Florida Trip Part 3: Myakka State Park and the Buzzard Bang |
| Gordon White | Monday, 01 February, 2010 | |||||||||
After working the weekend at the Florida Supershow, we were in the mood for a little time off. Working an RV show is a lot of fun, but being on your feet for nine hours straight for a couple of days can really take it out of you. I honestly don’t know how some of the industry representatives do show after show, week after week. My darling wife is the planner in our family and she pointed our 2010 Arctic Fox 865 towards Myakka River State Park just east of Sarasota, Florida. TCM reader and Florida resident, Don Kingfield, had recommended the park to us as one not to miss. He was right. Joining us on our Myakka stay were TCM Ambassadors, Jerry and Reta Caldwell, in their 2005 Lance 1181. As we pulled into the park, our rigs were embraced by a lush overgrown canopy of palm trees, oak trees, and airplants. When arrived at our shaded campsites, we backed right to a swamp complete with white Egrets tiptoeing through the water. We were surrounded by miles of wetlands, prairies, and shallow lakes. It was beautiful.
After we plugged in our campers, Angela and I took a short walk down to the Myakka Outpost where we were delighted to find free wireless internet. That was a big relief as our Verizon cell phone and MIFI 2200 3G internet device were not working well in the park. We urgently needed internet for the next day’s story. So much for the time off. The next morning we woke up at dawn and headed down to the Outpost to publish the 2010 Reader Survey and send out the email alerts. The sun was just peaking, the air was cool, and the buzzards were everywhere. That’s right, buzzards! There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of awkward, funny, scary, and otherwise fascinating buzzards at Myakka. And that brings me to a big bang. Bang! What was that? BANG! I mean what the heck was that? Ka-boom! Okay, we have a situation here. KA-BLAMMO! We’re starting to freak out, big time. It turns out that Myakka State Park has had it with the buzzards. Every morning a guy in a white truck comes out and explodes something in his truck bed to scare off the big birds. Of course no one told us about this most intense bird shooing event and we too considered flying the coup. Once we figured what was going on, we had a good laugh and got back to work. Bang!
Once the buzzards and email alerts had flown, we walked back to the camper and got ready for a day in the park. Later that morning, Angela, Jerry, Reta, and I drove our campers to the nature trails including the Bird Walk and Canopy Walkway. The Canopy Walkway features a suspension bridge eighty-five feet long and twenty-five feet above the ground to view the very top of the tree canopy. It’s the kind of bridge that Indiana Jones would walk half way across and then cut one of the ropes with his machete to force the bad guys to fall into the ravine as he swung to safety on the other side. We didn’t do that. For lunch we took our rigs down to Upper Myakka Lake just past the Outpost and parked right on the water. The weather was warm and the funny buzzards had returned. As we ate our turkey wraps, a favorite easy camper lunch of ours, we talked about our next stop, Midway Campground on the way to Everglades National Park. At least, that was the plan. |
