Myakka SP Visitor Center.
We had a leisurely start to the morning, with a light breakfast and coffee, before packing up and heading to Myakka River State Park with Steve and Karen. We took two cars as we planned to head home directly from the park.
L-to-R: Steve, Karen, and Linda study the maps and park info.
Myakka River SP was one of the first Florida State Parks. Although it is not that far from Venice and Sarasota, it encompasses many square miles of marsh, pine flatwoods, Sabal palm forest, and a long stretch of the Myakka River, including two lakes. Like Paynes Prairie, it is a wild place on the doorstep of urbanity and a major sanctuary for a diverse ecosystem including birds, alligators, and other animals. I have placed all of the wildlife photographs in a separate gallery post with today’s date.
Entrance tower to canopy skywalk suspension bridge.
Our friends from St. Petersburg (Michael and Donna) had recommended Myakka River SP to us earlier this month as one of the best places to see lots of very large alligators. They had also said that the best way to see the park was by kayak or canoe, and once we were there we saw why. The roads through the park and good, and there are some excellent trails and viewing areas, including one that takes you to an 85 foot long skywalk (suspension bridge) through the forest canopy 25 feet above the ground with a 75 foot observation tower at the end that gets you well above the treetops. But the park is mostly about water and most of the trails do not go to the water’s edge because it is marsh and there are snakes and alligators.
Linda on the skywalk 25 feet above the ground (she does not like heights or bridges that move, but she did just fine getting across.
Linda on the skywalk. It is 85 feet between the support/access towers.
Steve photographing from the skywalk.
There are two different campground areas, and they appeared to be older but very nice. Older in this case means winding roads and sites that are too small to accommodate an RV the size of our bus. We knew when we bought our bus conversion that one of the tradeoffs we were making was a higher-end travel and living experience at the expense of staying in state and national parks and forests. Even so, we were tent campers for many years and always enjoyed the less refined experience of state/national parks/forests campgrounds and their locations and adjacent activities.
The 75 foot observation tower at the end of the skywalk.
One of the campgrounds is near the entrance off of FL-70 and the other one is at the Myakka Outpost concession area on the south shore of the north lake. There is a café there, a gift shop, and concessions including a tram, an airboat, and bicycle, canoe, and kayak rentals. The boat launch is here and there is a nice picnic area where we stopped to have lunch. As we were parking we noticed people staring up at a tree. We quickly saw what they were watching; a large raptor eating a fish it had just caught. I put the long zoom lens on the camera and spent about 20 minutes photographing this bird from different angles. We eventually determined that it was an Osprey.
Karen and Linda resting at the base of the observation tower.
By mid-afternoon we had done what we felt we could do for the day without renting a canoe or kayak. We had a three hour drive to get home by which time the cats would have been on their own for almost 36 hours, so we said our farewells to Steve and Karen, agreed to meet again while we are both in Florida, and started the drive back to Williston. We made good time, arriving at 6:15 PM even with a rest stop and a fuel stop. The rain that was forecast for tomorrow started about 45 minutes before we got back to our motorcoach and it was obvious when we arrived that it had already rained heavily. We settled in for the evening, checked e-mail, and went to bed early having had two very full and satisfying days of visiting, sight-seeing, and entertainment.