Myakka River State Park Sarasota, Florida Jan 27 – Feb 10, 2026

We left Jonathan Dickinson State Park around 11 am on Tuesday, January 27th and drove three hours slightly northwest across the state to Myakka River State Park near Sarasota, Florida for a 14-night stay. We stayed here last year around the same time of year and Cindy booked the same pull-through site we had then, which was right across from the restroom/showers.

Myakka River State Park

And that was convenient because, while we had full hook-ups, this is the place where the park’s water is designated non-potable (same as it was last year), so we don’t even hook up to or use the park water for showers or washing dishes (which they say it is safe for) because I don’t want that in our travel trailer water lines. Instead we use water from our fresh water tank that we filled at our previous stop to wash dishes, our hands, and brush our teeth.

We also use gallon jugs we fill with the non-potable water at our site to flush the toilet and we use the park bathhouse to take our showers; all so we don’t use up the fresh water in our tank. And we supplement the water that is safe to drink in our tank with gallons of drinking water that the park makes freely available to campers while they are in the park. It’s more plastic than we like to use and they don’t have recycling for the empty plastic gallon jugs, but it’s what it is while staying at this campground.

Wednesday morning we awoke to 34 degree temperatures. We had the furnace on all night AND our thick blanket on the bed. When I took Bella out to relieve herself at 5:30 am, there was a light dusting of frost on the ground and all flat surfaces like Cindy’s chair and table.

After breakfast we decided to get some of our warmer clothes out of the tubs in the very front of the bed of the truck. With Cindy’s help it didn’t take long to move some of the other tubs and things out of the way, get what we needed, and put everything back in place.

Sweater For Bella

Bella’s getting older and frailer (ain’t we all?) and losing some of her fur (ain’t we all?) so we decided that, while we were out running errands, we would also try and get her a sweater to help keep her warm. Went to Pet Supermarket first and they had very few in stock and none that would fit Bella. Plus the cashier just didn’t care when we mentioned how few they had on display. As Cindy said, customer service just sucks these days, especially the “hourly” employees.

We searched and found an independent pet supply store not far away and drove there. We stepped through the door and before we even bothered looking I asked the middle-aged woman (I was getting possible vibes she was the owner) behind the counter if they had any dog sweaters. She apologized profusely that they did not, but said she had seen some at both the nearby Home Goods store and at a TJ Maxx store (both were surprising possibilities to all thee of us) a bit farther away, giving us directions to both. What a difference in customer service and plain old common courtesy compared to the chain store staff.

We tried the Home Goods store first, found an almost perfect sweater AND it was $10 less than the ones at Pet Supermarket! I’ve included some photos of Bella in her new sweater so you can ooooh and ahhhhh at her fashion sense.

Four AM Follies

It seems to be some kind of unwritten law that the propane tank for the furnace MUST run out of fuel sometime between 2 and 5 am, because that seems to be when ours ALWAYS runs out. In the middle of a freaking cold night!

At 4:15 Thursday morning Cindy woke me to groggily let me know that the furnace was “clicking” (the sound it makes when it’s trying to ignite but has no propane to light). So I crawled out from underneath the warm blankets, turned the furnace off, put on my slippers and jacket and went outside to switch the line from the empty tank to the full tank.

These are the times I’m thankful that we’ve always used dual tanks with a regulator that lets me just flip from one tank to the other. That way I don’t have to stand outside freezing my @$$ off disconnecting an empty tank and connecting up a full one.

Still, it was shiveringly cold because it was 33 degrees and, again, everything was covered in frost.

In Florida!

The supposed “Sunshine State”!

After switching to our full tank I went back inside, turned the furnace on and it started right up. I took off my jacket and slippers, then got back under the warm covers of our bed.

My loving wife stirred beside me and murmured, “Is it cold outside?” I resisted (for once, lol) the urge to place my cold hands on her warm body and instead told her “No, it’s very, very warm. You should go check it out.” She laughed softly, snuggled up closer to me and after a few minutes I drifted back to sleep with her lightly snoring in my ear.

Thursday was also Curmudgerons Day so I wrote about how I am a member in good standing on my personal blog.

That night we watched the latest episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. It was an interesting Klingon-centric episode that gave us a good look at the history of the young, peace-loving character from a race of warriors.

Venice Beach Weekend

Friday morning, while enjoying breakfast at the dinette, we were joined by a Prairie Warbler in the bushes outside our window. It was a beautiful bird that made a nice, vocal breakfast companion. One of the things we love about camping in different places is all the variety of birds we get to see and hear. I have some photos of it in the album for this post.

In the late afternoon we drove over to Venice Beach (about 30 minutes away) to scope out which beach the shark tooth hunting would take place at that weekend. Amber and Abby were coming over from Orlando, after Abby got out of school, to spend the weekend with Cindy looking for shark teeth. Since I wouldn’t be there to guide them, we thought it was prudent to check out the route to the beach so Cindy would be able to get them where they needed to be.

