We drove down
to Myakka River State Park this morning to take in the wildlife and nature tours. The park is just south of Sarasota and about
10 miles inland from I-75, a major North/South Florida highway. The park is only 65 miles away but the trip
took almost 2 hours due to heavy Tampa Bay rush hour traffic. It seems like the traffic is worse this year
and every red light wait is longer. A
highlight of the trip was going over the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over the
entrance to Tampa Bay from St. Petersburg to Bradenton. It is a beautiful bridge, very elegant, yet
functional – and the toll is only $1.25.
Myakka River
State Park is one of Florida’s largest, oldest, and diverse state parks. It consists of over 58 square miles of
wetlands, prairies, hammocks and pinelands.
The Myakka River runs through the park with two shallow rain-fed lakes that
attract a myriad of wetland creatures making birding, canoeing, fishing and
wildlife observation popular activities. The park is also home to an abundance
of alligators, with apparently 500–1000 of them roaming the lakes and wetlands
in the park. The park is also overrun
with wild pigs who cause a lot of environmental damage due to their digging for
roots and acorns, as well as excessive breeding (3 litters a year, with 6 -12
piglets each). The park rangers take out
about a 1000 of them a year but are still losing ground in their eradication
efforts.
The park area was
also once one of Florida’s largest dry prairies. Over the years, cattle grazing and the policy
of fire exclusion had caused the area to become overgrown with scrub brush, saw
palmetto, and other invasive vegetation.
Eventually, people realized how important frequent fire was in
preserving the prairie grass lands. The park now regularly performs prescribed
burning to help preserve and restore the prairie lands. The area is also subject to frequent
lightning-caused fires that are subject to selective fire-fighting efforts.
The first tour
we went on was a tour of the lake on a large air boat. The boat holds up to 75 people and lumbers
along at a full speed of 6 mph. Our tour
was full and lasted about an hour. We
headed across the lake and cruised along the shore, seeing alligators and
several kinds of birds. The tour was
narrated and provided a lot of information about the area, the wildlife and an
especially detailed description of alligator lore. The tour was not as exciting as previous swamp
tours we have taken on smaller airboats through the bayous, but was
nevertheless very interesting. And we
did see a number of gators.
After the boat
tour, we had lunch at the restaurant run by the concessionaire who provides the
tours and kayak and canoe rentals in the park.
We had a decent lunch then boarded the tram for an off-road tour of a
portion of the park. The tour was narrated
by the guide who was towing passenger trailers with a pick-up truck. We saw more gators, learned about the history
of the park, its various types of vegetation, and the types of birds and other
wildlife that live there. We didn’t see
any other wild life although we did observe some of the typical damage caused
by the wild pigs who normally forage at night and in the early morning. This tour was also not extremely exciting,
but we learned a lot and it was worth the trip.
After the tour
we had an ice cream cone at the restaurant and drove out to a nearby bird observation
platform on the lake before heading back to the RV. Again, we fought the rush hour traffic, now
going in the other direction, arriving at the RV park around 5:30 pm. We had a causal dinner in the RV after resting
a bit then retired early.
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