Tag Archives: Florida State Parks

Explore Florida, Road Trip, The Florida Spectacular

Submarines, Sand, and Sandpipers

The best state park ever? Maybe.

My fascination with Fort Clinch – which I started to write about when I sang the praises of the maligned sandspur – has to do with many things, probably too long for a single blog post, but I’m going to try.

In September, we did a cross-Florida road trip, which we completely did not plan in advance. Instead, we looked for last-minute campsites a day or three in advance (I freely admit this is not for everyone.) We lucked out toward the end of our trip and scored a few nights at Fort Clinch State Park.

Sign for Fort Clinch State Park, which reads "Fort Clinch Reconstruction and construction of roads buildings and grounds was performed by Civilian Conservation Corps Company 1420, 1937-1042."
Built by Roosevelt’s Tree Army.
Cathy Salustri

I’d traveled through Fort Clinch while working on “Backroads of Paradise“, but I’d never spent the night. My friend, Jon Kile (who has a pretty nifty website where he writes about his own travels), married a woman from the area, so they’ve been there a time or two, and his rhapsodizing about the park made me think we needed to visit.

Fort Clinch, one of Florida’s first state parks, started life as – big shock here – fort. In the 1730s – when Florida belonged to Spain – the earliest work on a fort started, but only a century or so later, shortly after Florida joined the US, did construction begin on the fort as we see it today. After the Civil War – I’m shortcutting a lot of history here because I assume that’s not exactly why you’re here, but if you have more history questions, check out Fort Clinch’s abbreviated history on the park’s website – the US abandoned the fort, sealing an almost-certain fate of demolition by neglect.

In the 1930s, Roosevelt’s tree army – the Civilian Conservation Corps – set to work turning the empty fort into one of our state’s first state parks. CCC workers performed backbreaking work – including removing wheelbarrows filled with random debris from inside the fort.

At the edge of Florida (you can see Georgia from the campsites on the beach), the park represents some of the best of Florida’s state parks.

The view from our campsite – and this wasn’t even close to the best view.
Cathy Salustri

When we camped, we scored a beachside campground, so as soon as we settled in, I headed to the beach to check it out. I’ve seen lots of stuff on Florida beaches, but I was not prepared for this:

Yes, that’s a submarine. Surfacing.
Cathy Salustri

At first, I wasn’t sure I wasn’t seeing a whale, but right whales don’t have a fin on top of them. Also, they’re large, but not that large. Apparently, subs surface in this area to get to the naval base, and I’d happened along one. (Note to self: bring telephoto lens and camera on beach strolls)

After that, the deer and the gopher tortoises and sandpipers… well, OK, they were all still pretty cool. I found a gopher tortoise strolling through the dunes…

Out for a morning stroll.
Cathy Salustri

…and even saw a baby one (I know I’m supposed to write “juvenile” but they’re so damn cute) at the Fort.

Hand for scale. No, I didn’t pet it. They’re protected.
Cathy Salustri

Of course, the fort itself has some pretty amazing sights, not the least of which is its architecture. We had a great talk about the history of the fort – and the suspicion that, at least for a time, one of Florida’s Black CCC companies (Jim Crow Florida and all, the Black men who worked for the CCC all had to go to the Myakka location) may have visited the park and worked there – with historian Frank Ofeldt, who wore a period military uniform but thankfully didn’t do that dreadful thing where he pretended it was 1860 (pet peeve: historians who like to pretend to be from the time they study.)

I took about 500 photos of the fort’s interior, but this one’s my favorite.
Cathy Salustri

Back on the beach, we found we had a friend at sunset for a couple of nights. Of course, I have no way of knowing if it was the same bird every night – they could have all talked about the weird lady with blue toes and come by, one by one, to see aforementioned toes. Other than that, though, the beach was pretty much deserted.

If there’s a better place in Florida, I haven’t found it yet.

Of course, I say that at almost every beach, and I’m determined to keep looking.

