Little Manatee River State Park

Happy belated Thanksgiving! From the Manateem.

After our extended break for the holiday, the crew drove the furthest south we had been since arriving in FL. Southeast of Tampa about 30 miles, we were in the middle of retirement village USA, where the stores and McDonalds have 'Golf Cart Only' parking spaces, and every place you go, you are surrounded by blue haired people. This is not a bad thing, just a noticeable thing.
Well, we camped in a nearby State Park Campground and worked the side loop trail on Little Manatee River. Here our volunteer site contact was Ralph Hancock, and he had three projects for us to complete. The first was a real mucky section of trail that was wet even in the dry season. Traversing this part we put in a 60 ft puncheon bridge using old telephone poles as our sills. It was nice to have a little variety and be able to put donated odd lumber to use.
The next two projects were tearing out two old and tattered bridges and then replacing them with two new bridges. The demolition and removal was the easy part as we spent much time in the set up and precision of leveling our footers. These bridges also used telephone poles for the stringers. With our experience from Apple Bridge, the crew used that knowledge and skill to construct two beautiful and sound bridges on the North side of this 6.2 mile loop. They turned out very well.
OH YES! The Manateem was delilghted to have our Program Manager Tyler Lobdell visit us all the way from the SCA Boise office in Idaho. Thanks Tyler!

Stats:
60 ft of puncheon bridge
14 ft foot bridge
22 ft foot bridge with ramp