Our Travel Blog

Our month is up, it’s time to move on. This morning we did some last minute emergency shopping….. we were out of coffee and toilet paper!!! We also took advantage of being in the area of the donut store to have a final donut.

The Drying Rack Hanging From The Ladder

All that is left to do is pack up the satellite dish and disconnect the water and sewer lines and we will be on our way.

We knew when we left Georgia before Christmas that it would be hard to get a campsite as good as that one, and we were right. This place is OK but our site is on the end right next to where they are constructing a new laundry / washrooms. The construction wasn’t a problem as there wasn’t much going on, but the view wasn’t so great. The problems we had at the beginning of this trip probably soured it a little as well, even though it was nothing to do with the campsite or area. Also the internet was a pain as it was so unreliable, even Lyn was lost without it, it also made it difficult to check on bills, bank statements, campground bookings etc. Hopefully that will improve at the new place.

The area we are in was not the most exciting, there were things to do if we made a day trip out of it, but nothing really captivating locally (e.g. beaches!)

All in all, the stay was OK, probably 7/10.

The title says it all really, the warmer weather is still with us and the furnace hasn’t come on once tonight. It was even warm enough during the day to allow me to dig my shorts out of the cupboard!

Tomorrow will be pack-up day and our last full day at this site.

After a day and a half the internet seems to be back, and more stable. Just in time for us to leave!!

A couple of days of warm weather spent mostly at the campsite. Yesterday Lyn treated herself toan expensive and exclusive haircut!

Today it was time to get one of the gas tanks filled, and change the water filter on the trailer. After lunch we went about a mile down the road and took a walk along the Withlacooche Trail. This is an old railway line that has had the rails removed and then a road surface laid, the whole trail is 46 miles long. There seems to be a movement in Florida called Rails to Trails so there are probably more of these around the state.

Well, we had two warm nights, and back to the cool ones, at least the trailer warms up well if the sun comes out… which it did.

Thursday mornings are shopping days, so we headed off to the local supermarket to spend out hard earned money. The only good news there is that the Canadian $ is still above par, andbeer is half the price it is at home.

This afternoon the campsite put on a Luau, complete with a roast pig. There were 160 tickets printed and all sold, at $5 each we figured we couldn’t go wrong!

We turned up at the clubhouse and exchanged our tickets for a pink stamp on the hand and 3 drink tickets each. Already we were onto a winner, $5 for 3 drink tickets, drinks included beer.

A number of games were organised to get people into the island life before food was served. Food consisted of a good helping of pork, beans, coleslaw, potato salad and rolls, all of which were excellent.
A great time was had by all, the only downside was that I discovered I can’t drink beer in the afternoon without falling asleep when I get back to the trailer 🙁

Last nights storm had disappeared by this morning, although it was cooler it was back to being sunny. We travelled about 30 miles east to Silver Springs. This is a nature park located at the head of the the Silver River. This river is formed by a series of underground springs, the largest of which produces 550 million gallons of water per day, evidently enough to keep New York city supplied for 24 hours. The water is crystal clear and is consistently 22C year round.

We took a glass bottom boat tour around the springs to see the fish that live in the area, in general the depth was around 15 -25 ft and it was no problem to see the bottom. The park has been used as a location for many underwater scenes in movies due top the waters clarity.

Along the shore were numerous alligators and turtles as well as an assortment of bird life.

There were two other boat tours in the park that took us through some of the backwaters showing what life was like in the late 1800’s when the area was settled.

The park also had a number of exhibits for wild life, mostly animals native to Florida, but somehow a couple of giraffe slipped into the mix. Probably the most impressive animal there was the Kodiak bear, although not native to Florida, it is a North American bear that is found only on Kodiak Island which is up around the Aleutian chain of islands. This bear was massive, I used to think Black and Brown bear were large, but there were a couple of them next door to the Kodiak, and they were dwarfed by him.

KODIAK BEAR – Needs a manicure!

Another warm day, Lyn went off to the craft meeting this morning and I did a few odd jobs around the place. The forecast was for rain to develop in the afternoon with the possibility of thunderstorms. Given the forecast we decided to stay in the trailer rather than to go exploring.

What seemed a little unusual to us was that most people were going round their sites putting away flags, ornaments etc. and also putting in their awnings.

Looking on the radar I could see a line of thunderstorms approaching that looked quite vicious, but they also looked as though they may slide by us (as they usually do!), shortly after this we heard on the radio that there was a tornado watch in effect together with a severe thunderstorm warning!

