It’s starting to cool down a little in Florida so I went out for a Parks on the Air activation. At 82F it was still sweaty but bearable. A little down the road from park K-3607 that I activated previously, is South Fork State Park, K-3656. This is land that I think they are reserving for a future park, or protecting it from becoming farmland by calling it a park. It’s part of the Southwest Florida Wildlife Management District, which I needed to walk through to get to the state park land. It’s an oddly shaped park due to the WMA and farms around it.
This map doesn’t show the State Park borders. There’s a sliver of park land near the road but it’s not a great spot to activate and not very challenging. I chose to walk through the WMA, I’d estimate I went about 4 miles round trip.
I found a good spot to setup with a little bit of shade.
Radio conditions were excellent, I was able to get 74 contacts with many of them in Europe. 8 contacts from Belguim and even got one from Denmark. The furthest US contact was Washington State, NK7L, I’ve worked him a few times at other parks. This was an enjoyable activation that went very smoothly.
There’s another park in this area that I’ll probably hit up next, Alafia River State Park. I’ve been there before, they have great mountain bike trails, a lot of them are expert level black diamond but they have a few easier ones. I’ll make a radio/mountain bike trip out of it. I’ve purchased an inflatable kayak that I’m going to attempt to use to activate some of the closer parks that require a boat, need to test it out first though.
