Hey Guys! While I was planning our Florida loop to hide from the winter, I really thought we’d have nice warm days the whole time. Well, maybe not the entire time, but for 90% of it at least. But, no. This year, the weather has decided to throw in some storms and cooler (50s & 60s) temps and Guys…that is not beach weather!! Not for me anyway! So, we didn’t get to have a “beach day” where we stayed at the beach and played while we were in Estero or Sarasota.

Such a bummer.

We stayed at the Myakka River State Park for a week and loved it! This is another state park we will definitely be revisiting! And…this one has full-hookups available in one of the camping loops! If you go and need full-hookups you’ll want to reserve a spot in the Palmetto Ridge loop. This park is another difficult one to snag a spot in and I can totally see why now that we’ve spent time there. The whole area is really pretty and the park itself is really close to town so, there’s great cell signal. You can see our “yard” in the picture above. It’s hard to tell from the picture, but it’s a really generous space with some great shade trees.

Some of you might not know what I mean when I say “full-hookups”. This means that there is water, sewer, and electric available at each spot. We can make it two weeks without a sewer hookup before we really need to go find a dump station. In Koreshan State Park we only had water and electric hookups, so anytime we needed to wash up or take a shower or go use the privy…we had to use the park facilities. Which is ok when I can snag a spot that’s not too terribly far away, but sometimes that means walking a mile to get to the latrine…day or night. That can be quite a walk (no matter how close we are) in the middle of the night…you know what I mean?

We were able to walk around two beaches while we were in the Sarasota area…even though it was too cold to actually stay and play. And we totally hit the jack-pot with shell collecting! So. Many. Shells! We would go pretty early in the morning (well, early for us…so we’d be there by 8) to try and get the better shells. Walking along a beach is not a bad way to start out the day. I think if we had a home near a beach I would probably be there daily.

This is a small portion of the shells we found on one of the beaches. I did my homework and found a method to clean, brighten, and preserve the shells, so Nicholas and I worked on that pretty much every day we were there. I’m a little OCD when it comes to organization…so all of our shells are grouped together in bags from the beach we found them. Each bag is labeled with the name of the beach, the town the beach is in, and the date we went. So…when we were cleaning/brightening/preserving the shells, I had to keep each group separate so none of the shells mixed with shells from a different beach. I know, I know…I’m weird. It’s a thing. We just ignore it.

I actually found this little guy on one of my morning walks down by the river (I’ll show you pics of that later), but the resident was still very much alive, so I left it there. Did you know it’s against the law (in Florida) to collect live shells?

Myakka River State Park is one of Florida’s largest state parks and is known for it’s wildlife. It’s also one of the prettiest state parks we’ve seen. One of the big draws to this park is Florida’s only “Wild & Scenic River” that you can explore with canoes and kayaks or on a guided tour. Just be careful…gators are abundant here. Big gators. Big!

One of the hikes in the park is the Canopy Walkway. How cool does that sound? Canopy Walkway. I was expecting greatness! But, it wasn’t very big…and the view at the end was…ok. I’m not going to lie…it was kind of a letdown.

The wildlife in the park was definitely not a letdown. There was such a big variety of different birds and raccoons, hogs…

deer, gators, and squirrels… There was always something to watch. It’s really hard to see, but in the left pic are some deer and in the right pic you can see two gators being lazy on the shore. Every time we left our campsite, we saw wildlife of some kind!

One of our family goals for 2019 is to have more campfires. As a family who lives in an RV and is outdoors more than the average family…we rarely have a campfire. We really enjoy them. But it never seems to happen. So, for 2019 we are making an effort to spend more time under the stars with a cozy campfire and less time inside playing games.

We found two foodie spots. One was called Smacks Burgers and Shakes…you can see a burger in the pic above. They were really tasty burgers and Alex and I had to have a bit of a sweet treat after lunch and each tried some of their frozen custard. I didn’t get a photo of it…but it was so good! The other place we found is called Der Dutchman Sarasota and Guys…oh…my goodness! It was so good! I got zero pics of it…but if you’re in the area…just trust me and go. It’s a buffet and it’s all home cooking. Like the good kind of home cooking…not the kind where Aunt Lola brought a mystery casserole and everyone is afraid to try it. No, everything on the buffet was really good. Make sure you save room for dessert…and get the Dutch Surprise…you’ll thank me. I would have paid them for the recipe…I tried…more than once.

I usually end my posts with some pictures of pretties I’ve found in the area…but let’s talk about the best part of this park instead. The sunsets. Guys…look at these gorgeous sunsets!! I have soooo many amazing sunset pics from our one week staying in Myakka River State Park! In the bottom left pic above, if you look closely, you can see two gators. I think Florida might have been showing off just a bit. She did a great job of it.

See y’all down the road!

#hidingfromthecold