In mid-May I headed down to south Sarasota for my annual trip to Myakka River State Park to see the tickseed blooming. I left early in the dark since the traffic going through Sarasota is so bad now. What use to be an hour trip from my old house in Tampa is now an hour and a half if I don’t hit traffic so I wanted to be early enough to miss the morning rush hour. I got down to the exit in record time and since I had 20 minutes before the gate opened at the park I stopped in at the nearby Sarasota National Cemetery. So many tombstones. All members of any Armed Forces can be buried here. The cemetery is fairly new, opening in 2007.

The Patriot Plaza amphitheater opened in 2014 for memorials and ceremonies. It was quiet before 8am this morning, only a few maintenance men and myself.

As I got closer to the park I noticed what looked like a prescribed burn along the road. I was hoping that wasn’t the case in the regular part of the park.

Just past the entrance I pulled over and got out and shot the above with my phone. The sun was up but it was cloudy or mostly hazy. This is what the two lane roads look like as you travel across back roads in central Florida. The road looked like a mantenance road to nowhere. This is part of the park which is over 37,000 acres but visitors are not allowed in the outlying areas.

Once in the park I pulled over at the first field to see the tickseed. Yellow flowers forever. It is native to the area and grows wild. Since this is an undisturbed prairie it grows all along the fields here.

I also stopped where everyone else stops. The first bridge you come to in the park that goes over the river. There’s always a lot of alligators in this area and you can see them from high up on the bridge. I spent several hours at the park until the heat got the best of me. I took tons of pictures so more on those later.