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Best Park in Palm Beach

South County Regional Park

So your doctor's been telling you to take better care of yourself, as always. And, as always, he uses the dreaded e word: exercise. However, running around your block means passing by that neighbor whose vacuum cleaner you borrowed and conveniently misplaced. But that's just as well, because what you need is a full exercise course with chin-up bars, steps, and various beams to help stretch all those neglected muscles. The course at South County Regional Park has 20 such stations. And when you're all done, you don't have to hurry home to shower -- the enormous Coconut Cove Waterpark is right there. Of course, if you skip both activities, you've still got 856 acres' worth of park to explore. That means baseball fields, tennis and volleyball courts, the Daggerwing Nature Center, a remote-control car track, a remote-control airplane field, and more open space than Wal-Mart would know what to do with.

Best Park in Broward

Quiet Waters Park

Quiet Waters? Isn't that where all those weird medieval people hang out? Well, if you're thinking of the Florida Renaissance Festival, then, yes, that's one of the many events the park hosts. But if face-painting fairies, jousters, and jesters are all you know about Quiet Waters Park, then you've been missing out on the Holy Grail of outdoor recreation in Broward County. For those looking to relax, there are plenty of shaded picnic areas along the lake ripe for a barbecue. For you active types, there's mountain-biking, a nature trail, and a lot of open space to toss around a football, fly a kite, play freeze tag, or do whatever else tickles your youthful fancy. But if you want to turn the fun up to ten, try out the cable skiing/wakeboarding course, which comes complete with jump ramps and rail slides. If water sports aren't your thing, then grab your blades, skateboard, or bike and hit the ramps and rails. Of course, to do all this would take a couple of days -- why not stay the weekend at the park's campground? At $25 a day, it's a hell of a lot cheaper than some overcrowded Disney World resort. Oh, and if you happen to get there next March, be prepared to joust.

Best Weekend Getaway

Cayo Costa State Park

Tired of paying through the nose for an oceanfront view? Had it with crowded beaches and car exhaust? Try this rustic isle just a couple of hours' drive from South Florida. There are 30 tent sites and 12 cabins here. There's also eight miles of beach, much of it deserted, and a surfeit of herons, egrets, and inner peace. But beware. You have to plan ahead. There's running water and cold showers but no stores. No cars are allowed; a shuttle carries you the one mile from the dock to the campsites. The place was whacked by Hurricane Charlie; the winds knocked down most of the Australian pines, an invasive species, leaving intact the native palms and sea grapes. So there's plenty of wood for fires. Costs? A tent site goes for $18 per night and a cabin for $30. (The cabins have three sets of bunk beds.) The island, which is just north of Sanibel and Captiva, is a 45-minute ferry ride from Pine Island. The ferry costs $29 round trip for adults and about half that for kids 6 and under. For reservations, call 800-326-3521. Book ahead. The place is popular during the winter and spring.

Best Heat Player

Damon Jones

For all their superstardom, Shaquille O'Neal and Dwyane Wade can't hit a 24-footer to save their nicknames. Wade makes a three-point shot, on average, once a month. O'Neal has made precisely one NBA trey, nine years ago. Damon Jones, the Heat guard keeping defenses honest -- and freeing the lanes for the Diesel and Flash to savage the rim -- happens to be a guy who couldn't even make a CBA roster when he left the University of Houston after a passable junior season. Jones started his pro career in 1997 as a member of the Black Hills Posse in the International Basketball Association -- and even then was coming off the bench. He fought his way up to the CBA, then toured the NBA with the Celtics, Nets, Mavericks, Warriors, Grizzlies, Pistons, Kings, and, last year, the Bucks. When Rafer Alston left Miami for a $5-mil-a-year contract with Toronto, the Heat signed Aimin' Damon for half that, money well spent: This season, the bargain-basement bomber hit more three-pointers at a higher percentage than any other player in the NBA. He carried one of the highest assist-to-turnover ratios in the league, turning the ball over about a third as often as Wade while starting more games than in the rest of his career combined. Jones has finally arrived, and no coincidence, so has the Heat. As he told the Miami Herald, in reflecting on his meandering career: "I wouldn't change the script at all."

Best Water Park

Rapids Water Park

With summer bearing down faster than a gaggle of elderly on an early-bird special, South Florida will soon be slightly hotter than the surface of the sun -- and that's after sunset. No need to even delve into how sweltering it gets in the daylight hours when heat indices routinely hit around 2 million degrees, and anyone foolish enough to step outside runs the risk of instantaneously bursting into flames. So you'll need to find a place to cool off till the weather becomes more amicable in say... December. The beach is nice if you don't mind the ever-present risk of shark attack or spending the next week picking sand out of various bodily crevices. And you probably trashed your Crocodile Mile long ago. So your only hope in this tropical inferno just might be Rapids Water Park. You can cool off while sliding down one of the park's 16 water slides. Or while bobbing up and down in its 25,000-square-foot wave pool. Or while drifting listlessly down its lazy river. For $28, you can explore all 22 acres of this waterlogged oasis, which will be open every day from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. starting Saturday, May 14, through the end of August.