Cindy had fun doing it last year. But this year she would have MORE fun because Amber and Abby were doing it with her AND I made sure to get her the right tool for sifting through the water and sand at the edge of the beach to find some missing teeth from sharks.

When Amber and Abby arrived we all went to dinner, then I left them to enjoy their two days at the beach while I enjoyed two days of bacherlohood at Nomad. Oh, and I also returned to Nomad with a homemade apple-cranberry pie that Amber baked and brought over for me. It was a nice surprise that both my taste buds and tummy appreciated.

Unfortunately, for them, the weather was pretty miserable that weekend at the beach. Cold, wet, windy, and cloudy. Check out the video for this post and you’ll see them almost get blown off the beach. But they braved it like champs and found lots of shells and shark’s teeth during their weekend adventure.

Meanwhile, yours truly was enjoying the solitude and warmth of Nomad (except when I was walking Bella) while watching some DVD’s, reading and writing. I got to crank the heat up as high as I wanted (since Cindy wasn’t there to melt like she does when I make it too warm) and enjoy some nice meals she made for me before leaving me to my own devices.

Saturday was also National Hot Chocolate Day and, as cold as it was, that made for a very appropriate observance. I always enjoy it when Cindy makes me a cup on cold mornings and wrote more about the special day on my personal blog.

And I was especially proud to learn that back in Orlando my daughter, granddaughter and Seth were all out at a busy intersection protesting. You can probably guess what they were protesting about. Cindy and I were thrilled to learn what good citizens they were being and hearing how good they felt letting their voices be heard.

Sunday was a half-day of batching it for me. The girls arrived in the early afternoon and we had a delicious lunch of Cindy’s homemade beef nachos and then played several hands of a new card game that Amber and Abby introduced us to before they had to leave to return to Orlando.

Are We In Florida?

It was cold Sunday night and we awoke Monday morning to a temperature of 31 degrees.

I thought we were in Florida!

That Monday also marked 15 years since our beloved Squeaky passed away. Here’s a post I wrote about that loving girl back in 2014 and one of her last photos is in this post’s album. She is still missed so much.

At lunch Cindy and I watched the first 2 episodes of Marvel’s new Wonder Man TV series, and then episodes 3 and 4 at dinner. I’m enjoying it, but Cindy was not quite sure at that point and was probably just watching it to humor me.

I also finally got around to posting my 2026 Reading Challenge Goal over on my writing and reading blog.

Tuesday morning it was 30 degrees when we woke up! Glad we had lots of propane for the furnace.

At breakfast I sadly learned that Chuck Negron of Three Dog Night had passed away the day before, and I wrote about my love for that rock band over on my personal blog.

Federal Budget Passed

On Wednesday, with the federal budget (other than DHS) finally settled on Tuesday night, we were able to start cancelling reservations we had already booked for campsites beginning in April and going through September. That’s the six-month period we’ll be volunteer-hosting in Georgia. We wanted to wait and be sure that there would be no shutdown of the Department Of Defense (they oversee the campground we’ll be at) BEFORE we cancelled those other reservations. That way, we (Cindy, actually) would not be left scrambling to get new places to stay if the government shut down and we were not needed where we were scheduled to volunteer.

But now we were all good on that front and we’re looking forward to trying out what it will be like to sit still somewhere and volunteer in exchange for a full hook-up site.

Thursday I took Voyager in for an oil change first thing in the morning and then went and got a haircut. Man, it was STILL cold!

And I think it’s crazy that a haircut at Great Clips that used to cost $12 is now $20. What’s the basis for THAT price increase? My hair is definitely not harder to cut. In fact, it’s probably easier because I have less and less of it every year.

After my last haircut, when it started growing back out, I trimmed my own hair on the sides near my ears and thought I had done a pretty decent job. But the nice lady who cut my hair that morning mentioned how she knows that SOME people cut their own to keep the cost down, so I guess it wasn’t as decent of a job as I thought, lol.

I keep trying to convince Cindy to just let me shave it bald so I’ll look as handsome as my brother, but she says not if I want her to look at me. And I DO enjoy her looking at me so…no shaving my head for me.

And I should clarify here that she thinks it looks fine on my brother, but she doesn’t think it would look good on ME.

Sir Ian McKellen

That night, while eating dinner, we watched The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and he had Sir Ian McKellen on as a guest. It turns out that, some 50-60 years ago, McKellen brought to life for the first time on the stage a character/play Shakespeare had created but that had never been performed. It was a lawyer who, in the play written 400 years ago, was called upon to address a riotous crowd that was gathered to express their displeasure that London was being inhabited by immigrants.

McKellen performed the scene from the play for the audience in the Ed Sullivan Theater and it was…amazing. We were blown away in the comfort of our little travel trailer and could not imagine how impactful it must have been for the live audience that night.

