If you have lived in Sanford for more than a couple of years, you have probably heard someone mention "the loop around the lake" the way people mention a home renovation that never quite wraps up. It gets brought up at the farmers market, at Fort Mellon Park, maybe over frites at Buster's. Someone says the trail is finally going to connect all the way around Lake Monroe, and you nod, because you have heard some version of that sentence before.
This summer, a real piece of it happened. But it is not the piece most people mean when they say "the Riverwalk," and understanding the difference actually changes how you plan a Saturday ride.
Two Different Projects Share One Name
The Sanford RiverWalk most residents already know, the paved stretch along Lake Monroe that runs past downtown, is finished and has been for a few years. The final segment, a 2.4-mile piece connecting Central Florida Regional Hospital out to I-4, was completed back in 2021 with a ribbon cutting that brought the whole trail to five miles and made it, according to the city, the longest shoreline recreational trail in Florida. That project ran about $43 million total, with a large share going toward rebuilding the seawall along the lake. If you walk or bike the downtown stretch today, that is the trail you are on. It has been done for a while.
What has not been done, until this summer, is the second and separate piece: a Seminole County project called the Lake Monroe Trail Loop. Its job is to extend the trail system outward from the RiverWalk toward State Road 415, closing the gap that would eventually let someone ride a full loop around the entire lake rather than an out-and-back along the waterfront. That is the project people have actually been talking about for years, and it is the one that just crossed a real milestone.
What Got Built This Summer
Seminole County, the City of Sanford, and the Florida Department of Transportation held a ribbon cutting this summer for Phase 1 of the Lake Monroe Trail Loop. The new segment runs along Mellonville Avenue from East Seminole Boulevard to Celery Avenue, then continues along Celery Avenue to just east of Sipes Avenue. It broke ground in spring 2025 and was funded through a mix of Seminole County's voter-approved Infrastructure Sales Tax, commonly called the Penny Sales Tax, and a Local Agency Program agreement with FDOT.
Here is the part worth knowing if you actually ride this corridor: that stretch of Celery Avenue used to be the part where the paved trail gave out and you were merging onto the road with traffic for about two miles before picking the trail back up near Mellonville. Riders have complained about exactly that gap for a while. This new segment is the fix for it.
It is not the whole fix. Phase 2 of the same project, which will carry the trail from a point east of Sipes Avenue on to Chickasaw Drive, is still in design and has not started construction. So the full 26-mile loop around Lake Monroe, and the eventual link to the 210-mile Florida Coast-to-Coast Trail running from St. Petersburg to the Space Coast, is still a work in progress. What changed is that one of the genuinely annoying gaps in that loop just closed, and the next one has a name and a route even if it does not have a finish date yet.
What You Can Actually Ride End to End Right Now
If you want to test the new stretch this weekend, here is roughly how the current route lays out starting from downtown.
- Start at Fort Mellon Park, the 17-acre waterfront park on Lake Monroe that anchors the downtown end of the trail. It has a fitness trail, a playground, and a splash pad the city bills as the largest in Central Florida, so it is an easy meeting point if your group includes kids.
- Head west along the original RiverWalk past the Seminole County Courthouse, the Sanford Museum, a public boat ramp, and the dock for the Rivership Romance cruise boat.
- Keep going and the trail connects near Lake Monroe Park with the Cross Seminole Trail and the Spring to Spring Trail, which heads north for another 25 miles if you are in the mood for a longer ride.
- Or go the other direction. From Fort Mellon Park, pick up the trail heading east and south along Mellonville Avenue, where the new Celery Avenue connector now carries you on paved trail instead of the old on-road stretch.
- That paved section currently ends just east of Sipes Avenue. From there to Chickasaw Drive is Phase 2 territory, meaning you are back on surface streets until that segment gets built.
So the honest answer is that you can now do more of this loop on dedicated trail than you could a year ago, but you still cannot do all of it without at least one stretch of road riding.
A Few Reasons to Actually Stop Along the Way
The trail is not just a way to get somewhere. A few stops make sense to build into the ride rather than pass by.
- Fort Mellon Park's splash pad and fitness trail, useful if you are riding with kids who need a break halfway through
- The Central Florida Zoo and Botanical Gardens, a short distance from downtown and an easy add-on if you are already out for the morning
- The public boat ramp and marina downtown, worth a look even if you are not launching anything, since it is the same site used as the fireworks launch point for the city's July 4th event
- The Sanford Museum, tucked right along the trail near the courthouse, for anyone who wants ten minutes of local history mixed into the ride
Close the Loop With Downtown, Not Just the Trail
The trail dumps you back into downtown Sanford whichever direction you started, and that is really the point. This is a small, walkable district where a bike ride and a meal fit into the same afternoon without much extra driving.
Henry's Depot is the easiest stop if your group cannot agree on what to eat. It is a food hall built on the site of one of Florida's earliest rail depots, with a rotating lineup of vendors covering burgers, seafood, wood-fired pizza, and barbecue under one roof. Buster's has been in downtown since 2013 and is still known for double-fried, hand-cut frites, though it has broadened from its original Belgian-only beer list into more of a general European beer hall since changing ownership a few years back. Tuffy's started as Sanford's original cidery and has grown into a music-and-games hangout with a kitchen, a reliable stop if you are staying downtown past dinner.
For something more sit-down, Hollerbach's German Restaurant on East 1st Street is the district's long-running destination spot. The Tennessee Truffle, a few blocks over on West 1st Street, runs a smaller modern-Southern kitchen that cures its own bacon and bakes its own biscuits, though it keeps limited hours, dinner Thursday through Saturday plus Saturday brunch, so it takes a little planning around the ride rather than showing up on a whim. If beer is more the goal than food, Deviant Wolfe Brewing has become a regular stop for events near Fort Mellon Park.
None of this requires a car. Park once near downtown, do the ride, and let the trail bring you back to wherever you want to eat.
The Loop Isn't Finished, But Your Saturday Just Got Better
The story about Sanford "finishing the loop" has been around long enough that it started to sound like background noise. This summer it stopped being background noise for one specific stretch of Mellonville and Celery Avenue, the part that used to force riders onto the road. Phase 2 still has to happen before the full 26-mile loop and the Coast-to-Coast Trail connection are real. But if you tried this ride a year ago and got frustrated at the gap, that gap is smaller now, and it is worth going back out to see for yourself.
If you are the kind of person who tracks what is actually changing in Sanford, not just the headline version, that is the same instinct that matters when you are thinking about property here down the road. Omar Cotto lives in this market and pays attention to the details like this one. Let's Connect.