Nothing beats a Florida beach when you’re the only one on it.
Cathy Salustri

Explore Florida, Road Trip

Here Be Dragons

Earlier this month, we visited Myakka River State Park, known for its alligators.

  • Barely 10 miles off I-75 as it runs through Sarasota, Myakka River State Park is a whole other world.
  • During the Depression, any Black men working with the Civilian Conservation Corps (aka the CCC, aka Roosevelt’s “Tree Army”) had to work at Myakka. These men built the cabins and other buildings that still stand today. Yes, you can stay in the cabins – don’t they look adorable?
  • Myakka River State Park is Florida’s largest state park, and vistas like these (seen from the Birdwalk) give you a sense of its enormity.
  • Murder on the horizon… (we saw other birds, too, but these crows were definitely plotting something.)
  • Another view from Birdwalk. The freshwater wetlands here are not unlike the Everglades – and neither is that gorgeous Florida sky.
  • Sadly, the River Tours do not take payments in acorns.
  • Back in the camper, our two faithful hounds test the bed.

Myakka River State Park, Florida’s largest state park, lies less than a mile from my Gulfport home, but once you’re inside the park, if you didn’t already know how close you were to the most densely populated county in Florida, you’d never believe it.

The travel trailer’s relatively new to us, so every time we camp we find things to tweak. We bought a Viking 17FQ in March; we bought it used, but only a little bit – whoever owned it before didn’t do much to modify it. That means that, right now, every trip includes a hefty dose of wildlife, nature, and organization. One of these things, you may note, is not like the other.

On this trip, the takeaway for me was this: Unexpected digital detoxes don’t work for me.  Don’t get me wrong – I love being away from my computer and phone. Just… not unexpectedly. Not when I’d planned on using down time in the park to finish writing a pitch to a magazine, clear out emails, and start re-designing this site.

I should have known better than to trust I’d have cell service in the park. My rationale was simple, but flawed: the park’s not even 10 miles from Honore Road, a main thoroughfare in Sarasota. Reader, it’s a long, gorgeous 10 miles and, as with so many other parts of Florida, it’s metaphorically much farther, and by the time we passed the park entrance, I watched bars vanish and realized I wouldn’t get much work done.

Overall, that was OK. Sure, we did drive to a part of the park where we had a weak signal so we could send a few last-minute emails that had to go out that day, and yes, we did look ridiculous holding our phones up in the middle of this raw wild place, trying to get enough of a signal to text the petsitter, but nothing bad happened. No one died.

For the average traveler, going without cell service is no big deal. So you miss Twitter for a few days; so what? For someone who earns her living writing about traveling through Florida, though, being able to use the internet while traveling is an efficient necessity.

And so our latest tweak is a cellular antenna and mobile hotspot. I have no desire to get into the mechanics of how that works, except to say it’s delightful to explain to the quite-young clerk at Best Buy what an antenna does. By “delightful” I mean, of course, “reminding you that you’re middle aged and, to that clerk’s mind, ancient.”

I’ll let you know if it works – we’re headed into north Florida soon, and I have high hopes (and also plenty of books downloaded on my iPad in case it doesn’t. I’m optimistic but also a realist.)

Explore Florida, Florida history, Road Trip, The Florida Spectacular

Very famous Florida cows

A return to the Florida road trip…

Last week on Twitter, someone posed the question, “What small decision did you make last February that brought *all this* about?”

Karma’s a bitch.

With a shocking disregard for karma, I did two things: I announced I would visit a different state park at least once a month, and, in looking at the freelance writing and speaking gigs I had lined up for the coming year, told my husband I was confident 2020 would be my best year, financially speaking, since I started freelancing in 2003.

