Lake Manatee State Park

Wednesday, December 4, 2013 

Lake Manatee

We arrived here Monday afternoon and set up camp. The lake is outside of Bradenton and just a little north and east of Tampa. The lake has no Manatee in it. Of course there are alligators. You can rent canoes here, which we might do, except that now that Peg knows about the alligators she’s all worried about them flipping us over. It is a very pretty lake.

At the boat ramp we bumped into a guy named Donny who was getting ready to go out on the lake to fish. In typical Florida fashion we stood around and talked for about 20 minutes. He is a native Floridian with family ties to upstate NY. Small world. We talked about the heat and the humidity, snow and mountains and family. And gators. Turns out there is another state park near hear called Myakka River State Park where they send the “nuisance gators”. I’m thinking “What does a gator have to do around here to be considered more of a nuisance than I already think they are?” Then I’m thinking, “No nuisance gators here, we picked the right state park.”

Swim with the alligators

We spent yesterday mostly sitting outside reading and doing the odd chores. We have no Wi-Fi here but we can connect via our cell phones. Since we have to tether to do that, technically not allowed by Verizon, we are careful not to abuse the privilege. We use Pda.Net to tether. It is a great app.

We will go to the library today after doing our laundry and spend time there using their Wi-Fi. Hopefully I'll catch up with the blog there.

This site is in another great Florida park. We have noticed that all the sites we've had in Florida have had a degree of privacy that you don't see in commercial campgrounds. We have a lot of space and we're surrounded by vegetation so that we have a level of privacy that you don't get elsewhere. Except for the lack of sewer hookup, a minor inconvenience, and iffy WiFi, something you learn to get around, there is really no reason to choose a commercial campground over these state parks. In addition, you save about $10 per day. True, there are no amenities here except for a picnic table, but we don't use any of the amenities you find in the commercial campgrounds anyway. Mostly we are after a cheap place to read, eat and sleep. Cheap and safe, and the parks are both. If we were Florida residents it would only cost us $11 per day instead of $20. 

Our camp host is Jerry, and he and his wife live in state parks, going from one to the other work-camping. If you’re retired and bored and on a fixed income it is a pretty sweet way to live. You get a free space with your utilities included in return for a certain number of hours of not too strenuous work. Jerry rides around in his golf cart checking people in and out and mostly kibitzing. He is our block watch.