April 5th

Myakka River State Park

 

Even though this was a long day, it was filled with interesting things and a successful geocaching adventure.

 

We decided to make the 1 ½ hour drive to Myakka River State Park, east of Sarasota. We had visited this park 2 years ago and knew we wanted to return. It is one of Florida’s largest (37,000 acres) and most diverse natural areas. Having been developed in 1934 by the Civilian Conservation Corps makes it one of the State’s oldest parks.

 

 

 

There are a variety of activities available at this park and we still have not done all that interest us. It is made very clear that swimming is not allowed. One only has to look at the park brochure to understand that a good reason for not swimming is because alligators are abundant.

 

 

We took an airboat tour on the lake which measures 2 ½ miles by 1 ½ miles.

 

 

We took this tour two years ago and saw lots and lots of alligators—more than we saw in the Everglades. However, it turned out that this was not a good day for alligator sightings due to it being windy. Captain Robert gave us much information on alligators.

 

 

One of the facts we learned, was that alligators do not like wind. They have flaps on their eyes and ears that close when they are underwater. On windy days, the flaps continue to open and close and are quite annoying to the gators. They can stay underwater for up to 24 hours on one breath of air. One way to determine the length of an alligator is to measure the distance from the eyes to the nostrils—one inch equals 1 foot and they usually grow 1 foot each year.

 

 

 

The park has a very nice café which offers a variety of food including alligator bites, alligator stew and gator red beans and rice. We chose to order their homemade chicken salad wraps which were delicious. I have tasted alligator meat in the past and it is definitely NOT like chicken as some people told me.

 

 

And of course, this park has geocaches—lots of geocaches—150-200 of them are active. We only had enough time to look for ones that were placed near the parking area at the lake. The yellow happy faces are caches that we have found.

 

 

Our favorite was a container placed in the Visitor’s Center. From the description, we knew beforehand that we had to answer some questions to get an access code. That turned out to be easy because not only did we pay attention to the boat captain’s narration, but we also actually remembered what he said! Neither of us realized the cache was sitting out in the open when we went inside the center. We thought we might have to ask an employee to give it to us, but no one was there. Then I begin looking around for a cabinet that we might have to open or a picture frame that was hinged. Finally, I saw a combination lock on the wooden container that was shaped like an alligator.

 

 

We weren’t completely sure that we had one of our answers correct, but we made an educated guess. Cordell entered the code into the lock and happily it opened immediately. There was a variety of trade items inside the cache.

 

 

While hiking in the park, we saw some big trees.

 

 

The main reason we traveled to Myakka today was to look for a series of 29 geocaches placed along the road leading to the park. This is known as a power trail. We have done two other power trails in Delaware and they were not interesting because the cache containers were all about the same and most of them were placed at the base of telephone poles ¼ mile apart. Today, we found all of the geocaches.

 

 

We knew this might be a more interesting experience when we saw an alligator near where we stopped for the second cache site. It was only a six footer so we continued on the trail.

 

 

This Power Trail Series was entitled Fun Run and it indeed was fun. The cache owner varied the types of containers he used and the places where he put them. Several of them were hiding in guardrails and they were the easiest of all to find.

 

 

A more difficult find for a new geocacher was one that was hidden in the pipes of a storm water drainage grate near a guardrail. But we have seen hides like this is the past and so we found this one fairly quickly.

 

 

This one was placed near a sign for Myakka Valley Ranches, a subdivision comprised of approximately three hundred 5+ acre parcels that is situated adjacent to the State Park.

 

 

The cache owner had cleverly dabbed white paint on a fake pinecone and left it on the white sand around the base of a telephone pole where it blended in very well.

 

 

We have seen enough fake rock caches that this was an easy find.

 

 

We have found plenty of cache containers hanging in trees, but this one was covered in camouflaged tape and well hidden behind some of the Spanish moss.

 

 

This tiny cache was hanging from the back of a board on a fence.

 

 

 

Two of the caches were found near gates to the park. I especially liked that the park has used someone’s name on the gate.

 

 

 

We did find a few other caches along the route that were not part of the series. One was a small centrifuge vial attached to an apple snail shell that was on the ground. We see a lot of these shells because they are a favorite food of the Swallow-tailed Kite.

 

 

Another one was a match stick holder hanging from a fishing pier.

 

 

 

I saw some pretty wildflowers along the side of the highway.

 

 

 

We had a high temperature of 92° today—a bit too warm, but I am not complaining. A friend sent me an e-mail a couple of days ago and told me that we could come home now because the temps in Calvert County had reached 80°.

 

 

After we finished finding caches on the power trail, we circled back to the Sarasota National Cemetery which we had driven by earlier. We had seen a strange structure from a distance that made us curious.

 

 

While this cemetery is not as large as the one in Arlington, it is quite impressive and very peaceful.

 

 

 There is a memorial walk which has markers honoring various branches and units in the military.
 

 

 

 

 

Patriot Plaza, a 2,800-seat ceremonial amphitheater, features commissioned art that honors veterans. Along the perimeter, there are exhibits of photos from the Civil War up to the war in Afghanistan.

 

 

We were running out of time and I did not get to spend as much time there as I would have liked.

 

 

It was a long day and we did not get back to the condo until after 9:00 pm. We were tired after having missed our afternoon naps, but it was one of the best days we have experienced while here in Florida this season.