29 January 2018 Myakka River State Park

A return visit to Myakka was a guaranteed activity on vacation. The park offers a wealth of wildlife viewing with a number of geocaches available for finding. Our first stop was the fertile viewing area starting at the bridge over the Myakka River and walking the trail alongside the river.

The gators are amazing animals to spot from a distance. I would rather not get too close.

Moss covered trees on a point.

This younger alligator still shows multi-colored stripes in the tail area.

It was time to make our way to back to parking and other adventures

Our last visit to the park was on a Sunday. The Canopy Walkway was very busy on the weekend. Today, the Monday visitors were light with even fewer takers to climb the stairs.

With no one else on the bridge besides us, I could fully enjoy shaking the suspension walkway. :)

The tower adds another extended level of climbing.

The long view is outstanding although the canopy walk didn't provide us greater bird watching opportunities.

We moved on to a couple of utility line walks with a few caches. We hadn't visited this section of the river on our first visit so we were happy to see a new area. We weren't disappointed with the sights.

Who knew they wore galoshes to keep their feet dry? I was surprised the term galoshes is still commonly used. It has an old movie sound about it.

We headed in the other direction along the same power line. It always pays to look off trail and be observant. Who knows what might be there.

This younger gator seemed oblivious to the nearby action.

Nearby, this anhinga had been out swimming and come up with lunch. The meal preparation made for an interesting video.

Between the amazing sights of nature, we did find a few caches. The tree below had multiple decoy containers. We missed the find on our last visit, but not this time.

We worked our way through the park for the rest of the day. There were stops for caches along the way, but our journey for the rest of the day was to reach the park's birdwalk and enjoy the sites. We were hoping to again see eagles near the birdwatch.

A palm warbler stopped by the observation deck as we were watching the shorebirds.

We spotted one of the eagles in a familiar perching area as we returned back along the boardwalk.

We were trying to make our way out before the park's sunset closure when we had our third encounter with wild hogs. Light was too low to grab an image as they made their way across the road and away from us. I much prefer longer distance spottings of these fiesty and dangerous beasts.