Thursday April 13th 2023

The clouds were gone and the winds diminished, but the humidity was up. The result was a nice day with a high temperature in the mid eighties. The temperature and humidity trend over the next few days is upward.

Today was a pretty standard day for my stay here at Myakka River State Park. The daily pattern is breakfast with some internet reading, followed by the first nature walk of the day. During the afternoon I do chores and run errands. One of those chores is usually preparing and eating some food a time or two. As evening approaches I take my second nature walk of the day.

My first walk of the day was to the bridge over the Myakka River on the main park road. Today I went a little deeper into the park to the walk along the river at the next turnout along the road. The alligators were out of the water a little more today. In one area there were eight or nine gators with their full bodies exposed to the air. This is a big improvement from just their heads. It was also a day for turtles. In addition to the cooter turtles I usually see, a couple of Florida soft shell turtles made an appearance. One only stuck its head out of the water long enough to look around and take a deep breath. The other one was out of the water twenty or thirty feet trying to go cross country somewhere.

I tried to walk back to the bridge on my second walk of the day, but an alligator crossing the road had other ideas. A big alligator walked across the park road just before I walked around the corner. Cars were stopped all over the road to observe the gator. It crossed the road, but decided the forest on the other side didn’t look appealing. The gator stopped with the last of its tail still in the road with its head a little way down the bank into the woods. The way all the cars stopped I couldn’t get by without getting closer to the alligator than I felt comfortable. After taking a couple of pictures I changed directions and walked along the river in the front of the park this evening. The entertainment along this section of river was a heron trying to consume a snake or eel.