{"id":1392,"date":"2007-04-07T21:17:35","date_gmt":"2007-04-07T21:17:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/northernloon.net\/travelogue\/?p=1392"},"modified":"2025-04-21T17:41:55","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T17:41:55","slug":"camping-in-ft-desoto-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/northernloon.net\/travelogue\/?p=1392","title":{"rendered":"Camping in Ft. DeSoto, Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eileen, Madeline and I drove our Rockwood popup all the way to Ft. DeSoto, Florida, for spring break. \u00a01450 miles. \u00a0 We heard about this place from our LaCrosse buddy Bob Stuber. \u00a0He’s been going there for years with the hippie contingent of Cadillac, MI (what there is of it). \u00a0 They invited us along. \u00a0It was just the excuse I needed to buy a used popup trailer.<\/p>\n

Our aging Toyota Sienna van pulled this 1,500 pound trailer “ok”. \u00a0Fine on the flats, wheezy in the hills of Tennessee. \u00a0It’s a long drive, it seemed to take forever. \u00a0Once past Atlanta, the rodes were choked. \u00a0That entire city seemed to empty out and head to Florida along with us.<\/p>\n

But anyway, we loved it! \u00a0Ft. DeSoto is a jewel of a County park, in Pinnelas County. \u00a0It’s out on a spit of land in Tampa Bay with no development around it. \u00a0There’s one large campground, and that’s it. The beaches are spectacular. \u00a0The bike riding within the park is pretty good – not a lot of it, maybe 12 miles covering everything, but it’s either off road or with a good shoulder.<\/p>\n

The water is protected, there’s a circular loop to be done with canoe or kayak.<\/p>\n

Here’s a quick look at the campground. \u00a0It’s tropical. \u00a0The campground is divided into a “tent” side and an “Rv” side. \u00a0The tent side allows popups. \u00a0Its densely overgrown and the sites are narrow.<\/p>\n

\"Deb<\/a><\/p>\n

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Here’s some of our fellow campers, with their rigs:<\/p>\n

\"camp2-008\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Molly and Madeline with an iPod<\/p>\n

\"iPod\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Raccoons run all over this island. \u00a0They are weird creatures, thin and pale looking, creepy. \u00a0They aren’t dangerous, but if you leave anything edible outside, they’re on it like a flash. They can open a cooler in their sleep, they’ll go in your tent for a candybar. \u00a0 I asked a ranger why they looked so odd, he said it was from severe inbreeding. \u00a0It’s hard for them to get out to this island, and once they’re here, they only have each other. \u00a0This doesn’t stop their population from getting into the many hundreds. \u00a0The island would normally support a few dozen of them. The ranger told me that occasionally they have sharpshooters come in to clean them out.<\/p>\n

Madeline thought the babies were cute, she took a few pictures of one in a tree.<\/p>\n

\"racoon-007\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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One of the appeals of this area in the winter is the Pinellas County bike trail. \u00a0The original section runs north and south on the western side of the county for 40 flat miles. \u00a0(It has since been expanded). It goes through too many small towns to name, and except for these town sections, it’s totally off road. \u00a0We put about 200 miles on our bikes, between riding in the park and this trail. \u00a0The trail can’t be reached by bicycle from the park, too dense and urban. \u00a0We drove to the trailhead.<\/p>\n

Here’s some pictures of Clearwater, one of the towns on the trail.<\/p>\n

\"clear-001\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Scenes of just hanging out at camp.<\/p>\n

\"Kerry<\/a><\/p>\n

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North Beach is the biggest and best beach in the Park, altho there are others. \u00a0Much time was spent here. \u00a0It was an easy pedal from the campgrounds.<\/p>\n

\"beach-001\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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In the last several days, people broke camp one by one and bid farewell. \u00a0We were the last to leave.<\/p>\n

\"Sandy<\/a><\/p>\n

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I saw this unusual load on the road home.<\/p>\n

\"big-004\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Eileen, Madeline and I drove our Rockwood popup all the way to Ft. DeSoto, Florida, for spring break. \u00a01450 miles. \u00a0 We heard about this place from our LaCrosse buddy Bob Stuber. \u00a0He’s been going there for years with the hippie contingent of Cadillac, MI (what there is of it). \u00a0 They invited us along. … Continue reading “Camping in Ft. DeSoto, Florida”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[11,4,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-camping","category-photo","category-vacation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/northernloon.net\/travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/northernloon.net\/travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/northernloon.net\/travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northernloon.net\/travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northernloon.net\/travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1392"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/northernloon.net\/travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3119,"href":"http:\/\/northernloon.net\/travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1392\/revisions\/3119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/northernloon.net\/travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northernloon.net\/travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northernloon.net\/travelogue\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}