Myakka River State Park

So beautiful and fun. We made the mistake of going the day after a huge rainstorm though and it was incredibly humid and buggy but we still had fun!
The canopy walk is so awesome. It feels like you are part of the state park and you climb all the way to the top of the view tower and see miles of beautiful trees.
We also walked near the river and a gator was casually floating by in the water with his head poking out. It was a lot of fun to just walk around and take in the scenery. I would imagine that during the cooler months like January/​February it is a great place to hike and explore, but the June summer heat kept us from doing too much of that.
Can’t wait to come back!!!

This place was pretty cool! Little dull for me ! Not enough uphill walking. So if your a true beginner at «hiking» this is for you! Flat the whole way. Didn’t see much on this trail. Trees. And uhm more trees. But it was cool once you climb that thing and you get to the top! However there’s so many flys up there it’s annoying!!!

Myakka River State Park is a Florida State Park, that is located nine miles east of I-​75 in Sarasota in Sarasota County and that includes portions of southeastern Manatee County.
I love Myakka River State Park, best park in Florida. Beautiful State Park, great views and things to do and lots of wildlife. Everyone will love to watch the gator viewing from the boat ride. This park is definitely a l beautiful, unique experience & I highly recommend visiting it.
Myakka offers many options for visitors, and provides opportunities for viewing Florida wildlife up close. If you’re having trouble seeing alligators in the wild, visit here. Don’t miss the canopy walk and tower.
This is a lovely park where you can learn about early Florida, do some kayaking, hiking and camping. Take a boat ride on the lake, or tram ride around the park with guides. Worth a trip with friends and family.
Love the friendly staff and the camping place is big and secluded with trees. Fun place to camp. The trails are well defined. The park has done a good job of controlling litter. Bring your binoculars would be a best idea. There is so much wild life to see like Eagles, osprey, deer, alligators and birds.
They have a great restaurant inside. I had the Gator Stew, which is really tasty and worth trying at least once. They have ample parking inside the park.

This place is awesome! And gigantor.
We went to check out some hiking, but realized there’s a plethora of other things to do. Firstly, there’s an hour boat tour, canoe rentals, and horseback riding. And, you can camp. There’s a convenience store in the park along with a restaurant on the water.
We managed to get five miles in, but wanted to come back for more trails. The longer ones seemed blocked off (or maybe it’s always like that?).
A second visit to follow, but I loved what I saw so far.

Beautiful park and the airboat ride was awesome. Lots of alligator and beautiful birds. My one recommendation is that from May to Sept the tram and boat rides should run later. Unfortunately we did not get there in time to do both, but I would definitely go back again and plan on becoming a member

We visited with friends who now live in the area. This is a great natural preserve for Florida flora and fauna. We only explored a little bit of the park, but will be back to do some hiking on a future visit to Florida.
The bulk of our time was taking a boat ride around Upper Myakka Lake. The lake is home to hundreds of alligators, lots of wading birds, a couple of deer, and many other animals. The tour leader was very informative and kept our attention the whole time.
After the boat ride we walk a short distance to a weir with an observation gazebo where we were able to safely get up close to a large alligator and a water moccasin.
If you enjoy the outdoors, this is a great place to explore.

Always went here as a kid. Now getting ready to bring my own kids this summer great way to have the family enjoy a ride with some alligators! Looking forward to the return.

