I recommend parking at the Sanibel Community Park 2231 Periwinkle Way it’s a hidden spot, also has bathrooms. I would recommend going through JN Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge. It’s $1 dollar for bikes and you have to check out the bathrooms on the second floor very cool murals.

5 star trail! Smooth & flat (except for 2 fairly steep but short overpasses). Plenty of areas to stop & restrooms along the way. Shady for about half the trail. Fairly busy for a Wednesday morning but one of the best trails I’ve ever been on.

If I'm nearby I might ride again but wouldn't go out of my way. Right by busy road. I wouldn't bring my 10yo again though.

Another great ride on the Pinellas Trail. I love that the detours are well marked. I also like the signs over the trail with the town names. If you make it to St Pete, don’t miss Dr BBQ. It’ll make the trip even better. There are several overpasses this direction so be prepared for a little shifting of gears. ¿ However, they are very short and you get the downhill, although the traffic engineers took the fun out with all the speed bumps.

Great ride today over the Causeway to the Pinellas Trail. Then took it north probably pretty close to the end, north Tarpon Springs. The detour scheduled to be open March 1 probably won’t open as it wasn’t near completion today but the ride around is easy and well signed. Came back on the trail and rode out to Honeymoon Island as well. The trail wasn’t super crowded. This a great trail and there are many great eateries along the way. Highly recommend Ed.

Parking can be expensive and scarce on sanibel. Park for free at the Ding Darling visitors center, pay $1to ride through the refuge and spend the rest of the day biking around the island

Path has been repaired so it is in good condition and mostly smooth. Path parallels busy road but it's nice to have a long stretch separated from traffic. From the community pool it's 7.5 mile to Bokeelia to the north and 9.0 mile to St. James City to the south. Ride to the north was more interesting, passing by numerous nurseries growing a variety of palms and tropical fruit trees. Water view in Bokeelia was short but great!

Really nice bike trail, polite people on the trail, and not too crowded today. The amenities were very nice to have for quick pull over breaks.

Completed the largo to Clearwater section and detoured to the beach for lunch. We drove from Bradenton and parked at Scott Taylor park -It had bathrooms and connects to the trail. Will definitely do this again but wanted to share how to get there because I looked for others that might have detoured to the beach for lunch and didn't see exactly how to do it. Follow the trail from Largo to Clearwater and take a left at turner street. You will see the sign that says "to beach" follow that! ( we didn't do that and ended up riding with traffic) It has a paved sidewalk with a yellow strip on the side with signs to show you the way. You also mostly stay off the road this way. Also--this will keep you away from traffic on this side that goes over the Clearwater bridge. When you get to just before the roundabout- use the crosswalk to walk over to the right side of the road and take the roundabout north. We wanted to have lunch right on the beach at frenchys Rockaway grill. You are on the sand with umbrellas! It was magical. Turns out there are several frenchys restaurants - so go for the "rockaway grill". There was also the Palm Pavillion restaurant but it has a patio and you aren't directly on the sand. This was a decent ride and the only hard part was the hill up the bridge- we walked some of it. Not that bad but we were out of shape. We originally were thinking we biked about 7 miles round trip. Turns out it was 13 total. We were shocked because it didn't feel that long. The ride is close to one hour each way. Not including lunch- which we spent about 1.5 hours! We didn't want to leave it was so perfect. I hope this helps someone who was like me looking for help to plan a a detour to the beach. Definitely doing this again! bridge.