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Published: March 8th 2018
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Blog 03-08-18 De Soto National Memorial
I missed 2 parks in the St Augusteen area to get my Passport book stamped so I wanted to see what was in this area so any parks here wouldn't be missed.
De Soto National Memorial is in Bradenton about an hour from here and as a bonus they allow dogs in the park so I wouldn't have to leave Watson. We left here about 10:30 and drove back roads to Bradenton, then it was city traffic. What a change from being in nature to traffic lights, crazy traffic, hundreds of stores, just crazy busy. Culture shock.
De Soto park is along the Manatee River near Tampa Bay and is a small penninsula. When we got there we were immediately back in nature again, a welcome relief. First stop was the visitor's center for the all important stamp in the book then we followed a self-guided interpretive and nature trail out to the point of the penninsula, around and back again, a big circle.
The park was established to mark the point at which Hernando de Soto and an army of 600 splashed ashore in 1539 to conquer, populate and pacify
the New World. This failed expedition would never yield gold and treasure, instead, the men marched from one village to the next, taking food and enslaving the native people. It is estimated that over 2,000 natives were killed.
Part of the trail was a boardwalk over a mangrove forest and I tried to envision men on horseback, they had over 200 horses, trying to follow the native people as they fled. The horses and men became mired in the mangroves and made further raids slow and almost impossible.
There was a small section of the park set aside for demonstrations and artifacts to see and touch. They had a war club studded with shark teeth that looked pretty nasty and an instrument that looked like a kid's top but was actually a hole driller or a fire starter, dual purpose. There were pieces of pottery, war clubs, shells and pearls (not real ones) that were used in trade.
There was also a table with a Spanish war helmet, chain maul armor, swords and spears, cross bows and nasty looking hatchets, all instruments of war.
There was also a thatched hut that would have been the native's
shelter. It was a very interesting trip into history and beautiful scenery to enjoy too.
The ride home was fine once we got out of the city and enjoyed the agricultural part of Florida. There were strawberry fields everywhere with migrant workers bending over to hand pick the delicious berries. What hard work for them, at least it was cool today. We passed orange groves and the smell from the blossems made me want to turn around and come back past them again, heavenly fragrance. There were wooden boxed of bee hives in the fields to pollenate the orange trees.
There were fields of cattle, most laying down, all over with an occasional long horn among the group. Then we passed a phosphate mine with a HUGE crane with an enormous shovel moving the earth about. Florida is the leader in US production of phospherous mainly used in fertilizer.
Then we passed a farm setting up for what I think is tomato production. They had tarps or ground coverings over the field then stakes every 2 feet.
It's a very busy time of year down here getting strawberries harvested and getting ready for the next yrs
crop. Then planting the warmer weather crops.
When we got home Watson plopped himself in his bed in the camper and that was it for him. The weather outside is cloudy and windy and cool, great time to catch up on sleep.
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