CAYO COSTA

Cayo Costa State Park has always been one of our favorite recreation spots. We've been bringing our kids and their friends to this "boat-access-only" island preserve for almost 30 years. It's just the best when it comes to getting away for some tenting, or renting their little one-room screened cottages, or for tucking your sailboat away into a secluded anchorage. It's hard to "get away from it all" in Florida, but this is about as close as you can get . . . 30 years ago or today.

This posting is to update our girls on what's going on at Cayo Costa. First of all, Hurricane Charley nearly wiped it out in 2004, but since then, the State Parks System has put a lot of money rebuilding its meager infrastructure. We highly support those efforts. They now have beautiful new recycled-plastic docks & slips on the east side of the island, along with new restrooms, a pavilion, a little office, and they've rebuilt the little screened camping cottages on the Gulf side. They've done a nice job keeping the experience low-key.

The most shocking change to those who have been there previously is the removal of all of the huge Australian Pine that ran for about a mile along the Gulf Coast beachfront where the tenting/camping area was, and still is. We support this effort to rid the island of this invasive species. We will miss their shade too, but the native species are filling quickly; it was the correct thing to do. You can still see some of the big Pine stumps in some of the photos.

The inland tidal lagoon on the Gulf side is still intact, however its entrance/exit is now way down at the far southern end of the lake. Today, it is much too shallow to push our Macgregor 26 through its cut in the primary dune into the lagoon, but who knows what it'll look like after next hurricane season. That's the way things are supposed to change on the Florida coast. There's not supposed to be concrete walls, asphalt, seawalls, levees, and condos on the beachfront. The gators have even returned to flourish in the lagoon. Remember swimming this everyday, girls? Can't do that now unfortunately, but that's OK.

Three of the pics are hard to visualize . . .they were taken as we sailed by the little sandbar finger at the entrance to Pelican Bay where we would slip the MacGregor around behind it and run it aground, and use that as our own private anchorage and beach for days. Just us and the wild pigs. It's still there, it's just smaller at the moment, but that too can change in one stormy summer. There was a MacGregor there when we arrived, but I didn't get a picture. Nice to see some family has discovered it as we did; I'm sure they're making the same memories for a lifetime . . . as we did.