This state park offers hiking trails, camping, fishing and biking. There are over 38 miles of trails.  We covered about 15 - 20 miles total on foot and bike combined.  The scenery was beautiful with shady live oak/palm hammocks, sandy pine flatwoods and sunny dry prairies. One of the hikes was called Deep Hole Trail.  Only 30 people were allowed to visit per day.  We visited and were amazed at the alligators and beautiful scenery.  

Old Prairie Campground - lot 44

Great spot with beautiful trees.  Were we to visit again, would choose to stay over in Palmetto Ridge Campground as the spots were a bit more spacious.  

Caroline Jones Concert

We ventured to the Crowbar in the city of Ybor for this concert.  The traffic was SO heavy heading over there and what we thought would be an hour drive was actually an hour and 50 minutes.  The concert had only about 100 people so it was very close up and fun.  She performs with Zach Brown, Kenny Chesney and has performed with Jimmy Buffet.  She is very talented and put on a great show.  

Night Kayak in Siesta Key

We went out with 5 other people and a guide.  The kayaks were see through and lit with LEP lights to see under the water.  We saw stone crab, hermit crab, needlefish, conch, whittling snails and spider crab.  We had nets to scoop out creatures from the water.  The creatures were saved in buckets to observe when we returned to land.  Funny part of the evening was when Todd caught a needlefish and it bounced all over the boat. All of the creatures were returned to the water at the end of the night.

Deep Hole Hike

The park offered 30 tickets per day to enter a special hiking trail spot called the Deep Hole.  Two and a half miles out and back.  The feature of the hike was seeing over 80 alligators on the shores of the water.  They appeared to be enjoying the sun and warmer temperatures.  Some would move ocassionally to go for a swim.  We also enjoyed seeing beautiful birds and a bald eagle. 

Dinner in Venice with friends from MI

We were invited to come to Venice which was about a half hour drive.  We enjoyed seeing the quaint downtown, our friends' Florida home and trying out a restaurant called Fins at Sharky's Beach.  During a delicious dinner we enjoyed the beautiful sunset over the water.  Todd got a surprise birthday dessert! The beach is famous for having shark's teeth along the shoreline.  We didn't find any teeth but were very interested to learn that the sand color is a little darker and has small black pieces in it because they are small bits of shark teeth.  Wonderful evening!

Ringling:  John and Mable Museum of Art

Enjoyed a visit to this museum in Sarasota.  Enjoyed learning about the history of the circus, Ringling family and their art collection.

Canopy Walkway

Our last day we headed out in the morning to one last spot on our list.  The Canopy Walkway. It didn't disappoint.  It was a short hike to a lookout tower.  The tower was 74 feet tall.  To get to the top you had to climb several flights of stairs.  At the 25 foot level was a suspended walkway that was 85 feet in length.  The walkway swayed a bit on the way from one side to the other.  The top of the tower was a beautiful observation spot.