Forts, Family and Feathered Friends

We left our inland camp and set up shop near the Gulf of Mexico and Tampa Bay. Fort Desoto County Park is a favorite of ours. It offers miles of biking trails as well as Bayside and Gulf beaches.

We’ve stayed in this park before but this site is the best we’ve had here. It is reasonably secluded with a water view. The park is very popular so we feel quite lucky to have nabbed this spot for two weeks.

Speaking of visitors, Pat’s brother Mike and his wife Donna camped at a site near us and Shelly’s sister Ellen and her husband Rory booked a condo on St. Pete’s Beach for a sibling meet up.

The Tampa-Saint Pete area has a plethora of small breweries. Of course we needed to check a few of them out.

Part of the fun of camping at Fort Desoto is the bird watching. Most of the birds are common to Florida but are uncommon to northerners. We did get to see a bird uncommon to the area, a Reddish Egret. It’s the first time we’ve seen one. We didn’t get a good picture but enjoyed watching it foraging in the shallows.

Osprey reside throughout the park.

While out viewing some Osprey nests we ran into some other bird nerds who told us about an upcoming birding event, Raptor Fest. The event took place at a bird rescue facility with lots of birds on view.

Most of our time was spent biking and walking on the beaches.

Our family visits overlapped which made for a fun family stroll along the water on a windy and overcast day.

After Mike and Donna returned home the rest of us ventured over the Sunshine Skyway Bridge to Sarasota for a matinee performance of Circus Sarasota.

This is a one ring circus that takes place under the “Big Top”. The performances include many outstanding international acts. Circus Sarasota comes highly recommended.