Back at Lithia Springs for another week or so

We got here about noon on Wednesday. We were surprised to find that only a few campsites were available. But, luckily we got the same site that we were in last month. Which is right across the camp ground road from the river. When we left Estero it did not rain but we were happy that they got 3/4” rain last night before we got here. The river has been running on the low side all winter due to lack of rain in FL. I checked the USGS gauge and the river had already come up from 80 to 100 CFS, we hoped that by Thursday it would come up even more. Now we needed to find a way to get our canoe to the Alderman’s Ford  to launch on Thursday.

So I biked around the campground and found a couple with a canoe on their pickup truck. They are paddlers from NC and were planning on paddling the river on Friday but offered to drop us and our canoe off at the put-in on Thursday morning, if I would bring their truck back from the put-in to the take-out on Friday. Of course I jumped at the deal and luckily for us the level came up to 130 CFS.

 Last year we paddled the river twice, both times near 300 CFS, which made the 9.5 mile run much faster. But todays level was high enough that we never touched a rock even running over the 6-7 shallow class I rapids.  With our rest stop at Duck Landing it took us just over 3 hours. The river dropped to 100 CFS for our new friends run on Friday and they said it was passable but in their light weight Kevlar canoe they would not have wanted to paddle it any lower.

It was cool, low 70’s, but we still saw 3 gators, some feral hogs and a site we never saw before. A large Heron caught a big snake and when we went by he took off with the big snake dangling from his beak. I hope he shared it with his family.

 

The other reason we like this campground is that there is access to the miles of concrete trails, shown in orange on the map, that go through all the natural areas of this huge housing development called Fish Hawk Ranch. Click for bigger picture.

The park has a bike/hike trail that runs near the river but it is for hardier souls.

We biked about 8 miles on Friday and about 10 miles on Sunday and went in two totally different areas. Not counting the sidewalks along the streets there has to be at least 25 miles of trails along the retention ponds and wild areas.

We were looking for a mailbox to mail our grandson Jeffery’s birthday card. No mail boxes or post office at all, we mailed it back at our campground.