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Published: January 14th 2012
Myakka River
The Myakka River in Myakka River State Park. The overlook is across from the hammock trailhead,.Today I explored
Myakka River in earnest.
The park shelters a now rare landscape called a
dry prairie , the same ecosystem found in parts of
Okefenokee Swamp (see
Golden Swamps).
During the dry season, it’s a traditional prairie with seas of high grass.
The rest of the year it floods and becomes a swamp.
Within the grass are groups of trees called hammocks.
These also flood in heavy rain.
This environment attracts birds and reptiles accustomed to a hot and wet climate.
Hammock Nature Trail
The grass is filled with wood ticks which carry disease at this time of year, so I focused on the
hammocks.
The park has helpfully created a nature trail which goes through one, with signs explaining the different plants and how they survive.
The trees are mostly old oaks and palms.
There is little underbrush.
The soil is mostly sand.
This type of landscape has been used to represent a jungle is so many movies that the real thing initially felt like a theme park exhibit (an effect magnified by being at Busch Gardens only two days earlier).
The oak trees
Hammock Trail at Myakka River State Park
Trail through a typical hammock in Florida. Wild Florida at its best in particular are covered in other plants.
The signs mentioned that they are called
aerophytes, plants which pull moisture directly from the air.
I thought they only occurred in super-wet climates like rain forests.
These plants have special survival mechanisms for the dry season, such as dropping everything except the roots (one of these plants is called the
resurrection fern for that reason).
Those which do keep their leaves become crucial food sources for birds and other animals.
At one point, the trail passes through an area which has burned.
Fire is crucial for the health of this ecosystem.
It removes old and diseased trees, making room for new ones.
If the forest never burned, it would become dominated by the pine trees found further north.
The hammock in this area was undergoing regrowth.
The oak trees were at full height, but the palm trees were still low to the ground.
The effect was like walking though an oak arborway.
Near the end of the trail is its most significant feature, the
canopy walkway .
Studying aerators from the ground is very difficult.
Canopy walkway
The canopy walkway at Myakka River State Park. Crossing it is just as scary as it looks The solution, which was developed in the Amazon, is to build towers in the forest and suspend bridges between them.
These bridges allow close access to the canopy.
Myakka River has one of these, and the general public is allowed to climb it.
The bridge is a true wire bridge, so it shakes as people walk on it.
When one is at treetop level, this is an incredibly scary experience.
The view more than makes up for the fear.
An overlook of the Myakka River lies close to the nature trail.
The river is slow and winding.
A pelican was wading on the far side.
The view of the trees reflected in the water needs to be seen to be believed.
Visitors to national parks are used to “
wildlife jams” where a particularly noteworthy animal will cause huge traffic backups as people stop to look (see March 19
th).
It turns out that Florida parks also have them.
On the way out, I encountered one at a bridge over the river.
Figuring it had to be for something good, I pulled over to
Alligator in the Myakka River
Alligator sleeping in the Myakka River, a few yards from a road bridge. see what was there.
I hit a jackpot: four
alligators.
One of them was sleeping in the river less than a yard from the bridge!
Myakka River State Park really does feel like paradise this time of year.
Florida in the right spots is an incredibly beautiful state.
Unfortunately, the feeling shatters passing by some of the land around the park: places from the other Florida where people place signs warning that unwanted visitors will be shot on sight (which
isn't legal, its worth noting), and plenty of gated vacation housing.
Paradise never lasts.
John Ringling Estate
After Myakka River I saw a different type of paradise, this one man made.
John Ringling was the middle child of seven brothers born in the 1850s.
Farming did not appeal to them, so they all joined circuses in one capacity or another.
They became very good showmen and eventually started their own.
I hope it’s obvious which one. 😊
In 1915, they acquired the Barnum and Bailey Circus to form
Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey, the famous Greatest Show on Earth.
It became a very successful circus.
John
Ca' d' Zan
Entryway of the mansion of John Ringling, circus mogul Ringling was the most astute of the brothers, and invested his profits in railroads and real estate.
He also spent a good chunk of his money building an Italian fantasy of an estate on the west coast of Florida, and collecting old Master Paintings.
He turned the latter into a
museum on his estate in the 1920s.
Unfortunately, he was wiped out by the stock market crash, and died penniless.
The estate is now a historic site.
In addition to the estate and art museum, it now also contains a circus museum.
One should be interested in at least two of the three main things to justify the
steep entry fee.
I dislike Baroque Art, so I focused on the house, the gardens, and the circus museum.
Ca' d'Zan
The house,
Ca' d'Zan was first.
House tours are given by knowledgeable docents, who concentrate on the architecture and furnishings typical for such tours.
The house was designed to impress, which it still does very well.
John Ringling spent a lot of money building it, but he spent it wisely and tastefully.
Many builders of McMansionscould learn
from his example.
The floors are all marble, except where they are Italian tile.
The ceilings are all painted, most by artisans from the circus.
There are many carved furniture pieces, which were also done by artisans from his circus.
The rest of the furniture was bought from estate sales of old mansions in New York, and is some of the finest decorative arts in Florida.
In the living quarters on the second floor, there is gold leaf everywhere.
Somehow, it all fits together into a coherent whole.
