Younger kids can take refuge in a calm, shallow lagoon right across the road. A park concession by the north-side beach picnic area sells food and fishing supplies, and serves meals until 6 p.m. Because winter is Florida's high season, the campground rarely fills during the summer. Beneath the inlet bridge, catwalks offer great vistas and a breezy reprieve from the sweltering rays, especially on an incoming tide. At this manmade inlet, anglers land blues, jack, flounder, snapper, grouper, and mackerel. The inlet connects the Atlantic Ocean with the narrow 156-mile Indian River Lagoon, the nation's most diverse estuary.
Ecotourist boat trips to Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge originate at the park marina.
In fact, it's hard to believe that Malibu lies a mere 25 miles to the south. In this rugged topography, mountains sidle right up to the ocean. The primevally wild beach is a bit forbidding, with its steep offshore dropoff and frigid water making swimming hazardous. A half-mile down the coast, a flat expanse provides worthy sunbathing and hiking between beaches and tide pools at low tide. But the sound of the waves drowns out traffic noise, and if you were any closer to the water, you'd be surfing.