We visited on a Thursday morning in late December 2024. There was plenty of parking when we arrived around 9:30AM. There were 3 cars in front of us waiting to get in. We drove straight to Cannon Beach and got a pretty nice spot under a tree near the beach.

Cannon beach has great snorkeling if don't have the time or want to pay for the snorkeling tour at the park. We brought all our own snorkeling gear. The trick for us was to snorkel near the rocks on the right hand side of the beach. The water was pretty clear for us as long as you don't kick up a lot of the bottom and messing it up for yourself. The rocks go pretty far out. The best spot was behind the mangrove patch at the further out island. The floor is very rocky so water shoes are also a must. The back side of the mangrove had as many and different variety of fish as we saw in Fort Zachary Taylor and Bahia Honda State Park. Possibly slightly more but that is also weather dependent. It was sunny all day when we were here and kind of overcast and cloudy when we visited the other 2 parks. I still think the snorkeling in Biscayne and Dry Tortugas National park was better. But this was a fraction of the cost.

There was plenty of space on the beach for those who just wanted to lay out and sun bathe. This was a much more natural beach and I don't think they sweep it like many other public beaches but I find that way more interesting as it's teaming with wildlife.

There was plenty of tree shade and shelters at this beach as well at right by the water. When you walk from Cannon Beach over to the bath houses, there is also benches you can sit on and just look out onto the water.

The showers were a bit far away from the beach at the bath houses. The showers are located outside and some shower heads were better than others. They also had changing rooms inside.

By the time we left around 11:30 the parking lot was almost full. There were like 8 or 9 cars in line to get in.

Overall if we were in the area of Key Largo or maybe even as far as Miami, I'd consider doing a drive to John Pennekamp State Park just to do some snorkeling at Cannon Beach. Just realize this is not your typical "beach" when you hear someone say "let's go to the beach". It's not clean beautiful white sand where you jump and frolic in the waves. This is a naturalist's playground and a chance to explore nature in this very specific biome.