The Best Kayak Launch Site Ever - Little Manatee River State Park | RV Lifestyle

Hi everybody, I'm Randy and I'm Diane and we're Zephyr Travels. And this week we are at Little Manatee River State Park, which is located near Sun City. Yeah, very close to Sun City, Florida. Yeah, so it's south of Tampa. It's a very nice park. We really didn't do a lot. We did take one day and go visit a couple that belong to our local Airstream unit. They live in Englewood, Florida. Yeah, this is a very nice campground. It's small, only 30 sites, one loop. But the sites are, well, they're not huge because I think there's a lot of vegetation between them, as you can see behind us. Yeah, in fact we did share our campsite with a couple of tortoises, which both Monty and Zephyr, especially Monty, were quite taken with. Yeah, we have it right over here in our campsite behind Diane. There's a hole and there's been a tortoise living in that hole. We think one or two. We've seen two tortoises. Yeah, we've seen two tortoises wander around the campsite one day and one went in the hole and it's been there most of the week. Right, right. And this morning it did dare to peek its head out and Monty saw it and they, both of them, actually scared it back into their hole or den or whatever you call whatever of course it's living. What do you mean you were here first? I think they were here first. Where's his head? What's that? Where's his head? No, it's on the top end. See, it's poking it out. Come on. Be good. No. Be good, Monty. No. No. No. That's a friend. Hey. No. No. The tortoise doesn't want to play with you. No. Hey. If anybody is knowledgeable about tortoises, please leave us a comment. Yeah, we'd like to know more about tortoises. We actually had to figure out what's the difference between a tortoise and a turtle and when tortoises are land, turtles are amphibian. Yeah, primarily in water. So that was something that we did learn this week. Yep. So we spent time just walking the dogs. Yeah, there's a lot of nice hiking trails in this campground. And if you do have a kayak, there is a nice area where you can launch your kayak. Yeah, I've never seen a kayak launch area. It really is set up as nicely as this one was. It's very nice and if you do happen to have some kind of physical disability, if you're in a wheelchair, they do have a handicap ramp and they do have it set up. So actually if you do kayaking or canoeing, you would be able to actually launch your boat and go and take advantage of the river. We're at the boat launch or the kayak and canoe launch here at Little Manatee River State Park. And they've got something here I've never really seen before. Over here they have a what you would call like a ramp or something that you can slide your kayaks down to the lower level, get them close to water without having to carry them down the stairs. And then right here, this contraction here is set up so that you can use it to get into your kayak. So it's really designed for people with mobility issues. So if you're in a wheelchair or just didn't have good mobility, you can come on here, slide yourself over onto this part here, which would be right over your kayak and then you could just lower yourself down. Now I've never seen anything like this. I thought this was pretty neat and wanted to share it. In addition to the setup they have if you are handicapped to get into your kayak, they do also have this handicap ramp. So if you are in a wheelchair or any other mobility or have any other mobility issue, this is a nice addition which we have never seen before. So it's a great thing to offer. Here is the ramp that you can easily glide your kayak or canoe in. And yeah, it goes right down to the water so it makes it very easy. Yeah, it does look like they rent kayaks here during the normal season, which isn't right now because there were no kayaks out. But they had a lot of kayak racks around there, so I think they have a rental business that would allow them to accommodate anybody that's mobility challenged. So we're getting ready to leave. Head to our next campground. We're headed up to Hillsboro? Hillsboro River. Zephyr Hills. In Zephyr Hills. Right. Actually, we'll be there. This is probably be our longest stay so far. This trip will be there nine or ten days. Nine or ten days, yes. So we'll be there over the Christmas holiday. Yep. If you like this video, what should they do Diane? Please give it a big thumbs up and subscribe to our channel, Zephyr Travels. Hit that bell for notifications. We do post videos on a weekly basis on Sundays and we'd love to have you follow along with this one lap of the U.S. journey of ours. Although next week, Sunday being Christmas, we will not have a video, right? Right, but we probably won't put this video out until after Christmas. So if you're watching this video, then you notice why we didn't have a video on the previous Sunday. Right. So in any event, until then, we'll see everyone down the road and we hope you, since this will come out after Christmas, hope you had a wonderful Christmas. Yeah. Take care everybody. Bye. To the simplest truth You and I as one will always be better than two. Be good Monty.