Shortly thereafter, the Florida State Park system closed all the parks for about six weeks (the parks closed on March 23 and reopened May 4) and most of my speaking gigs evaporated. I spent most of March, April, and May taking long walks, making hand sanitizer, and, yes, baking. I also made my own ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise, pressure washed the house, reorganized the back porch, made a 12-foot valance for the bedroom window, and spent a lot of time in the pool. I dipped my toes into World of Warcraft. Oh, and my husband and I – with the help of our community – bought a newspaper.

Here’s what I didn’t do: I didn’t write or speak about Florida. Somewhere towards June, some of my talks rematerialized as Zoom talks. I did finish a draft of my next Florida book for my editor, who has the patience of… well, someone editing a writer, and I plodded along on my fiction series.

But man, I missed my road trips. In late September, I wanted to see a different part of Florida, and the world started to realize we could navigate the pandemic somewhat safely, so we packed the car and headed for a long weekend in Ormond Beach. We carefully chose a hotel with separate a/c units for each room, packed hand sanitizer and sanitizing wipes, and headed for the east coast.

I tried not to take it as an omen that a tropical storm formed over the state as we crossed Florida. We spent a delightfully cozy, wet days on the Atlantic, but hey, we’d arrived in a different part of the state, with a different body of water, and our room had a balcony fronting it.

In October, we tried again, for our anniversary. We chose an Air B&B above a barn, packed groceries, and looked forward to two nights on a farm in Vero Beach.

When our newspaper delivery driver called us in the middle of the night to tell us she’d had an accident in the delivery van, well, it wasn’t an omen, exactly… more par for the course for 2020.

When the calendar flipped to 2021, I wasn’t about to declare that 2021 would be better, or my year to travel, or any of those other karma-tempting, pandemic-inducing sentiments. But, slowly, the freelance assignments have started to return. In January, USA Today asked me to write about Florida road trips for their 10 Best website.

While I technically didn’t need to re-create my first assignment (Anna Maria Island to Fort Pierce, A1A north to Vero Beach, back to Clearwater, and through Pinellas to return to AMI), I think most people can understand the strong desire to get out of the house in 2021. An overnight bag went into the car, just in case we needed to spend the night somewhere, along with the (by now) standard sanitizer/masks/wipes combo pack.

overgrown mural at Shonda's Souvenir's in Florida – photo by Cathy Salustri
The deserted but ever-colorful Shonda’s Souvenirs has a new resident: a pair of osprey (not pictured, clearly)

I say “just in case” but I wasn’t kidding anyone: Once I had a paying reason to drive across Florida, I was getting a full road trip out of the deal. I saw scrub jays at Lake June-in-Winter, and not just a couple – for the first time in my life, I saw a sentinel scrub jay, which is exactly what it sounds like. I watched two osprey build a nest atop a colossal pineapple at Shonda’s Souvenirs. I soaked in every salty and oak-covered scrap of the innards of Florida.

That was day one. Day two brought me back to Lake Kissimmee State Park, where I once spent a petrified night convinced a serial killer was lurking outside my tent (spoiler alert: it was a family of sandhill cranes.) On this trip, I visited the 1876 cow camp exhibit, where volunteers re-enact life at a 19th-century Florida cow camp.

I normally don’t love re-enactments, but, again, this was for an assignment, and I felt duty-bound to check out the cow camp. We plodded along a serene, wooded trail to the camp, and I’m so glad we did.

The Florida cowboy – and Florida cattle – aren’t quite like Old West cowboys. They crack whips to control cattle, hence the “cracker” moniker. And Florida cows – the original Florida cows – have the honor of being the first cows in North America, brought her by Spanish conquistadors and raised by the ancestors of the Seminole Indians and early Euro-American settlers. The breed, Andalusian, still exists, and at Lake Kissimmee State Park you can visit their descendants, which, you have to admit, is pretty damn cool.

For a first road trip of the year, it served two purposes: One, I had the pleasure of traveling the backroads of Florida again, and two, those cows reminded me that, despite a pandemic and what amounted to a year off from Florida for me, Florida endures.

I can’t wait to get back on the road again.