Gainesville Regional

Yes, there are bison in Florida. Paynes Prairie Preserve, visible on approach to Gainesville Regional, is a 21,000-acre basin marsh where wild bison and semi-wild horses roam a landscape that looks more like the Great Plains than the Sunshine State. Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto crossed this prairie in 1539. William Bartram called it 'the great Alachua Savannah.' During winter dry season, the bison herd clusters near remaining water sources, making them surprisingly easy to spot from 1,500ft.

Devil's Millhopper is a 120-foot-deep sinkhole carved out of Florida's limestone bedrock. From the rim, looking down past the wooden boardwalk that descends 232 steps to the bottom, you see a tropical rainforest in miniature: maidenhair ferns, oakleaf hydrangea, deep moss, twelve trickling streams that drain into a hole in the floor and disappear into the Floridan Aquifer below. The temperature at the bottom is consistently 10-15 degrees cooler than the surrounding pine flatwoods. Magnolias, hickories, and southern beech that ordinarily grow much further north survive here in the protected, humid microclimate. The name comes from a 19th-century legend: when farmers found small bones (fossilized animal remains, common in north-central Florida's karst geology) at the bottom of the hole, they assumed the sink was a "hopper" feeding bodies to the Devil's mill below. The actual mechanism is more straightforward and continuous — Florida's limestone bedrock dissolves under slightly acidic rainwater and groundwater, forming caves; periodically the roof of a cave collapses and creates a sinkhole. Devil's Millhopper is a particularly large and old example. It's been forming for at least 10,000 years. The state acquired the site in 1974 as one of Florida's first state geological parks. The wooden boardwalk descends in switchbacks down the north wall to a small viewing platform at the bottom. The boardwalk has been rebuilt multiple times due to weather damage and structural fatigue; the latest version replaced the entire stair system in 2018. Closed periodically after heavy rains when the bottom floods or when trail damage from tropical systems needs repair. Park entrance fee is modest; sinkhole is open Wednesday through Sunday.

Marion County is one of the world's premier thoroughbred breeding regions. From the air it looks nothing like flat, swampy Florida — rolling green hills stretch across the landscape, each farm delineated by miles of white plank fencing. The contrast is stunning: emerald pastures against white fences against dark live oak hammocks. Over 1,200 horse farms operate in the region, and on a clear morning from 2,000ft AGL you might spot horses training on private tracks, foals running in paddocks, and geometric cross-country jumping courses. Kentucky bluegrass transplanted to the subtropics.

Silver Springs produces over 550 million gallons of crystal-clear water per day. From the air, the spring run appears as an impossibly blue-green ribbon cutting through dark forest canopy — the color contrast is so vivid it looks artificial. The spring basin is over 80 feet deep yet every detail of the bottom is visible from the surface. Six Tarzan movies were filmed here in the 1930s-50s, and escaped rhesus macaque monkeys from a 1930s film set still inhabit the surrounding forest — one of the few wild primate populations in the continental US.