Shoot, somehow I lost an entire post regarding our stay at Little Manatee River State Park. To make things short the camp ground was nice but we left a day earlier than planned due to a forest fire. The fire burned between the campground and the ranger station. We departed Little Manatee in the middle of the night arriving at Collier Seminole State Park. Collier Seminole is located 15 miles south of Naples Florida just at the start of the Everglades.
The park is nice, very tropical in feel. The area is in a royal palm hammock, hammock being an Indian word for forest. The park, reminds us of being in Hawaii; Hawaii without a beach, instead we have alligators and bugs. Sites are small, parking the RV in dirt/ grass under oak trees and palms. Lots of shade which is great since temperatures are running about 80 degrees. The main activity here is canoeing the Black river. The river winds through the largest mangrove forest in North America. The park rents canoes or kyacks for $5.00 an hour or you can take a guided tour for $25.00. We were lucky and made friends with one of the camp hosts who lent us his tandem kyack. We had a great time paddling down the river. Lots of birds, we didn't see any gators. They are everywhere down here. Twice we rode our. Ike from the campground to Everglades City seeing more than 30 alligators in a canal that runs along the highway. After awhile alligator spotting became sort of boring.
Besides riding the bike, and canoeing, we also visited the Shark Valley part of the Everglades National Park. There at the Shark Valley we took the tram ride which follows a 15 mile trail through this section of the Everglades. Very interesting, beside seeing more alligators of various sizes, from babies to 15 footer, we spotted many varieties of birds including great blue herons, egrets, tricolor herons, wood storks, red shoulder hawks, osprey, and a turtle or two. The naturalist also explained the landscape, the various hammocks, alligator holes, sawgrass prairies and also the various animals other than alligator that live in the Everglades.
The Naples area is famous for their beaches, so we also spent parts of a couple of days at the beach and exploring Old Naples. The beach around the Naples pier is very nice with good public access points, nice sand and beautiful blue water. This time of the year the water temp is about 70 very nice. We also went to Marco Island's South Beach and Tiger Tail beach both nice beaches but public access points are few and far between. Florida likes to line their beaches with Condos that close off public access to the beach.
Other high points we had a very nice dinner at a German Resturant named Mozarts on Marco Island, we had drinks at Stans in Goodland which is a dive of a place and on Sundays Stan and his band plays music outside. Several hound red people of various ages from 21 to 80 hang out drink, dance and pretend in the case of the old people that they are young again. Stan's was very interesting.
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