First time visit for this native Floridian. Went on a Sunday, arrived around 10am and paid $ 6 entrance fee for me, my spouse, and three teenagers. First stop, visitor center: picked up some park information and used restroom. We decided to just get the feel of the park by driving around. On our drive we encountered a waterway with alligators, turtles, a deer running across the road, and some birds. We stopped at bird viewing Boardwalk and we were thrilled to see… a bald eagle! There was a very nice man out on the boardwalk who had a? telescope? set up and he showed all of us. It was an amazing site. There was also a juvenile bald eagle flying around. Lots of birds to be seen and a quarter viewing machine. Bring quarters! We then found our way to the gift shop/​snack bar. We all ordered: vitamin water, seafood gumbo, ham sandwich, burger, nachos, gator bites, one soda, and a beer. Tab was over $ 60. Seafood gumbo was a ⁵⁄₅. Hubby said it was delish: came with fresh bread & butter and a salad. Nachos ³⁄₅: «nachos» were homemade potato chips. Daughter skipped out on chili, jalapeños, and sour cream and just got chips & cheese. Maybe that’s why she didn’t give a higher rating. Ham sandwich ⁴⁄₅: about 6 inches, fresh meat and cheese… lettuce, tomato available and comes with side. Got potato salad… it was ok. Burger ³⁄₅: good, but just a burger. Comes with homemade potato chips and a side. Got slaw… maybe a ³⁄₅ so overall total meal maybe ⁴⁄₅. Gator bites ⁴⁄₅: 12 bites, lemon wedge, homemade chips. Good, tastes like chicken! Free drink refills on soda. Hubby got Watermelon wheat beer. He liked! Ok, back to nature — walked to canopy. Good, easy, short walk. Warning: don’t ask your hubby to jump of tree growing right off the ground as he might lose his balance, fall off, hit your daughter on the way to the ground, and then hurt his head and hand after falling. Totally funny but not worth the laughs. Bridge was cool but up to the top of the tower was crazy scary. Got up to top, felt tower sway, and went down. Beautiful view, however. Plenty of restrooms in park. Left around 2:30pm. Great time had by all! Oh, last thing, dogs welcome!

The park is huge with over 30 acres of hiking trails. Didn’t expect it to be as crowded as it was midweek, so if you want to do the airboat tour or tram tour, get there early. Well worth the $ 6 fee per car admission.
We signed up for the last airboat tour of the day. I believe there are 3 or 4. It lasts an hour and is covered boat with a knowledgable guide. We were on a gator hunt and weren’t disappointed! Saw many in their natural habitat as well as all kinds of birds that are native to Florida.
Both the airboat and tram tours give narration of the history and preservation of the ecosystem and its natural habitats.
Gives you an appreciation of nature at its finest as the gators move swiftly through the river, unlike at the zoo where they are piled on top of each other and barely move.
So many hiking trails! I think the best way to see is to rent a bike, didn’t have time this trip but will do again.
Much nicer place to visit in the cooler months as we did, though some of the trails were a bit muddy.
They offer camping, canoe, kayak, bike, fishing and hiking.
There is a gift shop and snack bar offering up gator bites. Guess they recycle?!

We took our two large dogs to check out the park. It is February, so it was a perfect time to go, as far as weather goes, not too hot or too cold. It rained two days ago, so there was mud in places, and we couldn’t walk along the hiking trail as much as we wanted.
At noon we went to the area where there is a gift shop and snack bar. It’s also where the tram tours and boat tours take off from. It was so busy and crowded that my husband had to drop me off and drive around while I went to get some food, which we took to a shady spot down the road (this was on a Wednesday!). The food was great, and homemade. They have unique food for a snack bar, like alligator stew, edamame salad, and gumbo, along with regular sandwiches and salads. The side salad was excellent. The food workers did a great job, I just wish that hairnets were still required around food prep areas.
Even though we had the hardest time finding a garbage can, there was no litter to be seen (yay visitors!) It’s a large park, so there is much more for us to return to explore. We will go back without the dogs to bike ride and try their tours and the canopy walk.
Animals we saw while walking… Sandhills cranes with their two chicks in a large prairie. Daddy crane came up to one of our 90lb dogs, within a few feet, and threatened her. Good daddy, though you should have been watching the hawk in the treetop that was eyeing your babies! Also saw a raccoon, and a flock of wild turkey in the forest.

Beautiful park. I took one star away because we wanted to go on the river tour and because we didn’t arrive early enough so they wouldn’t let us on the tour. We had a great time walking around, taking pics seeing the wildlife and the beautiful southern trees. I felt like I was on a real vacation!

