Most Tampa Bay guides are written by people who have visited Tampa Bay.
We run an outdoor adventure course in Oldsmar, which means our guides are outside in this weather roughly 300 days a year. We know which trail is unbearable in August and lovely in January. We know the bayou goes glassy about an hour before sunset. We know that “it rains every afternoon in summer” is true and also completely fine, because it lasts forty minutes.
So this is that guide. Where to go, when to go, and what it actually feels like when you get there.
When to come, and what it really feels like
Tampa Bay has two seasons, and the tourist brochures are vague about both.
October through April is the good one. Mornings in the 60s, afternoons in the mid 70s, humidity that lets you forget it exists. This is when locals do everything outdoors and when the snowbirds arrive and quietly take all the good weekday slots. If you can travel in this window, travel in this window.
May through September is hot, and workable if you plan around it. Start early. Anything outdoors before 11am is genuinely pleasant. Afternoons bring a thunderstorm most days, usually somewhere between two and five, usually over in under an hour. Locals do not cancel plans for this. They wait it out and go back outside.
A few specifics worth knowing:
- January and February are the best months on the water. Cool, clear, almost no bugs.
- March brings spring break crowds to the beaches. Inland parks and preserves stay quiet.
- June through August is peak humidity and peak lightning. Mornings only.
- November is the sleeper month. Warm water, cool air, nobody around.
Two things worth knowing about winter specifically, because they are the reason locals prefer it.
Manatees arrive. Roughly November through March they gather wherever the water stays warm. The viewing center at Apollo Beach and the springs around Crystal River are the reliable spots. Check the details before you drive, since the season dates move.
Weekdays are close to empty. Weekends fill in season, but a Tuesday in January is the quietest this area gets all year, and everything is better on a quiet day: shorter waits, smaller groups, and photographs without strangers in them. If your schedule is flexible, and it is for a lot of people who are here for the winter rather than for a week, book midweek.
On the water
The bay is the reason people move here, and most visitors only ever see it from a beach.
Mobbly Bayou Wilderness Preserve in Oldsmar is protected, shallow and almost entirely free of boat traffic, which makes it the easiest place in the area to learn to paddleboard without getting rocked by a wake. Herons, ospreys, the occasional manatee in cooler months.
Honeymoon Island and Caladesi Island off Dunedin are the beaches worth the extra drive. Caladesi is reachable by ferry and stays genuinely uncrowded because of it.
Weedon Island Preserve in St. Petersburg has a mangrove paddling trail that feels like a tunnel. Bring a map, or a guide, because it is easy to lose track of which channel you came in on.
Fort De Soto at the southern tip of Pinellas is the one to give a full day. Beach, trails, fishing pier, and enough space that it never feels packed.
In the trees
Florida is flat, so the vertical stuff here is mostly built rather than found.
Our own course sits in the canopy above Mobbly Bayou: over 3,000 feet of zip line, a 200-foot suspension bridge, high ropes elements and a 30-foot jump we call the Leap of Faith, which is the part everyone photographs and half the group talks themselves out of and then does anyway.
For tree cover without the harness, Hillsborough River State Park has genuine shade and a river that looks nothing like the rest of Florida, and Lettuce Lake Park in Tampa has a boardwalk through cypress where you will see alligators from a safe and legal distance.
On foot
Bayshore Boulevard in Tampa is the longest continuous sidewalk in the country and the easiest way to see the city on foot. Go at sunrise.
The Upper Tampa Bay Trail and the Courtney Campbell Causeway Trail are both flat, paved and good for a casual ride. The Causeway trail puts you out over the water, which is worth it for the view alone.
Philippe Park in Safety Harbor is small, shaded, historic and criminally underrated. Locals go there. Tourists mostly do not.
When it rains, or when it is simply too hot
The honest answer is that most outdoor operators here, ourselves included, keep running in light rain and pause only for lightning, which usually clears within the hour. Waiting it out beats rescheduling.
If you would rather be inside for a few hours: Ybor City for lunch and a walk through the old cigar district, the Tampa Riverwalk for a route that connects most of downtown, and the museums in St. Petersburg, which are genuinely good and genuinely air conditioned.
Then go back outside at four, when the light gets good.
Doing it with teenagers
Teenagers are the hardest group to plan for in this area, because most Tampa Bay attractions are built for either small children or adults with a drink in hand.
We wrote a separate guide for this: things to do in Tampa with teens.
When you want your heart rate up
Beaches and boardwalks are not why everyone comes here. If the point of the trip is to do something that takes a bit of nerve, start here: adventurous things to do in Tampa.
Doing it with kids
Most guides to this area assume either a toddler or an adult. The two questions that actually decide the day are how old they are and what month it is, and the answers change everything from where you go to what time you leave the house.
Sorted by age and by season: things to do in Tampa with kids.
Where we fit
Empower Adventures is in Oldsmar, about twenty minutes from Tampa, Clearwater and St. Petersburg, on 40 acres of Mobbly Bayou Wilderness Preserve.
We run guided zip line tours, high ropes, paddleboard tours and rentals, kids camps, and group and corporate days. Two hours on the course, guides with you the whole way, and challenge by choice throughout, which means nobody gets talked into anything they do not want to do.
We are one thing to do in Tampa Bay. This guide has plenty of others in it, and we would rather you had a good week here than a good afternoon.
A day we would actually plan
If you have one day and you want the version we would do ourselves:
Morning. Out early. Paddleboard Mobbly Bayou while the water is still flat, or walk Philippe Park before the heat arrives.
Midday. Eat in Safety Harbor or Dunedin. Both are walkable, neither is a tourist trap.
Afternoon. Something with a harness on it, or the ferry to Caladesi if you would rather be horizontal.
Evening. Sunset. Anywhere facing west, which around here is most places. Ours happens to be from a zip line, but we are biased.
