Myakka River State Park

Myakka River: Florida's Wild Heart

17 stops· 30 min· 3.7 mi

A slow drive into one of the wildest and oldest of Florida's state parks — Myakka River State Park, thirty-seven thousand acres of river, lake, prairie, and oak hammock just east of Sarasota, and one of the finest places in all of Florida to see alligators and wading birds in the wild. Ranger Quinn drives you up Park Drive, past the old stone weir where the gators gather, along the blackwater Myakka River, to the Canopy Walkway where you can climb into the treetops, and out to the great sheet of Upper Myakka Lake — the 'River of Birds,' where spoonbills and wood storks and herons feed by the thousand. Ranger Boone Merrick rides along with the tales: the young men of the Civilian Conservation Corps who carved this park out of the wilderness by hand in the depths of the Depression; Bertha Palmer, the Chicago society queen who stepped off a train and bought a county's worth of wild Florida; the two giant airboats that ruled the lake for thirty-six years; and the deep sinkhole at the far end where the alligators pile up by the hundreds. Best in the cool dry season, November through April, when the wildlife crowds the water. There's a small park entry fee; bring binoculars and water — and never, ever feed a gator.