Activated Lake Manatee State Park today. I had driven past this one coming from Beker-Wingate State Park K-3607 and had it on my list. My girlfriend, Amanda, likes to find geocache’s while I’m doing the radio and it looked like there were a lot of them at Lake Manatee when I looked back then. Unfortunately it seems they have removed most of them. We found a couple outside the park on the way back. She’s working on her technician ticket so she can activate some parks too. The ARRL DX SSB contest was still going on so I built a 17m dipole before we left hoping that I could get…

Activated Caladesi Island State Park K-1844 today. It’s no longer an island after a hurricane closed the pass years ago. There’s two ways to get there, either on a ferry from Honeymoon Island or walking in from Clearwater. I picked up a cart at Dicks Sporting Goods a few weeks back so I figured we’d walk in. It doesn’t work great on the soft sand due to the small wheels but I pulled it through. The north part of Clearwater has no public parking so I dropped the gear and the gf at the northernmost public beach access and parked (way) back where there was parking. My phone says I…

This was a really fun one. I went right after the Brooksville Hamfest. The state forest is pretty big, I went to the Croom Lake section. I’ve been to Croom a few times before for the mountain bike trails, so I was familiar with the area. I went with the gf, we found a car trail back into the woods and found a nice spot to setup the antenna. I got great signal reports even all the trees. It was a perfect temperature out and very peaceful. Couldn’t ask for a better activation.