Nov 29, 2012 - Day 137 - Myakka River State Park, Florida

We started our park tour on the boat tour of the Upper Myakka Lake on a airboat powered by a 1975 Cadillac Eldorado engine that was very quiet. We saw the now familiar Great Egrets, Great Blue Herons, Ibis, Snowy Egrets (with bright yellow feet, also called golden slipper birds), tri-colored Egrets, and Osprey and many alligators, one about 14 feet long and another little one about 2 feet long. After a great lunch at their cafe, we carried on to two of theie nature walks. The birdwalk pier was pretty but did not show us anything new. We...

Nov 28, 2012 - Day 136 - to Myakka River State Park, Florida

We started the morning with a pleasant walk along the nature trail from the boat basin, and watched a while at the boat basin to try to spot the manatee again. The fish were still jumping but we could not spot the manatee. We did see an alligator, about 3 feet long, so maybe that was why we couldn't see the manatee. We packed up and headed into Naples to find a Verizon office to make a payment on our jetpack package again as we were running out of data allowed for the month. We needed to find out if we could bump our package to the next...

Apr 28, 2012 - Myakka River State Park

It was a very long day. Up fairly early, because Clark wanted to go back to the farmers' market in St. Petersburg. We also decided we'd like to get a view of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. We'd heard so much about it and what a marvel it is, so that was another good excuse to go to St. Petersburg. As we saw it in the distance, I was reminded of the story the woman at the stallion farm told about her father. He had a visitor from Europe and was showing him around the area. He took the visitor to some building, in Tampa, and the guest asked how...

Feb 4, 2012 - January 27th

January 27th It rained all night but stopped before we woke in the morning. We got up ate breakfast and took a bike ride. We rode about 7 miles. We road the road to the park entrance, then back to the camp with a short diversion to the Manatee River to check a possible fishing site. Later I returned to the fishing site to try my luck. Well, I didn’t have much. Three small sunfish was all I caught. Returning to camp we gathered a little firewood, talked to the camper next to us for a long time and finally started a fire about dusk. We came...

Feb 4, 2012 - January 25th

January 25th Today we left Collier-Seminole State Park South of Naples and traveled to Myakka River State Park near and East of Sarasota. On the way we used US highway 41 most of the way. We didn’t see much in the way of wildlife on the trip. We did see a lot of urban activity though. Lots of shops and stores. We arrived at the new park around 3 o’clock. We checked in and set up camp. We took a drive down the park road and saw a very lot of wildlife. We saw several groups of turkeys, A lot of wadding birds, including sand hill cranes. We...

Jan 15, 2010 - Alligators, Feral Pigs, and Vultures! Oh My!

Today was our warmest day so far. Our car thermometer registered 78, and we were more than ready. We packed the boat with poles, lunches, and hope and headed for the Myakka River State Park. The park covers 58 square miles of wetlands, prairies, hammocks and pinelands. There is a 7-mile scenic drive through palm hammocks and along the Upper Myakka Lake. The park has camping, hiking trails, cabins for rent, and a concession building which has a restaurant and gift shop. There are tram rides through the forested areas as well as large air...

May 26, 2007 - Venice, Florida

Another birthday-gift trip from Michelle to Charlie Venice is about 1 1/2 hours south of us and has a unique feature: is shallow waters there is a deposit of pre-historic shark teeth. Michelle being pregnant could not dive, but she signed me up for a dive trip. Luckily my cold ended just in time for these 2 dives. The first site in about 22 feet of water, lots of small shark teeth, the second in about 28 ft dept with lot fewer finds, but those were all of the bigger items variety: a bunch of whale bones and two giant 20 million yrs old...

May 3, 2007 - Ringling Museum of Art & Winter Home

One of the "Main Attractions" in this part of Florida is the Ringling Museum of Art. Here is a little bit of the history as to how it ended up in Sarasota. In 1884 the five Ringling Brothers started a circus. The circus travelled by rail and would set up and perform in a town. Once the show was over, they would take down the tents, load up the animals and be off to the next stop. You have to remember that at this time there were very limited forms of entertainment and having the circus come to town was a big event. Often schools and...

Jan 28, 2007 - North Port, Florida

1/28 - 1/30 Well the cruise was over and it was hard to say goodbye to all our friends and relatives - a great time was had by all. The ship traveled 2567 miles at an average speed of 20 knots. We took a taxi back to our car and headed back to our home in North Port. We spent a couple days visiting with ML (Jeff was skiing in Vermont). She took us on a tour of Punta Gorda where we checked out a park and wharf along the Peace River. We also went to a shell store where we saw all the things that can be sold that are made out of shells. ML...

Jan 17, 2007 - The Manatee Festival & Homosassa Springs State Wildlife Park

Saturday we went to the 20th annual Manatee Festival in Crystal River. It's basically a street fair with local artists, vendors, etc. They also had boat rides through Kings Bay, where they didn't guarantee you would see manatees, but they indicated it was pretty likely. We had beautiful weather for it, 75 and sunny, and yes, we did see manatees. First I saw one surface on my right side, just out of the water and back in so quickly I thought it might have been a dolphin. It's possible that it was a dolphin, since they do have those around...

Jan 4, 2007 - North Port, Florida

1/4 - 1/5 Drove 62 miles to North Port, Florida and parked in the driveway of ML (Mary Lynn) and Jeff. ML and Ken use to work together at Xerox in Leesburg, Virginia. ML and Jeff were nice enough to let us park our house in their driveway for three weeks while we gallivanted around the Caribbean. We spent the two days finding our luggage and packing for the big trip. ML cooked a delicious chicken dinner and we got to meet their friends Jeff and Jackie.

Dec 6, 2006 - 12-6-06

12-6-06 Today has been a good day for the Jodock's and their amazing adventure. Jim's back is doing better, and Sandy hasn't killed him. Even though the pace has slowed down a lot, several things have transpired the last couple of days. Monday and Tuesday we did some minor shopping and Jim completed a couple of chores around the motorhome. Since he wasn't suppose to do anything strenuous, he repaired a broken shade, replaced the two fans over the dashboard, and replaced a retaining strap on the folding door. Tuesday we treated ourselves...