2014 Koreshan State Historic Site

We did about a 2.5 hour run down 75 south to the Koreshan camp grounds. I checked the tongue weight on Minnie and found it was about 850 lbs. more than enough so that it wasn’t the cause of any sway. So we loaded up the back end of Minnie to reduce some of the tongue weight and see how that worked out.

The run down was excellent. Our goal for this trip was to visit the Corkscrew Swamp, miles of wooden walks which run thru the Corkscrew Swamp just east of Naples. We expected to see lots of swamp but we were surprised to see all of the wildlife as well; gators, birds, raccoons, snakes, etc. It wasn’t really buggy yet but give it a month or so and it will be swarming with mosquitoes and biting flies. I was nabbed a couple of times by deer flies.

We are camping at the Koreshan site so we did drop over to see what it was about. The Koreshans were a religious sect that formed in the 1890’s. They believed that the earth was hollow, etc. and they practiced celibacy. At its best there were about 200 of them here in FL. Needless to say the last of them died in the sixties, leaving the 300 acres to the state. We shot a mess of pictures of the old buildings etc. and there are a ton of imported trees. Worth a visit if you were already here.

The camp ground is nice, fairly wide sites with foliage between each one. Lots of trees, we have an ear tree right over us and it drops these hard seed pods about three inches long and shaped like an ear. They weigh about 1/2 ounce, when they hit the top of the trailer from way up in the tree you can really hear it! We have the awning out not for the weather but to keep all of the tree flowers off the sitting area. Bath rooms are clean and serviceable but showing their age, showers definitely need floor re-grouting.

We took a run down to Lover’s Key a nice beach a little south of Fort Myers. It’s about 2 miles long. Typical south west Florida beach, hard white sand, lots of shells. I found a couple of shark’s teeth. We also went to Estero Bay Preserve. Not much there it’s really just a birding trail. There’s another one of these just a block or two north of Koreshan. It looks as though there was a good sized state park there once with a parking lot and entrance booth, but it’s all crumbled down now and just a birding trail. Guess the state needs to find some money to develop this park.

You can see more flics on my website http://www.fishbourne.shutterfly.com

Enjoy