South Lido Kayak Trip

Sarasota, Florida: After a few weekends of kayaking and trying different places, we decided to return to our favorite spot so far, South Lido Park. The kayak trail here has been the best we have visited so far and today's trip did not disappoint.

Last trip to South Lido, we took on a whim without really doing much research about the trails or what to expect. But when I got home and started working on photos, I realized that we missed a good chunk of the trails. So we decided to go back and explore the areas we missed. When looking at the map, we missed an entire mangrove tunnel during our last visit.

When we last visited South Lido, it was Memorial Day and it was very crowded as to be expected. To avoid this, we got there really early and pretty much had the place to ourselves for much of the morning. Because of this, there was plenty of wildlife to see. We had osprey fishing near us and a trio of cormorants that swam with us until we hit the first mangrove tunnel. Along the edge of the mangroves we watched Oystercatchers skimming the water, herons and egrets looking for food and even the sounds of woodpeckers in the trees.  There were plenty of wildlife photo opportunities I wished I had a waterproof housing for my good DSLR camera, there would have been some great photos.

Under the water was active as well.  The water was really clear and you could see a lot of what was going on under the surface of the water.  We saw a ton of starfish, sponges and a bunch of fish.  My son even tried his hand at kayak fishing which did not result in any catches.

As we entered the tunnels, the tunnel we missed was by far the best one.  It was very dense and made you forget you were off-shore of a big Florida city and not in the middle of a jungle somewhere.  The dense canopy really kept you cool.

Once we broke free of the mangrove tunnel, the sky started to show signs of storms to come, but we continued to push on and entered into the third tunnel and then a beach stop.

While wading in the waters of Sarasota Bay, the sky began to darken and the sound of thunder filled the air, so we reboarded our kayaks and headed back to the launch.

While we did get to explore much more of the park, weather cut our trip short.  But I am sure we will be back again as each trip has resulting in a completely different experience so far.

We paddled about two miles during today's kayak trip to South Lido Park.  Here is a map of our travels today.

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