the spot
The last time I went to Fort De Soto Beach which was about a week or so ago, I was finally able to locate the spot I went to a few years ago. The girl that I originally went there with traded a few emails with me and we confirmed that yes, it was De Soto but didn't know exactly where we went because the place is pretty big. But it was the best lead I had and certainly better than nothing other than "somewhere in St. Petersburg" which is, well.. not very helpful. 🙂 (And yes I know De Soto is in Tierra Verde.. work with me here..)
So I combed the map on Google Earth looking for that spot, and marked two places where I thought it might be at De Soto. After that, I punched in the coordinates in my GPS and off I went because I was really determined to find this spot. If I didn't find it, oh well, but I had to try.
The first place I marked was wrong.
But the second was spot-on correct. I knew I found it from the moment I pulled into the parking lot.
The exact spot (at least for where to park) is here.
From there it's short walk out to the beach and there you are.
Were you to go there you wouldn't consider it anything special because it's more or less like any other part of the park. But it's special to me because it was one of the first really cool experiences I had in the Sunshine State. Not knowing where this place was had been driving me bonkers for years.. it seriously irritated the crap out of me.
What happened originally is that when we went there, I thought, "I should really mark this in my GPS." I didn't. And I've been kicking myself in the ass ever since. But not anymore because this time, oh yes, I did mark it. 🙂