Johathan Dickinson SP

Well, it is time to move once again. Our time here on the Atlantic has been good. Of course the warm spell experienced here didn’t hurt our positive impression. Temps for the last few days have been Highs of 80’s and lows of 60’s. We found this park to be very nice. At the entrance there is dune, sand scrub habitat with lots of dead snags which is not very attractive to campers, but 4 miles into the park there is a campground called the River Campground. It is in the marsh, slash pine and turkey oak habitat; a nice camping environment. The bathhouse was clean but layout was very tight. If we return we will look for sites in the beginning of the loop, the back side (#114 up) has you where the sun hits the door side of the camper all day.


What a lovely beach within a few minutes drive. This is the National Wildlife Refuge beach on Juniper Island. Super place to spend a couple of days.

This brown pelican was eyeing a surf fisherman and posing for some of my pictures. How nice of him. We move Sat. Jan 31 further south. We plan to stay a few days in a city park before heading to Bahia Honda SP close to Key West. We are really looking forward to spending some time there. After 5 days there we go to John Pendecamp SP for 2 days then back to Myakka River SP. We are 1/3 of the way through our FL camping experience. It has been great so far and we look forward to what the Lord has in store for us for the rest of our stay. Hope to get a posting during our stay in the Keys.

New Parks, Myakka River and Jonathan Dickinson SPs

Third campground of our trip is Myakka River SP. I have to say that our first impression was not good as you can see from the picture of our site. This site is the tightest camping we have experienced in a State Park, a close second would have been Mustang Island in TX last winter. As we set up we both said that we would not return here again. Well, that changed after we had a chance to get out of the campground. This is a very large SP and it has a lot to offer. Extensive off road biking trails along with lots of paved road to ride, a lake, river area, hiking trails, a wilderness area and more. After looking around we see that there are better campsites (don’t get the sites that are in the middle of the grounds at Big Flats CG). The smaller Old Prairie CG is the nicest, with better bathhouse and laundry there.


Yes, we did more paddling here. The wilderness reserve attached to this park requires permits to enter. They limit use to 30 people per day in the area. We got permits and paddled the Myakka River from the ranger station to the Little Myakka Lake this day. And yes, this water has alligators. And we found that they grow them big around here!


This one was taken with a zoom lens and was a comfortable distance away.


These two were in a small channel and gave Les a thrill as they dove under his kayak to “escape” from us. Wow! I like the bigger water better.


You can see how close the bank was in this area. Another day we got permits again and hiked 2 miles into the reserve to the lake. It was a beautiful walk, and we saw an armadillo scurrying across the path. Heard some wild pigs in the brush but did not see them.


Another cool feature of this park is a canopy walk they have. Yes, it bounces as you cross and my fear of heights kept me moving along. It was cool to walk in the tree tops though.


The air plants they have here are so cool. Of course the Spanish Moss is the traditional one you think of but there are so many more to observe. And the pretty fungus that grows on the old growth trees is neat.


On our paddle we saw a nice variety of birds. I think I have them identified correctly. My birder friends will have to correct me if I’m off. I have pictures of them all on the slideshow to the right. Here is the list: Osprey, White Ibis, Lipkin, Little Blue Heron, Great Egret, Lesser Yellowleg, Great Blue Heron and Black-Necked Stilt. We saw a Yellow-crowned Night Heron, but no picture yet.


We see the damage from these guys a lot. The wild pigs tear up the ground and we have seen them at all the parks so far. They must be a big problem here in FL. We moved to the Atlantic side Jan. 22, that will be interesting to see if there is any difference from the west coast.


We moved to Jonathan Dickinson SP last week. As you can see they have much nicer sites. There is some biking here, hiking and good paddling on the Loxahatchee River.


We saw more birds, lots of osprey and paddled 3.5 miles to a historic site, Trapper Nelson’s. That was a long day, but very pretty. We will be here all of next week. The weather has warmed up and we are enjoying sun and temps in the mid to upper 70’s. We have to hunt WiFi so be back when we can.

Moving tomorrow

Tomorrow we move to our next campground, Myakka River SP. It is very close to this area so no big drive. The cold front hit us too. The high today was 55o, but I'll take that over the temps Mom is reporting from PA. Above is a pic of Turtle Beach and a couple more on the slideshow. What beautiful sea shells the Gulf of Mexico gifts to this beach. I had to pick up a pocketful! We will plan to drive out to the coast again tonight. Turtle Beach was about a half hour drive, but the one today should only be 15 minutes? There is a lot of build up on the coast and you can be driving right beside the water and never see it! Thank goodness some was saved for the public. We won't have WiFi at the next parks so back to visiting public libraries.


