Playlinda Beach #2 at Canaveral National Seashore

Playalinda Beach is located at the southern end of Canaveral National Seashore near the Kennedy Space Center and Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. Because of its proximity to these two tourist attractions, it is much more popular than Apollo Beach, the National Seashore’s northern beach. There is a fee to enter. See Canaveral National Seashore’s Fees and Passes web page for the latest prices.

There are thirteen parking lots along a 4-mile road that runs the length of the beach, plus a small parking lot at the Eddy Creek Boat Ramp located between Parking Lots #7 and #8. Each has a boardwalk that leads over the sand dunes to the beach, and it is only on these boardwalks where visitors are allowed to access the beach. Walking on the sand dunes is prohibited, plus they are covered with small shrubs and other brush, so you wouldn’t want to cut across them anyway.

Palmetto bushes and other shrubs cover most dunes at Canaveral National Seashore’s Playalinda Beach

All beaches have boardwalks with both ramps and stairs at each end, making them wheelchair accessible. However, this doesn’t mean that getting to the beach in a wheelchair is easy. The ramps are often very steep on each end as they work their way over the sand dunes. On top of that, you still have to get to the water, which can be far from the end of the ramps. Unless you are a Paralympian, you’ll probably need some help or an electric wheelchair to access most of the beaches.

Typical beach access ramp at Canaveral National Seashore’s Playalinda Beach

The easiest beach to access for those in wheelchairs is Beach #8. The boardwalk provides a straight shot from the parking lot to the beach, and the incline is slight compared to the other ramps. The Eddy Creek parking area has a similar boardwalk, but you must park across the street. At Beach #8, handicap parking spots are right next to the ramp.

Parking lot side of the boardwalk at Playalinda Beach #8, Canaveral National Seashore

Beach side of the boardwalk at Canaveral National Seashore’s Playalinda Beach #8

For those who just want to look at the ocean, most boardwalks have a sitting area with either benches or a picnic table.

Sitting area with benches on the Playalinda Beach #2 boardwalk at Canaveral National Seashore

Parking space quantities vary per parking lot, with the smallest lots holding around 50 vehicles and the largest 120; most average 75 spots. As for popularity, I did a head count of cars, and it appears that no one beach gets a significant amount of traffic, more or less, than any other beach, except for Beach #12 and #13 (more on that later). The quality of the beach is the same no matter where you go, so when it comes time to pick one, just find a parking spot and be done with it.

Playalinda Beach #4 at Canaveral National Seashore

Each parking area has a fancy outhouse, which is what Jed Clampett would call a portable toilet in a permanent building. There is no running water in the restrooms and no rinse-off showers outside. Mosquitoes can be very bad at the parking areas and in the restrooms, though once out on the beach the breeze keeps them away.

Typical restroom at each parking area at Playalinda Beach, Canaveral National Seashore

At the top of the Eddy Creek boardwalk is a covered pavilion with a long picnic table with benches on either side, plus two more benches. While you certainly can stop here for a bite to eat, the arrangement of benches leads me to believe that the pavilion is also used as some sort of demonstration area.

Covered pavilion at the Eddy Creek beach access boardwalk, Canaveral National Seashore

In the morning, the Beaches #8 through #12 are dominated by fisherman, but by noon they tend to go home and the beaches are slowly taken over by swimmers and sunbathers. If you want to swim in the morning, while you may still find fishermen, try Beaches #1 through #7.

Fishing on Playalinda Beach #9 at Canaveral National Seashore

Most of the beaches have less than a quarter mile between them. This means that if you want to get away from the crowds, which invariably set up as close to the boardwalks as possible, you can only walk about a tenth of a mile in either direction from the boardwalk before running into the crowds at the next beach. From my experience, you need to get at least a quarter mile from the boardwalk to get away from most people; a half-mile walk will usually put you by yourself. Unfortunately, most beaches at Playalinda are not that far apart. Only between Beaches #4 and #5, #8 and #9, and #10 and #11, can you get a quarter mile away before starting to approach the next beach. You can also access Beach #1 and walk south to the border of the Kennedy Space Center without running into many people.

Playalinda Beach #7 at Canaveral National Seashore

Beach #13, the very last beach on the park road, is a nude beach. Yes, you heard that right. Sometimes you will run into a few nudists who didn’t get the memo and choose to display their goods at Beach #12 as well. When I visited Beach #12, there was an old nude guy who was fishing. Nearly everyone else was clothed, and they just ignored him. I say “nearly everyone else,” because when I was preparing my photos for this review I discovered that I had photographed two other naked people whom I did not even notice at the time. Anyway, the moral to the story is that if you don’t want to see naked people, stick to Beaches #1 through #11.

Playalinda Beach #12 at Canaveral National Seashore (check out the couple at the top left)

There are only 45 parking spaces at Beach #13, and by the time I arrived the place was packed. On a busy day, parking for the nude beach can be backed up as far down as Parking Area #10, a half-hour walk to Beach #13, though in most cases you can get a spot at least at Parking Area #12. This is why I mentioned that the busiest parking lots are #12 and #13.

You won’t see any naked people in the parking lot, and the beach is hidden behind the dunes. Families that wander down to the end of the road should not find any surprises. I did not make a visit to the nude beach since I wasn’t planning to be nude, thus I can’t report more on it. You’ll have to check it out for yourself. I will say that most of the people I saw were aged hippies, none of whom I would care to see naked. From reading online reviews, it sounds like most of the crowd is 50+ years old and the majority men.

A nude beach exists in a National Park because the National Park Service follows state and county laws in regards to nudity since there is no federal law addressing the subject. When Canaveral National Seashore was created in 1975, the nude beach at Playalinda was well established. Brevard County, where Playalinda Beach is located, had no anti-nudity laws for the first twenty years of the park’s existence, but such laws were enacted in 1995. Arrests were made sporadically in the 1990s, but the sheriff made it clear that he and his men had better things to do than arrest naked people. When doing research on the topic, I found that articles on arrests and enforcement dried up after 2000, and today, from what I gather, unless you start having sex or are involved in other lewd behavior—violations that are more common than you might think—nobody is going to bother you. In fact, the nude beach at Playalinda is much more popular than the one at Apollo, and nudity is legal at Apollo in Volusia County.

There was a posting at one of the parking areas that lists common legal offenses and their fines and / or punishment, and nudity is not on the list (parking on the grass and disturbing the wildlife are). However, Lewd / Lascivious Behavior is on the list, and this is one of only three offenses that forces you to appear in court, with DUI and Reckless Operation of a Vehicle being the other two. The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that nudity alone does not constitute lewd behavior, which is why Bevard County had to pass a law specifically addressing nudity.

List of common offenses committed at Playalinda Beach

Those who would like to swim in Mosquito Lagoon are limited to the cove at the Eddy Creek Boat Ramp. There is a small beach there, a great place to go if you have toddlers and don’t want to expose them to the large waves on the ocean. Unlike the barrier islands that make up many of the other National Seashores, where bay access is as common as ocean access, here at Canaveral National Seashore, swimming is pretty much relegated to the beaches on the Atlantic Ocean.

Eddy Creek Cove on Mosquito Lagoon, Canaveral National Seashore

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