Let's start off with a little bit of information about me. My parents moved to Brandon Florida in 1964, I lived there until the beginning of the fourth grade. We then moved to Gainesville Florida where I stayed halfway through the 10th grade. We then moved to Miami where I completed high school and began my career with the state of Florida Department of Transportation (1975). In 1977 I transferred to the Tampa area to further my career. This September I will be forced to retire as I have reached 35 years with the department. As I am still to young to fully retire and I need to find another way to earn a living (anyone need a slightly used contract manager). So before I find that new job I want to do some of the things I enjoy most, and I figure I might as well write about them too.
While raising a family in the Tampa area I found that taking the children to the park was a very good outlet for pent-up energy. It also allowed my wife some time to catch up on some of the things she needed to do. Now, I felt like this was a no brain-er stay home and clean the garage or spend time with the children at the park. Turns out it was a good plan at the end of the day my wife was able to accomplish the tasks she had wanted to do (Not to mention some well deserved alone time) and the kids and I got to bond (although I still had to clean the garage).
I have been to many parks throughout the State of Florida. I would like to revisit some of the parks that I visited as a child or teenager growing up and the parks my children liked the most. One of the problems I had was arriving at a park ill-prepared, we would arrive all excited about a new adventure only to find out the park had a swimming pool and we did not bring bathing suits. How about having charcoal and food but no barbecue grills available, If fishing was allowed I did not have a fishing pole or bait.
I hope through this Blog I can resolve many of the issues you may encounter before you visit a park. Due to the shear number of parks located in this state I have to prioritize the parks I will visit. I have chosen to visit parks that provide camping facilities I think this will best serve this site. Now if someone has a park that you would like information on I will try to oblige. (I like to treasure hunt so I expect some of the parks will be located near treasure hunting sites.)
