Venice, Day 2

Today was filled with Myakka River State Park and a visit to the South Jetty here in Venice.

Now I'd been to Myakka several times with Mom and Dad on previous visits, but had only ever taken the boat ride on the chuck-full-o-gators Myakka Lake and the tram ride.

Today, we started by going on the nature walk through partially swampy ground - walkways kept us out of the muckier parts - to the Canopy Walkway.

First you climb the 'short' tower to the swinging bridge, 25 feet off the ground. Then you climb the 74 foot tower, and get an eyeful of beautiful country.

My friend had to talk me up, since I'm so scared of heights. I hung back on the next to the highest level for at least 10 minutes before I had the nerve to go all the way up to the top.

We saw an amazing array of birds: hawks, vultures, cranes, egrets, herons - nesting, flying, screeching, whirling. It was pretty awesome.

Back on the ground, we went back to the lake. Too late to take the boat ride, we found out that today wasn't a good gator-viewing day, so we weren't too disappointed.

Right alongside the boat, we got a bit of a treat. One of the rarer birds in the park, the Limpkin was wading around looking for food, so we got a nice close look.

From there, we went over to the little dam, where we were about as close to a gator as you can get and keep all your body parts intact.

After brats and floats, we decided to go over to the Birdwalk, which extends a ways out into the swampy land, almost to the lake, and saw lots more birds and lots more beautiful lake.

By the time we were heading back to Venice, it was getting later, so we decided to go straight to the South Jetty to see if we could spot any dolphins as the tide was coming in.

In all the many times I've been out dolphin watching on the Jetty, I've never seen as many at once, and as playful a bunch of dolphins as today.

They weren't just breaching and swimming around; they were blowing, jumping a little bit and coming down with a big splash; they were slapping the surface of the water with their tails. It was really fun!

Trying to take pictures got a little hard, because there so many off in several directions.

While we were there, we saw two bridal couples taking wedding shots, and what was probably an engaged couple getting their photos taken, too.

We were there for almost two and a half hours, just watching people, dolphins, waves, and the sunset.

All in all, a great day spent in the beauty of West Central Florida!