Slowly Heading North, now back in Juniper Springs

I was browsing through Facebook and noticed that a friend from Morgantown, WV was flying to Orlando for two days and one night and was wanting to do something different. I answered back, we are only 50 miles west of Orlando and if you rent a car we could paddle Friday afternoon on a beautiful natural river, the Withlacoochee South.

Nori jumped at the offer and got to our camp just before noon. After little light lunch we hopped in my canoe and paddled about 9 miles of flatwater and saw lots of birds and turtles and a few small alligators.

Nori took up my offer to try out our small dinette bed and sleep overnight instead of booking a hotel room. He gave Peggy & I a nice treat by taking us out to a good Mexican restaurant in Brooksville. He drove back early Saturday morning to make his medical conference.

On Sunday Peggy & I did a 8 AM 21 mile bike ride from camp to the start of the bike trail, the weather is getting into the high 80’s everyday. In fact Tampa set a record for the hottest February ever, the high each day averaged 10^o F above normal.

On Monday we needed to  leave our campsite since there was another camper with reservations arriving that day. We had hoped to stop at Paul & Helen’s after we took a 14 mile ride on the trail from Floral City to Inverness and return, but they were tied up so we did a lot of grocery shopping and spent the night in a Walmart in Silver Springs.

We got an early start on Tuesday and decided to paddle the Silver River which starts at the big spring where the glass bottom boats can tour around the Spring. Two years ago we did this and Peggy was sad that it did not seem like the river we always paddled before it became a State Park. I thought it might have been that we were there right after a heavy storm and the water was cloudy.

This year it was great. More birds then we saw anywhere on our trip this year. The water was very clear and you could see big fish near the bottom of the 25’ deep river. Peggy thought there was more grass on the bottom but maybe that’s what attracted the Manatees. How in the world did they get here, it has to be over 150 miles from the Atlantic Ocean? I believe this young Manatee was born and will spend his whole here in the nice 72^oF water of the Silver River. Over the years we always started the trip in a roadside park near the confluence of the river. This makes a 2 hour relatively hard upstream paddle in the swift current using the eddies to move upstream. It only takes and hour to get back. We didn’t see any monkeys this year, maybe the park has finally removed this evasive species from the river corridor.

There is a State Park here but the river access requires a one mile walk to get to a dock, a long carry or pull cart, but I found out they now rent kayaks right at the head of the Spring and also allow you to put in a private boat for a fee. I believe it’s $2/person to enter the park and $4 a boat to put-in there. This would allow you to paddle the 5 miles entirely downstream if you had a shuttle back or paddle down and back a few miles since the prettiest part of the river is closer to the source. So I still recommend this river as a great FL paddling experience.

We got to Juniper Springs about 1 PM and had no trouble getting a nice campsite. We paddled the river twice in December but really like the challenging winding 7 mile long paddle. The park runs a reverse shuttle where you take your vehicle to the end and they provide the driver a ride back for only $10. I took the RV down about 8:30 AM and we were the only one on the river with our early start. We had lunch in our RV at the take-out. This is not a river to paddle on weekends. Hundreds of boats with lots of swimmers due to the narrow winding river.

We are now slowly moving North, we decided to head up to Northern FL to Ocean Pond Campground in Osceola National Forest. Peggy likes it because they have electric power & water along with good cell service & TV reception, Ocala NF is more wild but has great private campsites and shower faculties.

Hottest February Ever

We spent two full weeks at Lithia Springs Park. We biked 4 more times on the FishHawk trails for over 45 miles and then we even biked out to eat at a nearby Mexican Restaurant for Valentines Day. The river keeps on dropping but it still had over 200 CFS so we talked our campground host into hauling our canoe up to the put-in again at Alderman’s Ford.

On Sunday morning we left for our next one week stay at Silver Lake. We had reserved a nice fairly level site right next to the lake at Cypress Glen Campground. Paul and Helen Tempesta our friends from Inverness had visited us here in early December but we didn’t get to paddle or bike with them. We had both come down with the flu and didn’t do much at that time. They drove over to visit us this Monday with their kayaks so we did a nice 6 mile paddle going upstream from our camp.

The weather has been setting records every day here in the Tampa area. The high temperatures are 15^o F above normal and it is the hottest February on record.

As I mentioned before the park is right next to the Withlacoochee State Park Bike Trail, our plan was to bike early on Tuesday to avoid the hot weather. We got about 1/2 mile and the bike tire went flat. I knew I had a new tube back at the RV, so we pushed it back. First problem, the Presta Valve went bad, so I could not inflate the tire. Second problem, the spare tube I bought was for another bike and would not fit. So we had to break camp and do a 20 mile RV ride to a bike shop in Brooksville. We bought two tubes and headed back to camp. By the time we got setup and put in the new tube it was too hot, so Peggy did her favorite thing reading her mystery books on her Kindle.

So on Wednesday we left at 8 AM and got our 20 mile bike trip in and we were back by 10 AM. It was a nice cool morning ride.

Today. we decided to take our canoe and paddle down the Lower Withlacoochee River to Hog Island and back, a little over 8 miles.

We stopped for a rest at a group camp. I guess they must have some tall people in FL. take a look at the picnic table.

We may have a surprise guest tomorrow if he shows up.

Great Campsite at Lithia Springs

Superbowl Sunday was the last day we had signed up for at EG Simmons, our plans were to head back over to Lithia Springs which is another Hillsboro County park. We could pay for more days and then drive the 35 miles anytime this week. I decided to call Joe, our friendly camp host at  Lithia, to see when any of the 5 river front campsites might be available. He said that today two sites would be leaving and campsite 45 would be empty within an hour. So we had a quick change in plans, we packed up but we needed to shop on our way there, so I called the park office and they agreed if we got there by noon we could have that site.

Site 45 is far off the road and very private, the other river front sites are very open but still nice to be able to launch or take-out in your campsite. At one time or another we have stayed in all four of them. We got 2” of rain while watching the Super Bowl, so it meant it was going to be a good week to paddle. But Peggy said Monday was laundry day and the closest laundromat is 10 miles away near Brandon. So it was a laundry & shopping day.

On Tuesday we decided to walk around the park and see what the swimming area looked like when the river was high. The spring empties into the Alafia River and the rain brought the river up 3’ which eliminated the beach area by the spring.

On Wednesday we decide to do an early bike ride on the FishHawk Ranch Bike Trails. The FL weather was finally getting warmer. We rode most of the pretty trails that go through the wooded areas and around all the small lakes. We saw lots of big birds and even a Gopher Turtle digging a borough. It took us 1-1/2 hrs. to do the 13 mile bike ride.

Finally on Thursday we met the same couple that helped us do a canoe shuttle up to Alderman’s Ford so we could paddle the beautiful Alafia River which had dropped almost 2’ from 650 CFS to 400 cfs. We didn’t take any breaks and paddling right along we covered the 9.5 miles in 2-1/2 hours. We saw lots of turtles and birds but only one alligator who leapt into the water before we could get a picture.

The weather is really warming up now. Forecast for the next week is for highs in the low 80’s and lows in the mid 60’s. This is about 10^oF above normal for Tampa.