We checked out the area and found it to actually be a really nice park we never even knew was there (one of the many hidden gems in Gainesville) where you can easily access Hogtown creek.. a flowing path of fresh clean water that runs all through Gainesville. The park has many trails, a nice garden, and easy access to the creek where you can hike up or downstream in water shoes or bare feet, and the cool crisp water provides a great relief from the Florida heat. Plenty of people jog along the nice trails, while others bring kids to look for teeth and swim. The best part of all is dogs are allowed, and our dogs LOVED swimming in the creek while we walked along it searching for fossilized teeth.
It's a free park, very clean and also very beautiful. Make sure if you bring your dog you clean up after him/her. Fortunately they provide poop bags for you! Manny and Weiner loved running in and out of the water, leaping off of the banks on the side, and they even made friends with a lab who was also swimming in the creek.
If you want to look for teeth, you can use your hands and eyes alone to search along in the sand, but it's best to have a strainer of some kind to make it easier to find ones beneath the sand. Look for areas with dark rocks and sift through, looking for tiny triangular shapes. You may even be lucky enough to find sting ray plates, alligator teeth, or other cool fossils. Florida is just full of them and we were fortunate enough to have visited multiple places to easily find shark teeth, this one being the first one right in the town where we live!
If you're visiting Gainesville or live in town, add this to your to do list on the next hot day. Was well worth it!
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