…I haven’t had time to catch up and share it all with you! Visited several parks in Sarasota County last week, including Jelks Preserve, the subject of this week’s Hike-A-Week, which goes out to subscribers around 7 AM today. I’m running late with it due to GPS hardware problems. It was a pleasant hike, shared with my husband, who was so thrilled with seeing so much wildlife – armadillo, armadillo, armadillo … we counted 18 in all that we could see up close, rummaging around. Did you know they shuffle around with a cloud of flies on their backs?
Find more photos like this on My Florida Hikes
Jelks Preserve offers several beauty spots on the Myakka River and loop hikes of a variety of distances: you pick and choose, up to 4.5 miles or so if you do all the spur trails plus the perimeter loop. We did 3.7 so we wouldn’t miss lunch at Snook Haven, a funky old fish camp / biker bar just upriver. Order their shrimp salad and homemade potato chips, they make both themselves and it’s a good combo.
Jelks Preserve is right along River Road between I-75 and US 41 in the wilderness of eastern Venice, just south of Venice Ave.
