March 3 - 5, 2014. Bike/Hike and Oil Change

Myakka River State Park covers 58 square miles of wetlands, prairies, hammocks and pine lands. I am quite sure that it is the largest and oldest state parks in Florida. There is much to do at this park and with a stay of ten days, we are able to find something different to do each day. 

          

                                        

On Monday we got the trail map out, chose a trail and headed off on our bikes. After about 30 minutes the trail became very difficult due to all the soft, white sand. We changed direction at the next cut, but ran into the same problem...sand so soft that it was very difficult to ride through. We ended up alternately pushing the bikes through the sand and then driving them when the sand was packed hard. After about three hours we ended up at a locked gate, attached to a barbed wire fence. There was no way that we were turning back so scaling the gate and passing the bikes over the barbed wire fence was the only option. From there, riding back to the campsite was a breeze. Fortunately we had lots of water with us as it was a very hot day.

                                   

       Someone is not happy about having to push her bike through the sand

Precious needed an oil change and since there was a speedy, no appointment, oil change lane at the Ford dealer in Nokomis we unhooked on Tuesday morning and drove to Nokomis, only to be told by the Ford folks that they don't "do" vehicles with bathrooms, even if it has a ford engine. Fortunately there is a very large RV dealer, just up the road from Ford. I made an appointment for Wednesday. We spent the rest of the day hanging out with Janet; lunch at Panera, and grocery shopping at Walmart.

On Wednesday morning we joined lots of other campers at coffee hour...coffee, tea, homemade breads and biscuits. A couple of the park rangers entertained, one with a guitar and the other with a harp.

My appointment at the RV place was for early afternoon and since I asked them to do a few jobs as well as the oil change, we had time on our hands. We found a great breakfast/lunch restaurant nearby and were able to kill the afternoon eating and then meandering in and out of the huge selection of RVs for sale on the lot. 

Back at Myakka, we finished off the day with a campfire.