Our original plans were to travel to Florida's west coast, near Sarasota and spend some time kayaking and bicycling in Myakka State Park. About a week prior we realized that the big
RV show in Tampa was open the same weekend we were planning to drive to Myakka. As it turned out, we got to the Tampa show on Saturday afternoon, caught a couple hours of the show including a seminar about using the generator in our RV. For dinner we caught an Uber car to the local
Sonny's restaurant (other locations have proved much better than this one) and spent the night in the RV at the show. The next day we enjoyed a couple more seminars and walked around the show, especially enjoying our conversation with two gents who own and travel with an old Ford RV that was home built in the 1930's.
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| Panorama of Upper Myakka Lake |
Late Sunday afternoon after the show closed, we drove the RV to Myakka State Park and checked into the campground. We were pleased with our site as we were on a bend at the far end of the campground so we were as private as possible, but still only a short walk from the lake for kayaking and the road for bicycling.
Monday was a bit cool in the morning so we relaxed, read our books and walked to the lakefront.
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| The powdery sand of Siesta Key |
It was a beautiful day, but still chillier than we transplanted northerners have come to expect of winter in Florida. So we drove to the beach in Sarasota having heard that the sand on
Siesta Key is brilliantly white, fine, soft and comfortable to walk on. We soon learned that the info was true even on what passes for a cold day, as we walked and enjoyed the tiny, cottony, powder-like granules. After a dinner at Walt's Fish Market Restaurant, we headed back to camp for a relaxing evening.
Tuesday was cool again, too cool for us thin-blooded southerners to spend too much time in the truly nice outdoors so except for a couple short walks in the park, we spent the day in town, notably at the movie cinema then refilling the LP tank in the RV.
Wednesday was definitely the day we'd been waiting for. Noticeably warmer, we rode several miles on our bikes enjoying wonderful views of the flora and fauna of west central Florida including palms, ferns, grasses, Spanish moss covered oaks and wet lowlands with ibis', cranes, pelicans and alligators. We even caught a small deer hiding in the trees, just a few feet off the road.
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| Small deer in the shadows, center of picture |
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| Karen enjoying her bicycle cruise through Myakka State Park |
Our bikes were fun transport throughout the park as we pedaled from the campground to the park entrance, then to an exciting "canopy walkway" that literally took us into the tree tops overlooking the park, river and lake.
Click Here for a video panorama.
Our biking also took us to a birdwalk that is a very long pedestrian pier that juts a couple hundred yards over Upper Lake Myakka. It was terrific watching the large flocks pelicans, and other water fowl as the cavorted over the lake. Just as we approached the campground we found another huge group of birds in the trees and on a pond,
Video Here.
That afternoon we launched our kayaks and paddled towards the hundreds of pelicans that were settled in a small cove on the northern shore of Upper Lake Myakka. As we crossed the lake we passed near a couple other boats including the "
World's Largest Airboats," as the concessionaires tag their tour boats.
The bigger thrills struck us as we paddles closer to the pelicans. Not only were there several hunder of the huge birds calmly milling about only a few yards from our silent kayaks, but we also saw a family of feral pigs scrounging for food along the shoreline just feet beyond the pelicans. The family of pigs included several cute little piglets as well as mom, pop and a couple uncles and aunts. Unfortunately, we didn't get any photos of this great wildlife adventure from our kayaks.
That evening, we returned to the shoreline for a spectacular sunset.
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| Myakka River sunset, just south of Upper Myakka Lake |
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| The birds and colors were spectacular |
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