Park #8 Alafia River State Park

Gee, I guess I'm a couple days behind here. So - to catch up - we left Hillsborough River last Wednesday and are now at our eighth park, Alafia River State Park. It's about 25 miles south of Hillsborough River, so we're still just a little east of Tampa. The park is pretty - but kind of different from what we're used to. The sites are pretty big and quite private - the camping area is sort of a big pasture, with grass about 4 feet high. There is a pretty little lake right by the campground so Dave's been fishing a couple times but no luck so far... There are two loops in the campground - the one we're in and the other one is an equestrian loop - each campsite has a pair of poles with a line running between them that can be used for hooking horses to - there's probably a name for this but I don't know what it is! So there are quite a few horses out here, including a beautiful yellow palomino. Cute story - Dave was out paddling in his kayak and he could tell the palomino was nervous and kind of prancing around, when all of a sudden his owner came out and asked Dave if he would mind paddling a little closer to the shore so the horse could get used to him. While he paddled up, the owner kept reassuring the horse and telling him it was ok. We got kind of a kick out of that! The other thing that's a little different about this park is that it's a huge dirt bike venue - bicycles, not motorcycles - and has a whole bunch of riding trails. The park used to be a phosphate mine in its "pre-park" days so it has a whole bunch of hills and valleys and tons of little lakes (or ponds!), so apparently it's perfect for biking - in fact, it's the site of the Florida State Championship races. The only bad thing for me is you can't hike on the trails - there's only one that's been set aside for hikers and that one is only a mile long. It's pretty cool, but too short. And, as the name implies, there's also the Alafia River - but YIKES what a nasty river for kayaking (especially compared to Hillsborough River, which will certainly be on our list of absolutely favorite rivers forever!). We did go out on the Alafia, but it was kind of dirty and after a short distance opened up into a much wider river with kind of boring banks - but the worst thing was the SMELL. Because of the long cold spell, apparently a LOT of fish have died and the river was full of dead fish floating everywhere - I even hit some with my paddles - YUCK! We were only out for about 45 minutes before we agreed to call it quits. (But there were some alligators, which we always enjoy seeing!)

The park itself is nice, but not great - but that's okay because the main appeal is its proximity to the Sarasota/Bradenton area. We haven't been in this area for three years so one of our goals for this week was to spend a few days doing some of the things we've enjoyed in the past. So today we went into Sarasota and went to the county park at the end of Lido Key. We took our bikes along, so the first thing we did was take a ride out toward the Mote Aquarium. There's a nice little park out there and it's just a really nice ride with beautiful views of the Sarasota Bay. We stopped at one of our favorite little bars out there - it's a charter fishing outfit with a funky little outside bar. Then we rode our bikes into St Armands Circle - a great place to sit and "people watch" - the residents are all rich as God, with a gob of wide-eyed tourists thrown in for good measure. We grabbed lunch at another of our favorite places - Cha Cha Coconuts. I had the conch fritters, which were excellent. After we ate, we rode back to the park and spent the rest of the afternoon out on the beach. Unfortunately it was kind of overcast, but on the other hand it was in the mid-70's with a balmy breeze, so we certainly aren't complaining! Tomorrow we plan to head back into Bradenton to spend the day at the Coquina Beach on Amelia Island. We finally feel like our Florida weather has finally arrived and we're getting to do some nice things outside in 70 degree temps - sorry, all of you poor frozen Michiganders!