Day One: Fort Desoto Camping Trip

Tierra Verde, Florida: For those of you that are familiar with Florida weather, the window for comfortable tent camping is not very long. We have been trying to get a trip scheduled for a while but with our son's baseball schedule, we haven't been so lucky. But we caught a break this weekend as his Saturday game was cancelled due to the holiday weekend. I went online and booked the only available campsite at Fort Desoto Park.

I have only been to Fort Desoto once while passing through the area but it was a quick stop and we didn't have a chance to enjoy the park. I was looking forward to going back and exploring the park as it has received great reviews for it's beach, wildlife and for being pet friendly. Since it was highly regarded for being pet friendly, we decided to bring the dogs. 

We arrived at the park and checked into our site, #102. What a great site. It was located right next to the bathhouse and had wetlands behind the site. While setting up our site, I was quickly reminded how much I love our Coleman Instant Tent. I had our test set up quicker then our neighbor had their pop-up camper set up and lightyears ahead of several of the other standard tents nearby. It truly is as easy as 1-2-3.

Once the site was set-up, we loaded the dogs into the truck and headed to the beach. Fort Desoto Park has a dog beach and dog park so the four legged member of the family can have a good time too. The beach was rather crowded but that didn't stop our Cocka-Poo "Sophie" from diving right in. Sophie loves swimming, but this was her first time at a beach and she really didn't know what to do with the waves at first. She was growling at the waves and attacking them as they rolled onshore. But once she figured it out, you couldn't keep her out of the water.

On the polar opposite side of things lies our Lab "Bella". She absolutely hates water. I tried to pull her into the water and she started bucking like a wild Bronco and pulling away. After a little while, she started getting a little braver and got her feet wet, but she never really got over it enough to jump in.

As the dog beach got fuller, we decided leave the beach and take the dogs to the dog park. Unlike the beach, they pretty much had the entire park to themselves. We left them run around and play for a while before heading back to the campground.

Once back at the campground, we stopped by the camp store from some ice cream. Their ice cream cones were delicious and big, a one scoop cone was actually two heaping scoops. A great treat to cool down from an afternoon in the sun.

Then we headed out to explore the park and campground. I thought the campsites on our side of the park were nice, well the ones in Area 1 "non-pet" are even better yet. A few that got my attention were in the 195-199 corner, nice waterfront view. We then traveled through the park with stops at the award winning North Beach, the East Beach and the eastern overlook with a scenic view of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. 

We decided to then tour the surrounding area. We took a drive though coastal Pinellas County, passing through St. Pete Beach, South Pasadena and many other coastal towns.

Those of you who follow the site regularly, know I have a new found passion in airplane photography. This is something that everyone in the family enjoys, even my wife likes going So we decided to go spend a little time at Tampa International Airport. Since we were coming from coastal Pinellas, we made a pass by St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport. There was nothing coming or going. There were a few USCG HC-130 Hercules on the ramp at the Coast Guard base but they were obstructed from the camera. But I did manage to get a photo of a UPS cargo jet on the ramp.

Then we crossed over the Howard Franklin Bridge, grabbed dinner and then headed up to the top floor TIA's parking garage. On the way across the bridge, my wife got a photo of a British Airway's jet on approach to the airport. I lucked out on getting a photo when it departed as it stayed at the terminal longer then I had anticipated. But we had a solid 30-45 minutes watching the air traffic before heading back to the campground. On the way back across the bridge, I spotted a FedEx cargo jet on approach to TIA, but to far for a photo and we were too far away to make it back, damn the luck!

Once we got back to the park, we headed back to the beach to watch the sunset over the Gulf. A great way to end the day. After the sunset, we headed back to the campsite and watched Hop before hitting the sack.