The house is designed around a central two story courtyard.
Besides looking great, it promoted the airflow crucial to cooling the house in the days before air conditioning.
The house has a plaza directly on the waterfront, which leads down to a dock with marble tile.
John Ringling parked his yacht on this dock.
One day, he lent it to a friend who ran it into a reef and sank it.
The most unusual feature is the windows, which are made of colored Italian glass.
When the bright Florida sun shines through, they project colored patterns
on the floor.
I saw the gardens after the house.
John Ringling’s wife loved roses.
She loved them so much that she designed an
extensive rose garden on the estate.
The garden is still there, and the current foundation keeps it updated with every rose variety imaginable.
They do a good enough job to be certified by the
American Rose Society.
Walking though presents a sea of roses in every color of the rainbow.
The other garden is the dwarf garden.
On one of his trips to Europe to scout new circus talent, John Ringling bought a set of stone garden gnomes.
He put them in storage.
A later director of the historic site created a garden for them.
The best feature is a banyan tree with a set of picnic tables under it.
The tables are surrounded by hanging roots, making it the most unusual picnic site in Florida.
Circus Museum
The final feature for me was the
circus museum.
The museum has two halves, one on the circus in general and one on the Ringling Brothers in particular.
I enjoyed the former
Gunther Gebel-Williams
Elephant cape from the most famous animal trainer in history, who worked for Ringling Brothers for 22 years without missing a show more than the latter.
It had more artifacts, for one thing.
Its centerpiece is a stunning model of a circus site from the heyday of the big top in the early 1900s.
A circus was a small city that arrived on dozens of trains, set up in a few hours, and taken down promptly after the show.
The precision needed to pull it off was amazing.
The model describes all of it.
The model is also an impressive piece of folk art, carved over two decades by
Howard Tibbals, a circus fan from Tennessee.
The latter half of the museum covered the Ringlings’ life and the circus they created.
There is a room of old travelling wagons; and the Pullman car, the
Wisconsin, that the brothers themselves used to travel the country.
One room has artifacts from clowns that became famous, and another room has costumes.
One of them is from an elephant used in famous animal trainer
Gunther Gebel-Williams retirement performance (after forty years without a missed show!)
A final room has
posters, including the one that first proclaimed the show “The Greatest Show on Earth”.
I
Animal cart
Cart from the days when Ringling Brothers performed under a big top tent. wish there had been more.
Fort DeSoto Beach
I wanted to spend the rest of the day in a stereotypical Florida tourist spot, the beach.
On the way there, I had to traverse a notable item in these parts.
Most Florida bridges are long concrete causeways that run yards above a river.
They are in no way notable.
The
Sunshine Skyway across the mouth of Tampa Bay was like the rest until 1980, when a barge ran into it in thick fog.
Thirty five people drove off the bridge and died.
The state replaced the bridge with a soaring suspension bridge that peaks five stories above the bay.
It’s impressive.
The view from the top is even more impressive, especially on the rare days with little humidity.
On these days, the view covers the entire bay, from Brandenton in the south to Tampa in the north to St. Petersburg in the west.
I got this view, and had problems paying attention to the road.
The drive up the bridge reminded me of the launch hill of a roller coaster.
The beach I
The Sunshine Skyway
A rare view of the Sunshine Skyway across Tampa Bay. Humididy usually leads to a much foggier view. I took this photo from the rest area on the south end of the bridge. went to is
Fort DeSoto beach at the southern end of the Pinellas Peninsula.
It’s ranked by many
experts as the best beach in Florida, and likely the mainland US.
For starters, it has fine grained sand and warm water.
It’s pretty long, so there is room to spread out.
Since it is a county park, the only development is the snack bars.
Perhaps most importantly, it’s located at the end of a winding road with an annoying toll bridge in the middle, so relatively few people go there.
The beach faces west, so the sun sets over the water.
It was pretty special, even by Florida standards.
I stayed there until it got dark and the beach closed.
After the beach I wanted some dinner.
I went to Gulfport, the only town in this area NOT geared to tourists.
I found dinner at the
Habana Café, which specializes in Cuban food.
It was very good, and moderately priced.
The restaurant looks like a Cuban Hacienda, just adding to the atmosphere.
Later that night, I got my first case of the festival effect on this
Fort DeSoto Beach
Fort DeSoto Beach, ranked by many as the best in the United States. Note the utter lack of development, and relatively few people. trip.
The festival effect, as described in one of my guidebooks, is when a traveler unknowingly arrives somewhere near a festival time.
The first real sign is that most hotels are booked when looking for housing.
I quickly discovered that the hotels in St. Petersburg were either atrociously high priced, flea pits, located in the hinterlands, or full.
Much work finally uncovered a well-located hotel with tolerable rates.
The
Hotel Ponce de Leon opened in downtown St. Petersburg in 1922 during the first golden age of Florida tourism.
The current owners managed to update the hotel while keeping most of the
tropical moderne design details.
I appreciated this.
The reason the rates were low enough to be tolerable is that the rooms are tiny, which is typical for the era.
They were larger than those at RoomMate Grace, but that’s about it.
After checking in, I discovered what the festival is.
St. Petersburg is hosting an
IndyCar race on Sunday, and people were arriving early.
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