June 18th, 2021

After a two week furlough, we are back!  The Wednesday Sisters hike  has resumed! Hurrah!  This week we set out for Myakka State Park, which is a gorgeous park that is usually packed with tourists, and that is why we seldom hike there.  But we had the urge this week so off we went.  And you know what that means, right?  Yes!  It's time for the Photo Safari Report!

Joy and I always have a great time so we knew that no matter what, we would have fun.  The only questions were: would there be massive crowds and (sort of connected to that) would we find many things that were photo worthy.  As it turned it was a perfect morning to go.  The sky was gloomy and grey and you could just feel that rain was on it's way, which I'm sure discouraged a lot of folks.  (but obviously not us) and because we drove in exactly on the stroke of 8 am, there was almost nobody there but us and the forest.  Perfect!

Actually we knew it was going to be a great camera hiking day as we drove in.  First we saw things like this:

Which was immediately followed by things like this:

And that's before we even parked the car!  Wow!

So let's see how should I start?  I guess since I already posted one deer, I could begin there.  We've seen deer before at Myakka, but it's usually one or two, in the distance and you have to time the shots as they walk between the trees.  This time we saw lots of deer.  They were everywhere!  And while they were, very wisely, cautious about humans, once they realized that we weren't going to approach them, we had no problem getting pictures.  What a delight!

And speaking of wildlife, we saw a few other things, none more surprising than the wild hog!  You will have to forgive the quality of the photo as he was quite a distance away (thank goodness)

There were so many alligators that day!  We actually lost count.   Let's see if I can find a group of them.  What is a group of alligators called (besides scary?)  It's called a congregation. A congregation of Alligators.   Ah! Found it, Here you go:

Birds, of course. Loads of birds!  They were everywhere! My goodness, the sheer variety is almost overwhelming.  You ready?  It's a lot so hang on:

It was so nice to see flowers again too.  Not quite as many as there were birds, but still, flowers always make me smile.

Myakka State Park is right there on the Myakka River which is a beautiful bit of water. Had a get a few shots of that too.  I've canoed on the Myakka before.  Well let's be honest, Tim canoed, I sat in the boat taking photos. Still I was in the dang canoe so it counts! At any rate, water photos:

Joy and I even did the canopy walk which involves climbing up a very high tower and then walking over a bouncy swaying bridge and then climbing up an even higher tower.  My knee was not well pleased with me, but it was absolutely worth the climb.

And as always, my favourite category, the random, miscellaneous shots:

So there it is.  The first photo safari report in two weeks!  Hope it was worth the wait.

Have a wonderful weekend please!   Hugs all 'round