Photo – Page 35 – Northern Loon Travelogue

Eileen, Madeline and I drove our Rockwood popup all the way to Ft. DeSoto, Florida, for spring break. 1450 miles. We heard about this place from our LaCrosse buddy Bob Stuber. He’s been going there for years with the hippie contingent of Cadillac, MI (what there is of it). They invited us along. It was just the excuse I needed to buy a used popup trailer.

Our aging Toyota Sienna van pulled this 1,500 pound trailer “ok”. Fine on the flats, wheezy in the hills of Tennessee. It’s a long drive, it seemed to take forever. Once past Atlanta, the rodes were choked. That entire city seemed to empty out and head to Florida along with us.

But anyway, we loved it! Ft. DeSoto is a jewel of a County park, in Pinnelas County. It’s out on a spit of land in Tampa Bay with no development around it. There’s one large campground, and that’s it. The beaches are spectacular. The 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.

The water is protected, there’s a circular loop to be done with canoe or kayak.

Here’s a quick look at the campground. It’s tropical. The campground is divided into a “tent” side and an “Rv” side. The tent side allows popups. Its densely overgrown and the sites are narrow.

Here’s some of our fellow campers, with their rigs:

Molly and Madeline with an iPod

Raccoons run all over this island. They are weird creatures, thin and pale looking, creepy. They 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. I asked a ranger why they looked so odd, he said it was from severe inbreeding. It’s hard for them to get out to this island, and once they’re here, they only have each other. This doesn’t stop their population from getting into the many hundreds. The island would normally support a few dozen of them. The ranger told me that occasionally they have sharpshooters come in to clean them out.

Madeline thought the babies were cute, she took a few pictures of one in a tree.

One of the appeals of this area in the winter is the Pinellas County bike trail. The original section runs north and south on the western side of the county for 40 flat miles. (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. We put about 200 miles on our bikes, between riding in the park and this trail. The trail can’t be reached by bicycle from the park, too dense and urban. We drove to the trailhead.

Here’s some pictures of Clearwater, one of the towns on the trail.

Scenes of just hanging out at camp.