Lake Woodruff NWR

All the maps I can find online for this place are terrible - see our photos.

When you enter along Mud Lake Road you pass a visitor center that I've never stopped at - it looks like administrative offices to me. Then on the right after the railroad tracks you'll see Mayaca Trail - it's just a quarter mile long pine forest and scrub trail. It connects to another little trail called the Green Tree trail. When you reach the main paved parking area there's a little Live Oak Trail leading south from there that's a half mile loop. Those are all fine but your life wouldn't change if you missed them.

The main show is when you walk west a short distance from parking where it opens up into an expanse of grassy pools and patches/islands of trees in the distance. To the north is Spring Garden Lake - Lake Woodruff itself is somewhat far to the west. If you walk maybe a mile or so around Pool 1 to where Pool 1,2, and 3 share a corner there's an observation tower. If you go along Pool 1 on the south side you hit Hammock Trail - a half mile loop - where Pool 1 and 3 abut.

Towards the end of summer Swallow Tailed Kites gather here by the hundreds before they migrate south every year. In general though have a close look at raptors flying here. In summer this place is pretty unbearably hot - bring water. In the winter it's still very pretty and much more enjoyable not just for the weather but more likely to see warblers etc. Sunsets are particularly beautiful here.

We haven't been to the other public use areas. If you look at the official maps I've seen there are a pretty good bunch of trails at the SE end of the park - the corner of which is where highway 44 crosses the train tracks - around 2400 N New York Ave. I haven't been there but the only entrance I can find off the roads is around 2880 N Shell Rd off 44/NY Ave. Inside that area from satellite view there seem to be jeep trails - I don't know if they are for the public. Otherwise I think the way you're expected to access other areas of the park is by all the little river offshoots of the St.John's river.

This map is terrible (a low resolution BMP file - I think my grandma made this in 1998) showing public areas. This one isn't much better but also kind of shows the trails somewhat. There used to be a Friends of Lake Woodruff website but at least as of this writing they are down. If they come back they might have better maps.