September 06th, 2022

Well hello hello!  Hope everyone had a terrific nice long holiday weekend!    Tim and I spent most of it getting stuff done around here, but we did take a few breaks.  And one of them was to spend a little time, one afternoon at Myakka State Park.  

It wasn't so much a hike as a combination of  short drives and short walks, but my camera was in my hand and therefore, it counts!   Myakka State Park is a different sort of place to visit.  There is a long, beautiful winding road that goes completely through it with periodic places to park, get out and hike.  Often we ended up just pulling over on the side of the road because that's where the picture needed to be taken.

This wasn't something we planned ahead, it was more a random, "hey, we finished what we intended to do today, what do you wanna do  now?" moment one afternoon.  I have found that mornings and evenings are generally the best  times to do a photo safari.  Partly for the quality of the light and partly because the cooler parts of the day usually provide  the best critter activity.  BUT afternoon was when we had a little unexpected free time so that's when we went.

Obviously, for the above reason, we had very low photo expectations. To our surprise, those expectations were a little surpassed.   I was pretty sure I would be able to get some photos of the river and I was correct.   The Myakka River is always photo worthy:

 If we had come away with just these river photos, I would have been happy and considered it worth the time.  But, for some reason,  I got a ton of photos of various sorts of white birds.  It could be just that in the heavily forested and sun bleached afternoon,  the white birds were the only ones that stood out against the dark forest enough for us to really notice them.  Or perhaps white birds don't mind the hottest part of the day?  Regardless, here is a sampling:

To our surprised, we did find a few other birds and some other creatures venturing out into the heat of the day.  What is that old saying about Mad Dogs and Englishman venturing into the noonday sun?  Apparently it applies to a few other animals as well. Including Tim and I, now that I think about it.  Who is crazier, the wildlife who have nowhere else to be or people who do have nice air conditioned places to hang out on a very hot day?  Don't bother to answer that one.

I guess that's the most of it.  I believe I shall call this particular photos safari, the Afternoon at Myakka Hike.  Not very creative, but accurate.

I will leave you with a couple of rando photos. Hope you enjoyed this little abbreviated photo safari report :)