Fort DeSoto County Park - a Short Visit

Every other weekend, we try and head out on some sort of quick little adventure ... if we're feeling up to it.

So, a couple weeks ago, we headed out to a new park in St. Pete. This park is actually one of the top rated parks in the entire U.S. So I was pretty excited to get over there. It turned out to be a pretty good bargain, to actually get into this place. Usually when you head towards the beach in Florida, you have to pay for parking once you get there. And that will typically run us several dollars. To get to this park we did have to pay a couple of tolls, but the total ended up being about $0.75 (at the time of this writing anyhow).

And the best part is - you actually get to enjoy a fairly massive park complex, with all kinds of activities and things to do.

Here's a couple of photos from our stop:

One thing I want to say - take notice of the blue sky in the canon picture. I'll finish this off with a discussion of that sky.

It is a 'Fort', by the way. And it was our first time there ... thus the military parts in the pictures. As you'll see below, we probably would have more exploratory pictures, but our visit was cut short.

It turns out ... this is an excellent park. There are trails to run, walk, or bike. There are tons of beaches to lounge and play on. There's plenty of fishing and boating areas. And it's a fairly large park, so it can accommodate quite a few recreationers.

Anyhow ...

I wanted to finish this post by talking about Florida weather. You'll notice the nice blue sky above the canon in the picture. Well, we probably walked around the park for about 30 minutes. You can see, the skies were pretty nice. I mean - you could tell it was cloudy over the water. And then at the end of our exploration, we stopped in and bought some overpriced food for our starving children. As we were eating the food, all of the sudden ... from the Gulf side ... this gigantic monsoon storm blows in. The way these HUGE storms just roll in during the afternoon is insane. Beach clearing thunder and lightning. Torrential rain that leaks in under the door of the building, and howling winds that look like they're going to blow the trees over. It's just the most uncanny thing to see.

We had originally gone to the beach to play in the water, and needless-to-say, we didn't go near the water after the storm came rolling in.


However - it was a superb park - well worth spending a whole lot more time checking out in the future. So, I'm sure we'll be back for more fun in the sun.

Al