I've been coming to this state park for several years. It is a pleasant place with several local attractions and lots of good shopping. It is a big state park with lots of roadways for riding a bike. There is also a boat tour of an old trapper's cabin, but I did not take that this time--mostly because it was chilly and rainy most of my stay. The old trapper, by the way, donated most of the land for this park in his will after his death.
I rode my bike the 2-3 miles to the visitor center and rode through the old river campground, but unfortunately did not take very many photos. This is the park road. You can see that the land is a combination of pines and scrub growth.
I really liked that the visitor center had a row of very comfortable chairs on their front porch!
I took this photo of one of the windows because of the storm shutters. Notice that they have five hinges instead of the usual two. You cannot see it here, but there are latches to close them if a storm is predicted. And of course, they are metal, not wood.
Nice bike path back to my campground!
The campground is only about 10-12 years old because it was rebuilt on the site of an area that had most of its trees wiped out by a hurricane. When I first stayed here about 9 years ago, the full-hookup campground, which was the newer area, had no trees and hardly any shrubbery, so you could see the entire campground from every site. A lot of people complained about the lack of shade.
Lots of privacy between sites now. They still need to plant more shade trees, probably the local slash pines shown in the photo of the bike trail above, and the ranger said they were trying to raise the money to do this.
I took a drive one sunny day to visit a local Loggerhead Turtle sanctuary.
Unfortunately, the center was under construction, and they had only two turtles. This shows the blocked off new area.
It will certainly be nice when it is finished. They have not accepted any new turtles because of the construction, but they expect to accept many within the next couple of months.
This is the current temporary tank area.
On the way back to the campground, I went through the entrance gate and was about to turn left to the campground. However, I saw a couple of cars pulled off the roadway to the right taking photos of something, so I turned right instead of left to see what was happening.
A family had stopped to help this gopher tortoise cross the road. It was headed into the grass and probably towards its burrow.
She should not have done so, but the older daughter grabbed the tortoise so her dad could take some better photos. Notice that gopher tortoises have tall, oblong shells. They live in burrows that they dig, not swamps or lakes. They lay their eggs in the burrows and prefer dry, sandy soil. They are considered a valuable species because many other animals use their large burrows.
Anyway, I got a few good photos also, and then we let him or her continue on his/her way.
This photo below shows an observation tower in the state park built during WWII on this small hill, which is actually the highest place in southern Florida, even though it is only about 125' above sea level!!
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