The rain started, quite gently, and we noticed a few people going to the clubhouse, nothing unusual as there are often activities going on down there; then more and more people headed down, this time with pets. Now that is unusual as pets are not allowed in the clubhouse. The sky got darker, the rain got heavier and the thunder got closer, given the amount of lightning building up around us, I made a quick dive outside to disconnect the hydro. More people headed down to the clubhouse and we finally put two and two together and decided that they were heading to a more secure location, maybe this event was a little more serious than we gave it credit for.

By now it was very dark out, there was abundant thunder and lightning, the wind was howling and the rain lashing down, no way were we leaving the trailer now. Another check with the weather site, and the tornado watch had been upgraded to a warning for our area!

Looking on the weather radar I could see the storm cells as the weather people here very nicely number them, give details about them and put arrows on them to show their direction. The weather outside hadn’t changed much, the amount of water coming down was quiet amazing The radar now showed a purple triangle which is a tornado, it was about 15 miles from us and on a heading to remain clear. The really heavy weather lasted about 20 minutes, the tornado stayed away from us then the rain started to ease up. As the rain decreased, people started emerging from the clubhouse, the radar showed that the line of storms had now passed and there was just moderate rain behind it, in fact it’s still raining about 7 hours later.

I am not sure if the people going to the clubhouse were over reacting or whether we were wrong for not joining them, I suspect it was a touch of both. Interesting afternoon though!

As today was such a warm day, we decided to head north about 50 miles to Cedar Key. To get there was fairly easy, all the roads were straight, 3 primary roads with straight stretches of 10-12 miles. Round here there isn’t much of a population, and most of the roads are tree lined. The trees down here seem to be confused, only now are a few of them losing their leaves, this should have happened in September! This morning we looked out of the window and there was a squirrel burying an acorn in the sand, quite a natural occurrence in the Great White North, but why in Florida??

Once I had learned how to steer the truck again I managed to park it at Cedar Key. This was very much a summertime waterside town, there were numerous old shops, all but one being closed (relief!!). We wandered around the town, and then out onto the small beach; beautiful white sand and very few people, although in the summer I imagine the place would be mobbed. We saw a number of birds out on the water, initially we thought we saw a bald eagle sitting on top of a pole in the water, but when we got home we checked the book and it was actually an osprey. We also saw an anhinga which is a water bird that can look like a snake rising out of the water. The bird has a long thin neck and a long pointed bill. It will ften swim under water with just its neck above the surface, giving the look of a snake. The long pointed bill is used to spear fish.There was also a large number of pelicans and cormorants around, the pelicans are fascinating to watch when they are flying, the glide within inches of the water for long periods of time and actually have to climb a little to give them room to flap their wings.

Despite it being a nice 20C day, there wasn’t an open ice cream shop in sight, guess it’s oo cold for the locals!

We tried to find a road with a few curves on the way home, but no joy! The good news was, that with straight and flat roads the fuel consumption in the truck was over 24mpg at 55mph (90km/h) not bad for a 6.6 litre turbo!

ANHINGA

The internet here is about as reliable us using 2 tin cans and a length of string to communicate. It was down totally all day Sunday. My apologies to Mum who apparently waited up all night for the non-existent episode of the blog 🙂

Sunday was Manatee Festival day in the local town of Crystal River. Festival is evidently defined by closing off the main streets in the town and charging to enter them. Once in side there was a whole slew of street vendors doing their thing. What I found more interesting was watching the people who attended, without wishing to be done for slander they appeared to range from the dungaree wearing trailer park dwellers to the wannabee upper class residents of the city.

There were dogs everywhere, some normal but a large majority of the smaller dogs, in particular yorkies were dressed in glitter coats, hats and sunglasses 🙁

The main reason for our visit there was to go on a boat tour of the local river looking for manatee. We took about a one hour trip on a dive boat and were not disappointed. We went into a small back channel and on the way there we saw a couple of the mammals. Once in the back channel they became more populous. The channel has designated manatee quiet areas where no humans or boats are allowed in, however we could see into these areas and they were full of the mammals. The channel itself also had a large population that were easily seen from the boats, which is not surprising considering they are around 10ft in length and weigh up to 3500lbs. The days animal viewing was rounded out by a couple of red tailed hawks giving a flying display above the crowds.

Manatee

This day was probably one of our laziest days yet. There was nothing to fix, nothing needed doing!

Although the day was bright and sunny, it was cool and windy (I know, nothing like the Ottawa wind chill warning of -35 to -40 tonight). I think the highlight of the day was going to get some milk!!

Tomorrow is slated to be warmer, and we plan to head out to the local manatee festival. If it is warm enough we may even get out on the river.