Our Week at Hillsborough River S.P.

Well, today (Tuesday) is our last full day at this park - and we LOVE it here. This is definitely on the list of "must return" state parks. The hiking has been great - I'm attaching a picture of me with my new hiking stick! I've done all of the trails and they are really pretty - yesterday I did a 3.4 mile hike that went along the shore of the river for half its length and then cut back through the "jungle" (which is how it felt)! Since we had rain on Sunday, the last quarter of the trail was really muddy and slick so I was actually glad I had picked up the hiking stick - I kind of leaned on it while I circumvented some of the standing water on the trail. Another nice trail goes back to a small set of rapids along the river - I think I read that it was one of the only rapids in Florida - and I would say it compares to the rapids on the Grand River back home. But it was really pretty. The park itself is really beautiful, with the bridges over the water and and beautiful trees and plants everywhere. We've both done a lot of biking here - it's one of the only parks I've seen that actually has a designated bike lane on the roads going through the park.

As I mentioned in the last post, they also have a fort here, called Fort Foster. We did that tour on Saturday (they only have tours on Saturday at 2:00 and Sunday at 11:00). We met at "parking lot #1" and got onto little trams which then crossed over the road and went through some private property in order to get to the fort. Two camphosts conducted the tour and gave a lot of history of the area. The fort was built by a Colonel Foster (hence the name) in the 1830's during the second Seminole War. We had to walk a little way to get to the fort itself and as we approached it Dave noticed some movement through the little slot window at the corner of the fort and wandered over there to see what was inside. All of a sudden a gun barrel came out through the window, pointed right at Dave, accompanied by a loud shout from inside. Dave jumped a MILE and everybody cracked up laughing. When we got inside, we found this guy (his name was "Turkey"...?!) dressed up as a Seminole Indian. The tour was pretty comprehensive - the hosts took us inside each building and explained all the artifacts and how each building was utilized. At the end, we went outside to the bridge that goes across the Hillsborough River and "Turkey" gave a little lecture on the Seminole Indians and their "side" of the arguments that lead to the war. We found out that this was the longest war (7 years) fought by the United States up until Vietname - interesting. Anyway, we enjoyed the tour, although it was a TOUCH lengthy - 2-1/2 hours.

So tomorrow we move onto the next park - we took a little ride down there on Sunday since it was raining - and it will be a good one too. And the weather has been excellent - in the 70's pretty much every day - so we are quite the happy campers! Today we plan to take a last kayak ride (our fourth this week) on the beautiful Hillsborough River and tonight we'll watch our favorite show (The Biggest Loser) and probably take a run into town to the Walmart and to Beef O'Brady's for a cocktail. And that will wind up our week here. The next post will be from Alafia River State Park.