I have been to this park a few times but this time I stayed for four nights. I loved every minute of it. If you want have wifi then you have to stay in the big flats loop. The other two sections are hit or miss with wifi. The camp host, Cathy was helpful and kind. I have some health issues and the Rangers could see I was in distress and took good care of me. They also checked on me to make sure I was ok. (I was staying by myself). The park was well maintained, all sites were level and the people were friendly. The wild life was abound.

Boat tour was awesome. It was extremely hot though so wear light clothing and hats and Sun screen… Alligators were everywhere. So cool. The boat tour guide was Informative but not very friendly.

I gave this park 2 stars because while the park is extremely beautiful, and huge, my experience there was not what i expected.
I reserved a campsite in old prairie, as it was the only one on the online reservation map that looked available, even though i knew that couldn’t be right, with how big the park was i doubted that this was the only campsite with water/​electricity hookup. However, you cannot make reservations on the phone apparently so I had to arrive to the actual park in order to ask at the office if there were more sites, as my group was pretty big. As it turns out, there are more sites that they do not make available online, for some unknown unpractical reason. The night I arrived it was late so my group just set up our tents and went to sleep.
However, we woke up to our ‘camp host’, a very rude man that proceeded to tell us that we had broken all of the rules of the park because we had 5 tents and 3 cars, and we were not allowed to have more than 2 tents set up per campsite, and only two cars parked. He later came back to our site, with a park ranger, to give us a list of the camp rules, highlighted. We rented another campsite across, since there were none next to us. As more of our friends arrived, this man came back with another accomplice just to tell us that our friends could not park at the other site we had rented because they did not have stickers on their cars.
By this point im sure he hated us, because he found any reason to come and tell us we could not do a certain activity. He proceeded to spend the entire day riding in his golf cart and passing to look at our campsite and make sure we weren’t breaking any rules, such as not molesting the squirrels (yes, this is a rule). I had a hammock up, he asked a park ranger to come and tell me to take it down. No alcohol allowed, no more than 8 people at a campsite at a time, no fun basically.
So half of my group decided to go into primitive camping, which is a 2 hour hike into the wilderness, so that we could finally camp in peace. Long story short, we were not able to camp with our friends and had to split up due to their ridiculous enforced rules of only having 2 tents, 8 people, 2 cars, no hammocks, no alcohol, etc. It was just crazy. But the primitive camping was isolated and nice, finally we got some peace away from this soul sucking park nazi.
But like i said, the park itself is beautiful, just a shame that its run this way.

We had a great day at Myakka! The boat ride was well worth the price. Ken was a great captain and we really learned a lot about the wildlife and their habitat. The tram ride was also informative and we got to see baby alligators, which was pretty cool. They talked a lot about the way things were for the early settlers and the types of vegetation then and now… honestly these are not the most interesting topics for me, but others in my party enjoyed it. I didn’t get a chance to do the canopy walk, but hope to come back and do that soon. Definitely a fun place to go and see gators, birds, and beautiful landscapes. Also saw a couple of deer grazing as we were leaving… a great ending to the trip!

I am not saying that my fear of alligators is reasonable, or even realistic. But, it does exist.
Growing up in Gainesville, Florida has only heightened by fear of alligators. As a child, I was told to never go near them because they would eat me. So, it is quite confusing to me why someone would want pursue unfed alligators in their natural habitat without a guide or a gator wrangler— out in the middle of a swampy forest, all alone. Even kayaking in a lake that has alligators is off limits to me. What happens if I fall out of the kayak, a gator grabs me and death rolls me a couple of times underwater? Not my idea of an adventure. But, it is nice to see so many adventurers visiting Myakka State Park— maybe I will see you on the local news.
While this is all very interesting, I think that Myakka State Park is pretty darn cool. It would take at least twenty visits to find everything that the park has to offer. The map we were given when entering the park is not very helpful. It was literally just a map, barely mentioning any parking, and no mention of trail entrances. Luckily, there were some other people just entering the park and we followed them to one of the many parking areas along the winding road.
We managed to find the trail that has the really cool wood tower reaching 76 feet high. The taller tower goes way above the tree line. We were there on a clear day, so we were able to see very far into the distance. I felt like the sky was only a few feet above my head, which made it difficult to look up. If you wobble back and forth, you can feel the tower move. At the top: There is also a magnifying machine that takes quarters, so bring quarters if you do not have binoculars with you. Binoculars are common at this park, since there are many folks bird watching around the areas with water.
The tower was my favorite park, but I also really enjoy walking along the canopy trails and looking at the ferns, moss, oak trees, and palms. The foliage is very thick off the trail, but very very quiet. Barely any visible animals at all.
I hope to get a better map next time and explore more. For $ 6.00/car, it is definitely dirt cheap for a fun experience. It would be great to go RV’ing or camping at Myakka as well. I can easily see how a family could visit for an entire week and do something new every day, with proper pre-​planning.
Ya’ll ever seen Crocodile Dundee? Same as an alligator, just a different shaped mouth. Just sayin.’

