Day 2 - Myakka River State Park

Like I mentioned yesterday I have not been out taking photos as much lately as I would like. Until I have a chance to get out for some new pictures I am going to get the blog caught up with some of the photos I have taken since last November. I'm starting out with some pictures from my trip to Florida this past March. This was the second year that I have gone to Florida during March. The first year was centered around my Mom's Wedding, this year was centered around Twins Spring Training.

Since my time in Florida last year was mainly helping get ready for the wedding I did not do much sightseeing so that was a goal this year. My Mom and I went to Myakka River State Park in Sarasota County. The main focus of this park is the alligators that live in the river that runs right through the middle of the park. However before we drove towards the alligator infested waters we stopped off at the Myakka Canopy Walk. The Canopy Walk is a combination of two towers connected by a 85 foot suspension bridge. The walk was built as a way to study tree tops but is mainly used by tourists looking to get a view from the top of the taller 74 foot tower. The view from the top is expansive, I am not even sure how many miles you can see but it feels like hundreds. While I enjoyed climbing to the top the favorite part for me was the interesting lines of the tower itself.

After climbing the towers of the Canopy Walk we drove deeper into the park to find some alligators. I was told that there were a couple options to choose from for viewing, you could either walk paths towards the river and find them sunning or you could rent a canoe and paddle towards them. Well I am not an idiot so I chose the walking path viewing method this time around (and will choose that again if I ever return to the park). We walked a few hundred feet from the nearest parking lot towards a man made damn to find the gators sunning. There were about 6 gators in the area between the shore and water. For the most part they did not seem to mind the people watching them and you could actually walk to within about 50 feet of them and still feel like you were safe.
This guy however chose to get a LOT closer than that. The splash you see in the water is a gator that this idiot walked up to in an attempt to get a picture with it. He got within about 10 feet before the alligator decided it was being threatened and bolted back to the water. He was just lucky the gator chose retreating to the water instead of attacking.

The park also has a very nice boardwalk/dock that leads out into a lake to watch birds from. When I was there Florida was in the middle of a severe draught and this section of the lake was basically dried up. Because of that most of the birds had moved further away towards the deeper water sections that we did not have a great view of.
The dry lake bed did have one benefit though, the wild pigs had moved into the area. Here you can see an adult pig and two younger pigs. This picture was taken right before the adult pig decided she did not like the people standing around looking at her and her piglets.
This was the next picture that I took as I retreated back into the car and out of the path of the angry wild pig. After she started running in our direction everyone in the area got back into cars and the pig turned around and returned to her piglets again.

That pretty much wraps up our day at Myakka River State Park. If you ever find yourself in the Sarasota area it is certainly worth a couple hours of your time. Tomorrow we will continue catching up on some photos from Florida.

Oh yeah, I meant to include this last photo too. I don't often post pictures that I am in - maybe never - but thought I could handle posting this one. I'll probably use it as a new profile picture for awhile too.