Myakka River State Park

Our Trip to Myakka River State Park

We visited Myakka River State Park after having had a stomach flu for two weeks. We NEEDED to get out of the house and get some fresh air but we didn’t want to share our germs so we knew we had to avoid public places. We decided to drive down to the park from Tampa – about an hour and 10 minute drive for us.

Perhaps we had been cooped up for sooooo long that anything would have been entertaining but we had the best time! I’m not a huge lover of hikes and the outdoors. Especially in Florida, hiking often means mosquitoes, sweating, sugar sand, and mediocre views since our topography is flat.

We headed straight for the Canopy Walkway when we arrived. The walkway is 25 feet high and 100 feet long. There’s also a taller tower that rises 74 feet into the air and allows for beautiful views of the treetops. We were happy to discover the walkway and tower are a short distance from the parking lot. The views were beautiful!

We chatted with a few people at the walkway who told us they had just seen 8 alligators by the docks. We went straight there! The kids were eager to spot a gator. They told us to drive past the area where they do river tours, to the end of the parking lot, past the docks, then take the trail a short ways which will lead to a lake. It was easy to find and we spotted a bunch of big alligators when we arrived. There were fisherman there with the alligators all around them. Made us nervous but it was also a good show!

After that we drove slowly through the park and spotted a few deer. Our kids didn’t even know we had deer in Florida so that was a fun surprise.

Next we visited the birdwalk which lived up to it’s name! We saw several specials of birds including a hawk which was eating a mouse. It was a little graphic. We also saw a small alligator crawling through the marsh.

On our way out of the park we stopped at the bridge right by the entrance. We had also been told that was a good place to spot alligators. Sure enough, there were several meandering through the waterways and we sat and watched them watch us for a while.