We were blessed with good wildlife here. This cardinal and her mate visited yesterday and came very close for us to take their pictures. On a bike ride on some backcountry trails of the park (a lot of areas that were too sandy to ride and we pushed) we had a herd of wild pigs cross the path ahead of us. Three adults and 10 babies, no picture! We also saw my first FL Scrub Jay, a bird only found locally I believe. They are so pretty and the one we saw had no fear of us, coming very close for us to get a good look. The squirrels also like to come into the campsite. Sorry we keep our area clean. ;-)

Oscar Shearer SP, Osprey, FL

Our second campground is Oscar Shearer SP outside Osprey, FL. This cg is a little bigger than the last with 98 sites. Even though the sites are not quite as big, they are private with good vegetation between. They have lots of bath houses that are older but well maintained. Our site is on the creek but we don't have access to it. Other sites on the creek do have access to the creek, ones we will look for if returning. You can paddle the creek, see below. This park is more developed with a Nature Center where they hold activities from a good group of volunteers. There is biking here on a Rails to Trails that is about 6 miles in length. This park sits on it and has easy access. There seems to be more birds here. Eagles fish from the creek along with osprey. We return here in Feb., I'm glad we are returning. The weather continues to me good. It has cooled to t-shirt and long pants temps. but that is OK! Oh, we got a call Monday from Jane and Martin. They were down at their place in Sarasota and we were able to meet them for breakfast before they had to fly home.


More kayaking on the creek behind our site, South Creek. Since we are close to the bay and the water here is saltier, there are no alligators in the creek. Yeah! We had a nice paddle from our site to the Rt 41 bridge. The creek is very narrow and shaded as in the picture above for the beginning of the trip but widens gradually as you approach the bay. We stopped before the bay. Along the way we saw mangrove trees, palms, live oaks, oyster beds, eagles and herons. Bery nice.


Does this look familiar? We were touring a historic site, Spanish Point, where there is this house built 1901. We were amazed at the paneling and ceiling, just like the cabin. Another evidence that our 1900 building date for the cabin is probably correct. This tour was very interesting, having info on 3 phases of the history of this area: Prehistoric (Indian), Pioneer (1867 Webb family) and predevelopment (1910 Palmer family.

Quick Post

Just a note to let you know we moved to our second park, Oscar Shearer SP. More on it later. The nice thing is that we have WiFi here! So I will be on line and able to put on a blog entry soon, have to get some more experiences and pictures. I was able to get the slide show changed to some pics from this trip now. Our weather is still wonderful and sunny.

Lake Manatee SP

New Years in a South Carolina CG. A good dinner, some champagne and a James Bond movie made the evening memorable.


We had a good visit with my cousins Jan and Jerry Daniel in Jacksonville. What a good New Years dinner with the PA Dutch saurkraut and pork! We had a chance to see their vineyard and were treated to some of their wine. They left us camp out in their front year too! Thanks Jan!


Lake Manatee SP. Wow what a gem. Small park located just north of Sarasota, FL and inland on a manmade lake. Only 60 campsite which are spaced very far apart. Nice privacy. We are blessed with higher than normal temps, 75o to 85o during the days. And beautiful sunshine. It is to rain today but that gives us a chance to find this library to post the blog. This is a super start to our winter adventure.



Les and I have enjoyed 2 trips in the kayaks on a local river, Rye River. This "river" is smaller than our stream and it tidal so at low tide many places are very shallow. But the palms, pines, cypruss, orange trees, and mosses make it a really nice place to take in. We saw a river otter and many turtles. Oh yeah, and the big guy below.


OK, this is the time I was shaking. I simply must educate myself better to how to behave around alligators. Because I'm not sure we did the correct thing? As this 12 ft alligator slid off the bank just 20 ft in front of us, and then laid across our path looking at us. We stopped and starred at him, not knowing what to do as he was blocking our path with his large body. After a few very long seconds, he submerged and disappeared in the black water, shallow water I may add! Not knowing where he went, and being that this Rye river is so small, we paddled onward, over his position. That was spooky. This is a picture of him on our return trip where he was laying on the opposite bank. We are OK so maybe we did the correct thing by starring him down?? Or, maybe God protected us like he did David with the lions?

Winter Trip Begins

We are off again for round two of escaping the winter freeze in PA. We buttoned up the cabin and headed out around 8:30am Dec. 30th. We drove about 7 hours south on I95 the first day to "our" campground in North Carolina. We say "our" campground because when we stopped last spring on our way to the Aliner Rally for the night, we were the only people in the entire park. This time there were 3 other sites occupied. The temps that day were in the 40's and 50's.

Day 2 found us in sunshine and temps. in the upper 60's all day! We had to take off our outter shirts used for the morning when it was 42o. We made it to Waltersboro, SC and a private cg. That is how I'm able to get this blog going. For New Years we had a wonderful haddock, rice, and salad dinner. Les made the fish outside. We watched a James Bond DVD, Christmas gift from Aaron, and had champagne but had to toot our horn at 11:30pm because we were tired.

Today we will go to Jacksonville, FL to visit my cousin Jan and Jerry Daniel. This is the first time we will have visited them. We will camp at their place and then head to Sarasota to our first SP Friday.

We will be in touch with pictures maybe the next WiFi. God Bless.