Here’s a link to the YouTube video of it that I put on my personal blog. If you haven’t seen it yet, do yourself a favor and take a look.

Two Mile Hike

Friday morning we went on a ranger-led hike of two miles through a VERY small part of the 37,000 acres that make up Myakka River State Park. We would have preferred to have gone on the noon hike but it was full when we tried to make our reservation, so we had no choice but to take the 9 am hike.

It probably worked out for the best because, while it was chilly when we started the hike, it was getting warm toward the end. We probably would have been sweating if we had taken the noon hike.

There were 10 other people with us as we followed Ranger Natalie on the hike. If you read our blog regularly you know how much Cindy loves seeing deer. Well on this hike a boy deer, with his horns only partly grown, was in the underbrush. He apparently felt safe enough that we couldn’t get to him that we were able to get within 6 feet of him. Cindy was SO excited and was able to get some really close-up shots of him (that you can see in the album) as he was nibbling on bushes and trees.

Then, farther down the trail, near a small body of water, one of the guys in our group turned back toward us with his camera pointing up and behind us. He was trying to get a photo of a bird in a tree and was stepping backward. All of the sudden I saw him jump up and toward the trail like he had been shocked by electricity or stepped on a snake.

Well, almost.

He came close to backsteppping on an adolescent alligator that was sunning itself just off the side of the trail. It was about 3 1/2 to 4 feet long and didn’t move. Ranger Natalie said it was napping and probably didn’t notice the guy…but he sure noticed it, lol. Anyway, we all got some good photos and video of it and Ranger Natalie placed herself between us as a group and the gator, probably more to protect the gator than us.

It was still in the same spot when we came back by on our return, so it must have been a deep nap.

At one point, we were all bent over looking at the trail as Ranger Natalie pointed out a Bobcat track in the sand. But Cindy happened to be looking farther down the trail where we were headed. She suddenly exclaimed, “What is THAT?” We all looked down the trail to see two dark shapes crossing from one side to the other. Were they foxes? Were they bears? “No”, Ranger Natalie said, “that was two river otters, probably a mother and pup. You folks have had quite a treat this morning, because we hardly ever see them out in full view like that!”

Way to go, Cindy!

Before the hike I’d been off my feet for a coupe of days, elevating my left foot and leg because my torn meniscus was still giving me trouble. But the morning of the hike I felt good and thought it would be no problem hiking 2 miles.

Wrong! About halfway through I was in pain and by the time we made it back from the hike I was gritting my teeth with every step. I planned to get off my feet when we got back to Nomad and stay that way the rest of the day, but life likes to throw curveballs at you at the worst times.

Dead Mini-Fridge

When we got back, Cindy asked me to get something out of our outside mini-fridge where we keep cold things that won’t fit in our small (not mini) inside fridge before I sat down and elevated my leg. When I opened the door I could tell things weren’t as cold as they should be. The mini-fridge we bought 18 months ago in Washington State had given up the ghost. We quickly moved things to the already-crowded inside fridge where we had to cram them in to keep them cold.

Then we had to search online to see where we could get a replacement. We thought we found the one we needed at a nearby Walmart and their app said they had three of them in their store.

They did not. Not on the shelf and not in the back warehouse. Something similar happened once before in another state when the app said they had what we needed at the store and it did not. Pretty useless to have an app that isn’t kept up to date and we’ve been burned twice by them now so we’ll never believe them again.

Our Lowe’s app said there were two at a nearby store and so we drove over there. Sure enough, there were two on the shelf. Thanks, Lowe’s, for having a properly functioning app. We grabbed one and we were good to go. Got back to the site, unboxed it, plugged it in and by next morning it was cold enough to move things into. Only thing is this model does not have a small freezer section like our other two have had. But the “freezer” has always been just an extra-cold, cylinder-like area with a flappy plastic door and no back. If you put more than one thing in the freezer OR if it sticks out the open back you don’t really get it frozen. So, it shouldn’t be a big deal not to have one.

Saturday I stayed off my feet all day. This year is the 25th anniversary of the release of the first movie in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, “The Fellowship of the Ring”, so we got out our extended version DVD set and watched it that night.

I’ve been a fan of LOTR since I bought the paperback boxed set off of Jeff Smith in the 10th grade for $5. Jeff got an adult to buy him beer with the $5, then got sick and threw up, so I definitely ended up with the better end of the deal. I read that set every few years for the longest time; always enjoying the experience, something Jeff Smith couldn’t say about the $5 I paid him or the beer that made him sick.

Sunday was a repeat of staying off my feet all day. We watched the second move in the trilogy, “The Two Towers”, again on the extended version DVD.

Monday we spent getting things ready for our departure the next day. That night we watched the third movie in the trilogy, “The Return of the King” also on the extended version DVD.

The plan is to watch all the “extras” on the DVD’s during our next couple of stops. Because there are a lot of them.

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