $6 per car, and the lady provided a map and recommended her favorite trail. We checked that trail out as well (the white trail), but the height of the observation tower trail was really the star! We decided to drive around after doing both trails, and we saw their campgrounds. So surprising at how busy this place was! It seemed there was hardly an empty spot! Must be a happening place to camp! We'd definitely return for more adventures, as this is a cool park!

This place is great for those into the outdoors or nature in general. Kayaking, camping, fishing,…read moreand plenty of wildlife you might run into. There's overlooks and and an endless supply of trails to choose. I will definitely be back with some chairs and hoping for some quiet time to myself. The environment is so unique here you feel like you're in a different country at times.

I literally spent two hours on Father's Day just to see if this park was a Leathers & associates…read morepark like Jim Space in Arcadia. Sure enough!! Jim Space has a rocket-NASA theme, this is so Okeechobee it's not funny. The Mud-buggy playground, the boat, it's all right on par for the creativity of L&A and the uniqueness of Okeechobee. A well-deserved civic asset!

The playground at the Okeechobee Sports Complex is a well-hidden GEM, I tell you. I'm guessing all…read morethe locals know about it, but I did a couple of pretty thorough (or so I thought, anyway) internet searches and never came up with anything even remotely resembling a playground anywhere near here. Luckily, we have the awesome breakfast lady at Hampton Inn to tell us about such things. And even draw us a MAP. Score! :D I felt like I was privy to some insider info that I was most definitely Not Supposed to Have, which only makes it that much more cool. So this place is probably the most awesome true playground I've ever seen. Not like I'm a huge playground aficionado or anything, but still. It's this ENORMOUS collection of wooden fort-like structures with all kinds of slides and swings, tons of stuff to climb on and explore and have an absolute blast. The entire thing looks to be relatively new, and they definitely are keeping up with stuff like mulch on the ground and maintenance on the structures themselves (I saw a couple of pieces of newer wood, in comparison to the older more weathered stuff that the rest of it is built out of). There's a little area of sand, which kids looooooove and moms hate. Ugh, sand on my floorboards. And in his shoes. And his socks. And then the floor inside when he takes off the shoes. *laughing* There are also a couple of park benches along a little path for the moms to hang out, and a pretty large pavilion right there next to the play area with a whole bunch of tables, a water fountain, a Coke machine, and I'm guessing restrooms somewhere as well (Speculation! Pure speculation!). The good news / bad news is that this thing is huge and sprawling. Good news for the kids: bigger = better, and spread out = more room for running like wild beasts! But somewhat bad news for the moms: there's absolutely no way you can actually keep your child within eyesight without moving around, and moving around a LOT. The structures themselves prevent you from being able to see much more than little bits of blonde hair go running by, a glimpse of legs and shoes elsewhere... you get the idea. And that's fine, really -- I am perfectly okay with not being able to see my kid at Every Possible Second and don't feel the need to Helicopter parent him. But. BUT! The place isn't enclosed on all sides, and there's not a single stationary vantage point where you can ensure that your child hasn't wandered out of the area completely. I'm pretty laid-back about a lot of stuff, but I'm totally not okay with the idea that my kid could walk off (or be taken off, yikes!) while I idly sit in the shade sipping on a frosty beverage. Not a big deal with older kids, but at his age? Yeah. I still need to watch him like a hawk. Anyway, allllll of that was to say - moms, watch your little ones because they can slip right out the back side and you would never know it. And take note playground people, you could totally make this SO MUCH MORE SAFE by extending the fence line a little further around the back side so the only way in and out can actually be seen from one place, be it a bench or the pavilion or even hanging out on the sidewalk somewhere. I don't need creature comforts, I just need to be able to make sure my kid hasn't escaped. A few other things that keep it from being a whopping 5 stars as well. No shade for the kiddos, like every single playground ever in the history of mankind. I dutifully greased up the boy with sunscreen before heading out and of course he still ended up with a slight burn. And nothing that can really be changed on the part of the playground folks, but something for potential playground-goers to be aware of: at 215ish, there was a massive influx of teenagers that walked over after school and completely took over the pavilion. They weren't hanging out in the play area while we were there, but rumor has it that they're always there in the afternoons, and that they do sometimes decide it's fun to play on the equipment. Not sure if they get rough and rowdy or not (they were perfectly well-behaved in the few minutes we were all there together), but something to keep in mind if the "big kids" make you antsy. Because I'm lame and the only picture I took is crap cell phone quality and is only a portion of the entire play area, you can check out some pics at the page I pulled off the county website (and see some of the other little hidden playground areas too, those scheming playground-hiding punks!!), just scroll on down to the sports complex. And be warned, their photos don't do it any justice either: http://co.okeechobee.fl.us/sites/default/files/files/PRBallFieldsParksPlaygrounds030211.pdf All told? SUPER COOL playground. 5 starts from a kid's point of view, only 4+ stars from mom due to lack of shade and effective kid-containment.

In 1921 the Indian River Land Co. deeded Pocahontas Park to Vero Beach. In the 1920's the park had…read morea small zoo that included alligators, a bear, and a bobcat. The tennis courts were added in 1925. The town's first community center was built in the park in 1935. During WWII it served as a club for Navy personnel training at the airport. After the war it was again used as a community center until a new one was built just north of it. The original center is now The Heritage Center with a museum dedicated to the citrus industry. A plaque outside the building commemorates the spot in Pocahontas Park where on July 2, 1925 William Jennings Bryan delivered a speech for the county's inaugural festivities. Today families visiting the historic Vero Beach downtown area can still enjoy this charming park that has delighted generations of families. The park has pickleball courts, a playground, restroom. shuffle board court, and tennis courts. Standing guard at the entrance to the park is Patriot the fiberglass horse. Pocahontas Park is the perfect place to take the kids to play or to enjoy a game of tennis.

Pocahontas Park is a pleasant enough place located in the Main Street Vero Beach section of the…read moretown. It is more designed for kids, however there are plenty of benches out front and it seems to be a popular place for people just to chill for a bit.

This is a pretty cool ocean themed playground we've visited a couple of times while visiting family…read morethat live nearby. I love the flooring, clean and cushiony and no sand! Castle like structures, obstacle course, swings and slides. I also love there's only one entrance to the playground, this is a huge plus since I'm usually with at least 3 kids (but 5-7 when we come here). There are shaded areas, water stations and restrooms. They also have pavilions you can use for free during the week or rent on the weekends for birthday parties.

Great playground for children. Very clean and in a great area as well. Wheelchair accessible as…read morewell. Various sized slides for all ages, also had a misting area to cool down from the hot sun. Definitely will return with my son.