Koreshan State Historic Site (State Park)

This state park is just between Naples and Ft. Myers in the small town of Estero, which was founded by the Koreshans! The Koreshans were a small sect around 1900 with a unique view of the world. These folks believed that the entire universe existed within a giant hollow sphere. According to the literature, they conducted experiments to confirm their theory! The group never reached the membership goal of two million and in fact, never made it to 500! So, much like the Shakers, they have died out for a wide variety of reasons.

We attempted to go to a Red Sox game. Attempted. Having been unable to acquire tickets online, we thought maybe we could just go to the new spring training stadium (Fenway South at Jetblue Park) and get tickets there. Our hopes were dashed when we arrived and would have had to pay $9 just to park to find out if we could get tickets from a scalper. We returned to the campground with dashed hopes. We somewhat eased our wounds by watching NCAA basketball...Duke falling in their first game! Amazing.

Saturday morning we decided to take advantage of the sausage and gravy breakfast being served by the volunteers. This was all part of an antique engine meet at the park over the weekend. We rode our bikes over and arrived to the sounds made by old one-lunger engines huffing with an occasional “poof” sound. Frankly, Marty loves these old machines and the sounds they make. The breakfast was good and for a contribution of $2.50 each we got a large biscuit with homemade sausage gravy.

Koreshan State Park is just off Route 41, which is a major north-south road here in south Florida. There are shopping centers nearby and all of us rode out on our bicycles to pick up a few necessities. David picked up a puncture returning to the campground but fortunately had a repair kit in the camper.

Our site in the campground is within the territory of one male cardinal. He sings in the morning and evening, announcing his presence to all other cardinals. Sometimes he attacks his image that he sees in our neighbor's truck mirrors. It has been fun to observe and hear this beautiful bird.

Our only other “wildlife” in this park has been turtles, large slow moving, grass-eating creatures we've not been able to accurately identify but we think it is a Florida softshell. There are lots of very large dragonflies, probably Regal Darners.

Here it is, this is the special!  

We departed Little Manatee Springs after one night and headed to Barbara and Bob's place (David's sister and brother-in-law) for lunch.  Now using wifi at Hillsborough River State Park.  We'll write more about these two places in the next blog.