Best Dog Park

CityPaws

There's really no other way to judge a good dog park than the poop factor. Nothing will ruin your day faster than stepping in a steaming pile of doggy doo, especially if it came from somebody else's mutt. The courteous patrons of West Palm Beach's CityPaws dog park are good enough to regularly clean up their mutts' messes. Unlike many dog parks stuffed into the sans-shade section, CityPaws is well-shaded inside Howard Park, which is full of banyan and oak trees to provide a cool spot for your dog to wrestle in the grass. CityPaws also holds a Smooch Your Pooch contest on Valentine's Day and a doggy costume contest on Halloween. Just make sure to clean up when ballerina Fido makes a mess.

Best Surf Spot

Reef Road

The bluehairs who live around here won't be glad we told you, but Reef Road is the premier surfing spot in all of South Florida. Of course, if you're good enough to surf it, you probably already know about it. But grommets and newbies who want to check it out should know a few things before they go. First of all, the break is located in a residential area on the north end of the county's richest chunk of real estate, and there's no public parking within two miles of the spot. There are few bank robberies and crack raids in the affluent town, so police have nothing better to do than ticket you for parking illegally or obstructing traffic. You can stash your ride way south in some public spots on A1A or take your chances with a tow truck. Assuming you find your way to the break, just south of the Palm Beach Inlet, look for a bombing northeast swell, which is what this place needs to start firing. When it does, you'll be dropping down some deep, fast faces, and when the wave lets you off, you might be in Lantana. But you'll be stoked: On a "perfect-o-meter" scale of one to ten (one = Lake Erie and 10 = Jeffrey's Bay, South Africa), Surfline.com gives Reef Road an 8, which is about as good as it gets on the Right Coast.

Best Tourist Trap

Mack's Groves

Northerners flock to Mack's Groves, a gargantuan glorified gift shop on A1A, to immerse themselves in a citrus paradise. Of course, Mack's carries a full line of regional knickknacks, trinkets, and doodads (coral, shells, candles, sea urchins, and starfish), plus silk shirts with palm trees and other examples of pricey SoFla kitsch. But folks who associate winter with snowplows and icicles can have their minds blown by Mack's formidable array of tropical fruit goods. Key lime aficionados will find key lime pie mix, key lime jelly beans, key lime drops, key lime mints, key lime tea cookies, key lime chocolate, key lime crunch, key lime juice, key lime marmalade, key lime mustard, and more. But the 70-year-old institution's staple is its citrus gift baskets (ranging from $30 to $60) -- assortments of fruit that can be shipped almost anywhere in the U.S. and even to Europe. Mainstays like pink seedless grapefruit, Valencia oranges, and honey tangerines nestle snugly against exotic offerings like regal honeybells, clementines, tangelos, and orantiques. Single pieces of fruit are under 50 cents apiece, and samples are always handy. Here's one store where it's OK to be sticky-fingered.

Best Pickup Basketball

Regional Park at Weston

We're not talking about the game. We're talking about practice. So why's it so hard to pick up a good pickup game? By the time you find a court that isn't covered with broken glass and discarded condoms and one that actually has nets on the baskets, there are downs so deep you need a calendar to figure out when you'll get on a court. If you do finally get a game, you end up covering some six-foot-eight guy with a nickname like "Da Meat Hook" who takes every opportunity to drop vicious, 360-degree tomahawk dunks on your face. We can't promise you're not going to get posterized, but at least the Regional Park at Weston, with the nicest outdoor facilities in Broward County, eliminates the search for a place to play. On the eight well-lighted courts, the games run the gamut of ages and skill levels, so you don't need to be trying out for the AND1 mix-tape tour to get in a game. Best of all, the lights stay on till 11 p.m., just in case you want to "practice."

Best Leisure Activity Other Than Clubs or Movies

Beach Volleyball at

Everybody who's not a moron knows that the real fruits of leisure are to be found in the outdoors. But sometimes, Fort Lauderdale's greatest offering, a stretch of golden sand on the placid Atlantic, isn't enough. Sometimes, a beach is just a beach. You can sweat, swim, and soak up sun. Done that. And yet, there is one way to make beachgoing the most kick ass time ever. Just cruise south of Las Olas Boulevard, enter the gate of South Beach Park, pay $6 for a carload, and drive all the way to the end, where volleyball courts stretch from the picnic benches to the beach. Bring people looking for social refreshment and a workout, or just a ball. Pickup games are everywhere, full of new friends to be made -- the athletic kind. It's addictive fun that'll have your body moving like no club DJ ever could. The park, which also has basketball courts, is open from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m.

Best Of Broward-Palm Beach®

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