The Myakka Canopy Walkway — North America's first public treetop walkway, a suspension bridge and tower that lift you up into the oak-and-palm canopy. Park at the trailhead and walk a few minutes in.
On your left is the trailhead for something special, and it's worth parking and walking the few minutes in to see it — the Myakka Canopy Walkway. This was the very first public treetop walkway anywhere in North America, and the idea is simple and wonderful: instead of always looking UP at the forest, you get to climb INTO it, up where most of the life of a forest actually happens. A short trail leads you back through the oak-and-palm hammock to a suspension bridge, strung twenty-five feet up between the trees, that you walk across, swaying gently, right in among the branches. And for the bold, a tower climbs higher still, some seventy-odd feet up, to a platform above the treetops with a view out over the whole wild park.
It came from the work of a pioneering scientist who studies forest canopies — a whole hidden world of birds and bugs and air-plants that lives up in the treetops and that almost nobody ever gets to see. Up on that bridge you're in their world. A fair word: a hurricane came through here a couple of years back and thinned out the canopy some, so the trees are still filling back in — but it's a lovely, unusual thing to walk, and the view from the tower is worth every step. Park here, take the short walk, climb into the trees — then come on back to the car and we'll head on up to the lake.
Photo: Shockblaster · CC BY-SA 4.0
