Fort DeSoto Park, Third Visit, Part One

Carole and I started our vacation down to Florida (we go roughly once per year) by hooking up the Casita travel trailer, loading all of our various supplies onto the truck, and heading out about 8:00 pm on a Wednesday. What we generally do when we choose to start late that way is to drive as far as I feel comfortable (until I get too tired to drive) and then pull into a state rest area and park to get a few hours of sleep in the trailer. We tried this at a rest area near the SC/GA border and there was no space due to the fact that long-haul truckers had taken up all of the space. Which is okay, because you don't want a hard working truck driver falling asleep at the wheel.

So, we drove down into Georgia and stopped at first one, and then another state rest area, finding both of them also taken over by the big rigs. After that I kept my eyes peeled for a Cracker Barrel Restaurant, as I'd read they didn't mind RV folk parking overnight in their lot since most such folk wake up, go inside, and order breakfast. Ironically, we ended up pulling into a Cracker Barrel in my hometown of Brunswick GA around 1:00 am or so. And we slept there, got up in the morning, and had breakfast in the restaurant.

Then we made all safe haste to get on down to St. Petersburg and the Pinellas County administered Fort DeSoto Park. We'd been to the park twice before--the first time having discovered it completely by accident while driving around--and it never ceases to amaze me. The infrastructure in the park is of the highest quality: roads, parking lots, ocean/bay access, docks, bath facilities, campgrounds, offices, historical structures, picnic areas, etc. It's hard to believe that it's a county park and not a full-fledged state park.

It exists on about 1400 acres shared between several islands connected by narrow causeways. If you like bird life, this is your place. Well over 300 recorded species of birds make this park at least a temporary stopping off point. There are decent numbers of resident ospreys--a bird which I dearly love to watch and photograph. I found out on this trip that there are now several nesting pairs of Bald eagles, but I didn't see any of them.

Unlike on our last trip, we brought our kayaks with us. While you can rent kayaks and canoes in the park, we like to bring our own. We put in at one of the spots along the bayou near our campsite (site #100) and paddled around observing the bird life and aquatic creatures who made their presence known from time to time. We were lucky enough to encounter two manatees, but as the water in the lagoon is a bit turbid, I only got a couple of photos when one of the big mammals came to the surface to get a breath of air.

As for the campground: it is huge. It offers 238 sites, all with electric and water hookups. Most of the sites have lots of vegetation on either side, giving you a plenty of privacy. And there are many live oaks with their sheltering branches offering shade. Many sites are waterfront, either on the lagoon, or on the bay allowing access to the Gulf. There are extremely nice bathhouses sprinkled through the campground with flush toilets, sinks, hot showers, and laundry facilities. (The laundry prices went up quite a lot since our last visit so it's a bit pricey to wash and dry a load of clothes compared to our previous trip.)

One thing that is unique about this park is that you feel as if you are far away from cities and traffic, but you have to drive through St. Petersburg to get to the park (tolls to get in total $1.75). We had picked a day to go into St. Pete to have breakfast, visit the Salvador Dali Museum, hit some shops, have supper, and then go back to the campground. Normally we don't do city-stuff on our vacations, but because of the campground's proximity to the city and all that it offers, we made an exception.

My only complaints about the trip have nothing whatsoever to do with the park itself, or with the city. But I have noticed on my last three vacations to Florida that the amount and diversity of wildlife has diminished. This could be just the luck of the roll and we've merely hit some bare patches in the continuity. But I have been disturbed to note that I am not seeing the numbers and varieties of wild animals that we normally encounter when in the state.

Bottom line: you could do a whole lot worse than booking a camping vacation at Fort DeSoto Park. But if you do want to stay there, book well in advance. We had to book our site five months before we used them, and were lucky to get the site that we wanted.

Our site (#100). Directly across from the bathhouse and laundry.

The bathhouse in our section of the campground with accompanying amazing oak.

Our spot at North Beach. We think this is the best of the beaches in the Park. There's a big sandbar just off the beach that becomes accessible at lower tides and you can wade or swim out to look for seashells and sea critters. No crowds on the weekdays--stupendously crowded on Saturdays and Sundays.

One of the trails I hiked on the island.

A pterodactyl...I mean Brown pelican that sailed over me on its way somewhere else.

Part of the park's namesake: Fort DeSoto. Built during the Spanish-American War when we took most of Spain's colonies away from them. The fort was armed and manned (along with the one on Egmont Key), but of course they never saw any battles.

An inner section of the fort.

Me, lounging on one of the big mortars/cannons/whatever.

A great egret that I photographed as it caught (and then ate) a small pufferfish (which you can see in its beak).

I don't know anyone in this photo. they were just in my way when I took this composite image of the Salvador Dali Museum building. Designed by Yann Weymouth, it is sometimes called "The Enigma".

I call this one: "American with Dali".

I'll post more stuff tomorrow, time willing.