Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Bicycling in Venice

                                                                                                                                                        There are two excellent biking and walking trails in Venice.  The Legacy Trail runs from Sarasota to Venice and goes past Oscar Scherer State Park where we stayed last year. We biked closer to Venice this year and were glad to see that the new bridge across the Venice Bypass has been completed since our visit in 2011.  This bridge is very near a bike shop where we took George’s bike for a repair, so we began our ride there.

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We rode north for a while and enjoyed meeting a couple of serious bicyclers who have recently retired.  Then we headed back toward Venice, stopped for lunch, and continued south.

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The Legacy Trail goes past the old train depot (former Seaboard Airline RR) which is now a bus transfer station and

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then intersects with the Venetian Waterway Park Trail which runs on both sides of the intracoastal waterway to the gulf.  It’s a very enjoyable trail to ride on. 

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We’re used to seeing lots of birds here – even saw bald eagles last year – but look what we saw this year!  This was the first of 4 gopher turtles that we saw along the trail.

Gopher Tortoise

On the return ride we met up with a Great Blue Heron walking in the grass along the trail.  We got a few photos before it flew to the other side of the waterway. 

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