Lithia Springs 3rd time

After spending a week in Lake Worth, we were ready to move on. The weather has been cool all of January & February, which is actually good for staying active. We did a lot of bike riding as I had discussed in my last blog but we wanted to canoe again.

Most of the Florida rivers are very wild and isolated but we felt maybe it was too early to head north to Juniper Springs. It is due east of Ocala. We decided instead to head back to Lithia Springs which is about 200 miles away.

We decided to see if we could see Lake Okeechobee from a bike trail along the Hoover Dike. There is a trail entirely around the lake but see the map above, the Orange Lines are trail closures. So we picked the 5.6 mile section in Clewiston to ride since it was on our way to Lithia Springs. But even though there was a great big parking lot, the trail access in Clewiston was closed, so we drove to the more northerly trail access point and found out that we could bike about 4.5 miles each way along the dike. However all you could see were the canals on each side of the dike, it turns out there is a grass island at that point which limits your view of the lake.

I rewarded Peggy with a Prime Rib dinner at a nice restaurant in Avon Park. Peggy got a haircut at a Super Wal-Mart and it was getting dark so we stayed overnight there.

We left early and went directly to the put-in at Alderman Ford where I dropped Peggy off with the canoe. I had called the campground host who graciously shuttled us the last time, to see if campsites were available. We missed our favorite site #40 but got another big site. They gave me a shuttle ride back to the Peggy and the canoe. The river was still running at a descent level, about 280 CFS. There were 6 or 7 little class 1 rapids. I can never slow Peggy down, we finished the 4 hour trip in 2-1/2 hours.

On Monday we headed back on about a 10 mile ride through a new section of bike trails east of Fish Hawk Ranch. We had a few hills that Peggy didn’t like along the main road but it was a perfect day for biking.

We plan to stay here at least four more days.