Hillsborough River State Park, FL

We spent four nights at Hillsborough River State Park, located just northeast of Tampa.  It's an awesome park, with lots of hiking trails along the scenic Hillsborough River.

The "Stationary Bridge" over the Hillsborough River.

The river just below a small rapids.

While hiking one afternoon we saw the roiling waters created by an alligator as it attacked its prey.  It was over in an instant - a quick trashing sound, then silence.  All we saw was a mass of white air bubbles rising out of the black waters, in a pattern of turbulence that suggested the gator first folded in half to one side to grab its prey and then instantly snapped back to the other side.  Who its victim was is anyone's guess - a fish most likely, but perhaps a river otter?

The river, like most rivers in Florida, has a gentle current, since there isn't much of an elevation difference between here and Tampa Bay.  There is a canoe concession here at the park, and we have a life vest for Lana, so we thought we'd rent a canoe for a couple of hours and explore the river.  But they won't allow dogs in the canoes, and we expect our earlier experience is the reason.  When we would take our previous dog (Nala) kayaking with us she would often hang well over the edge of the boat, straining to catch a scent in the wind.  It's easy to imagine a wiley gator seeing her outline against the sky and coming a couple of feet above the water to easily snatch a tasty gator-sized snack...

The warm weather has the lilies blooming everywhere.

We haven't had the greatest campsite here.  It is mostly paved and located at a point where ALL of the traffic in the campground passes by.  To minimize Lana's tendency to want to scare off every big dog that passes by, we basically "circled the wagons" to create a defensive perimeter.  With the van and camper blocking the view of the road on one side and our shade structure blocking the view on the other, most dogs don't see her, so there is no "stinky eye" staring contest that quickly escalates to threats and challenges.

Last night was the first Friday in quite a while where we've stayed in a park campground.  Whereas Sunday through Thursday the campground is mainly full of snow birders, on Friday and Saturday the locals tend to reclaim their parks.  The result for us was that a lot more people stopped by last night asking about our camper.

A small turtle, perhaps a cooter.

But we are glad to be moving on from here.  While the park is awesome, the cycling opportunities here are less than ideal.  There's a two mile paved park loop and several mountain bike trails, some of which extend beyond the park.  And the main road to the park, US Hwy 301, has paved shoulders, but way too much traffic for us to want to use it as a training ride route.

We did bicycle some of the mountain bike trails, though it wasn't long before most of the longer ones transformed into a series of mud holes that forced us to turn around.

A trail in Dead River Wilderness.

Today we head for Camp Marty for one night, then we'll cross the state for another stay at Tomoka State Park that will last through St. Patrick's Day.  We have about two more weeks before we start tag-teaming our way north!