Three Days in the wilderness and now back to class A campground

After 14 days we finally left one of our favorite campgrounds, WP Franklin on the Caloosahatchee River. We like Myakka River State Park but it is impossible to get into without reservations made 11 months in advance. While looking at the FL map I noticed a small FL State Forest west of Port Charlotte near the Myakka River. There isn’t any river or bay access there but it looked like the park had a rustic campground, similar to Piney Mountain in MD that we used to love to camp in. It has 4 RV sites, 4 tent site and a pit toilet scattered in a FL scrub forest. You had to make on-line reservations but I did it early enough that there was no problem getting a site. It has a 3 mile gravel road that also accessed a nearby housing development that had miles of paved roads but only a few houses, along with a crowded community of nice houses along the Myakka River Bay. We took two bike rides in the beautiful warm & sunny but windy weather. There were all kinds of birds here but the only wildlife we saw were a few armadillos.

My niece Pat Foos and her husband Tom flew in to the Tampa airport and were driving to Naples, we told them to stop by and experience some wilderness before hitting the crowds in Naples. Years ago we used to take Pat and her sisters on camping trips but they are not now campers so were not impressed by our campsite that hadn’t a view of any other campers.

We had no trouble without electric power as my solar arrays had the batteries recharged by mid afternoon after watching TV at night and early morning. Peggy did not like the lack of shower facilities and was glad we only stayed here for 3 nights.

We left early Sunday morning for EG Simmons campground on Tampa Bay. They have 100 campsites in two campgrounds with all sites having water access to canoe or kayak the bay. This is a Hillsborough County Park like Lithia Springs but it is more popular so it is harder to get into. They don’t take reservations and have a 14 or 28 day limit depending on which sites you choose. They do have an 8 campsite overflow area that has no electric power. We figured we may need to spend a day or two there but 3 nice sites opened up, so we made camp after sitting in the lot for an 1-1/2 hrs. making sure none of the overflow campers wanted to move,

Sunday was a beautiful day. There are paved roads to the camps, picnic shelters, boat launch and kayak rental that make it easy to do a 6 mile bike ride without leaving the park. After last nights 2” rain we are trying to decide whether to canoe or take a 15 mile bike ride to Apollo Beach area where all the Manatees gather near the warm water discharge from the big power plant. A cold front came in bringing a little wind, so we took a 3 mile canoe paddle out into the bay We found it a little rough so we headed back around the mangrove islands along the marked canoe trail. Looks like we will have a few cool days before it warms again.