Photo galleries

Egmont Key State Park and National Wildlife Refuge, an island at the mouth of Tampa Bay off the north end of Anna Maria Island,...

Who say you can't surf Anna Maria Island? Not the kids from the West Coast Surf Shop Surf Camp and the Eternal Summer Surf...

The 637-acre Robinson Preserve, bordered by the Manatee River, Tampa Bay, Palma Sola Bay and Perico Bayou, offers dog-friendly hiking, biking and kayak trails...

  You can’t take it with you, but you can hold a piece of history thousands of years old at Neal Preserve by simply picking up...

Perico Preserve is a former 176-acre farm that dated back to the 1930s. A vegetable stand operated into the 1970s at 11700 Manatee Ave....

BRADENTON - De Soto National Memorial marks the spot where Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto and his army made landfall in Florida on May...

The FISH Preserve is nearly 100 acres east of 119th St. W. in the historic fishing village of Cortez, whose residents began raising money...

Related coverage A century of Cortez Snapshots of Cortez The village that mullet built Climate change in Cortez The future – a memory?

Grassy Point Preserve in Holmes Beach offers mangrove tunnels on the bay side of Anna Maria Island on the Intracoastal Waterway and nearly 35...

While we’re partial to sunsets on Anna Maria Island, moonrises are pretty special too.

Least terns, pelicans, royal terns, snowy plovers, gulls, black skimmers and oystercatchers are some of the shorebirds that frequent Anna Maria Island.

Manatees, or sea cows - actually relatives of the elephant - frequent waters around Anna Maria Island. They are a federally threatened species.

Dolphins frequent the Gulf of Mexico, the Intracoastal Waterway, Sarasota Bay and the Manatee River near Anna Maria Island.