This park is beautiful and there is so much to do. They have river tours, land tours, fishing, nature trails, canoeing, a canopy walk up in the trees and I’m sure I’m missing something important.
All of the activities are worth doing. I highly recommend the combo tour as you get a nice ride through the park with lots of history and also a river tour with info on the gators.

Nice park. It is HUGE! The canopy walk was pretty lame. about a 50 ft walking bridge thing. The view from the tower was nice.
We took the «largest airboat» tour. It was great. $ 13, for an hour guided tour. Saw gators, birds, and some wild pigs! I definitely recommend the boat tour.
You could easily spend hours hiking or biking all the trails.

I like Myakka River State Park. It is a nice place to take family and friends when they are here to visit.
I would suggest going on a day that has sun. The air boat tours are fun. And you see a lot of gators if the sun is out. You seem to always see many birds. Even saw wild hogs on one of our tours. The hogs are difficult to see at times though.
The bathrooms are clean, gift shop has some nice things. They also have a snack shop with different gator food.
A nice place, and great for traveling on a budget. A car with 2 – 8 people is only $ 6.00 to enter the park, and the air boat tours are only $ 12.00 per person.
If the sun is out you can also see many gators near the water while driving through the park. they come up on the embankments.
Also a favorite of my family is the Canopy walk. This is a nature trail out to two towers connected via a bridge. You walk up one tower, across the bridge, and then higher up the second tower. This brings you high above the trees (canopy). You can see for miles, all around the park. They have many other nature trails for hiking and biking.

If you’re in the Sarasota area and have a love of nature and hiking, then I recommend coming to Myakka River State Park. Although many parks have wildlife and nature trails, what sets Myakka River apart from the rest is the fact that it has an amazing canopy walk, which is a suspended walkway that connects from one wooden watchtower to the other end of another wooden watchtower. That’s one of those irreplicable experiences. From the top of the watchtower, you have amazing panoramic views of the greenery all around.
The nature trail is also something I recommend, if you like walking. Although they claimed there were raccoons, armadillos, deer, and other wildlife, my friend and I saw nothing (hence the one-​star deduction), but who knows, try it – you may get lucky. The walk itself is pretty easy, on flat terrain, and not long at all. Most of it is shaded by the many trees growing all around, which helps in this 93+ degree heat.
Since I did not see any wildlife, my friend and I decided to try the birdwalk, hoping to have better luck. Other than some white egrets, which are very typical in Florida, we did not see anything else. There was a large body of water but we did not see any alligators or any of the other wildlife that some of the other Unilocalers described and photographed, so that was a bit of a disappointment. As I turned to leave, I did spot an osprey on the treetops, but other than that, if your entire purpose to coming here is to spot wildlife, you may be disappointed depending on the luck of the draw on that particular date.
Something that upset me greatly were the ignorant people ripping out plants to take home. I guess some people do not understand how disrespectful and harmful it is to nature to take away plants from their native habitat. It is a protected area, so the only thing you should be taking is photos, not plants nor any other form of wildlife, as tempting as it may be. As a practicing naturalist, it was very sad and upsetting to witness these people happily walking around displaying their loot as if it was something to be proud of. I am hoping that people reading my review will become more educated, civilized, and control themselves from removing any items from the park, or leaving behind any trash.