Holiday Party with the Family

On Saturday we celebrated our family Christmas at Joan's home.

My four favorite girls.

The Godfather

This is why we fly home for Christmas time, we have such a beautiful family.

Our Last week in Florida

The weather in Florida this year has been cool with a  lot of rain, about once a week.

On our last week at Silver Lake we got in 3 more bike rides. Thursday we finished the Good Neighbor Trail all the way to Brooksville, it was a 25 mile ride on a very nice new trail. Peggy loves the tandem because we go twice as fast as she can do on her mountain bike.

On Sunday we biked North toward Floral City a 30 mile round-trip ride, but didn’t quite make it, we did 26 miles total.

On Tuesday our friends Helen and Paul drove over to our campground to paddle with us. We love our nice light weight cart that helps us get the canoe from our RV to the launch site without hurting my back.

Helen took all these nice pictures on our 5  mile paddle down the Withlacoochee river.

On  Wednesday we did another 18 mile bike ride to Trilby and back.

Early Thursday morning we drove to the Orlando Airport in a steady rain. The roads and turnpike were fast and we got to the KOA near the airport in about two hours. This is where we store our RV while we go home for the holidays.

We got to the airport and through the TSA lines 1-1/2 hours early, then things went into delay. Our plane was not at the gate since it got diverted to West Palm Beach because of the rain storm. Then all the flights were grounded because of the lightening storm and tornado warnings. Finally after sitting at the gate for 6 hours we finally took off for Cleveland. I thought delays only occurred from snow storms.

Spending Eleven Days at Silver Lake

Sunday morning we drove in the rain from Paynes Prairie to Inverness. Sunday afternoon we spent with our friends Helen & Paul Tempesta and had a great time and wonderful dinner.

We then drove to our nearby campsite at Silver Lake, Cypress Glen- site 47. We love the site since it is right on the lake and has access to the Withlacoochee River & the 46 mile long paved state bike trail. New this year they put in a new 10 mile long paved trail to Brooksville. So this gives us lots of opportunities to Paddle, Bike and hike. Now if it would only get warmer. This has been a cool Fall so far in Florida.

Here is a map of the Trails & River.

We spent Monday morning fixing our awning by installing the gas strut that had failed. We had Phoenix RV ship it to Paul & Helen’s home. We then had a rest day.

Tuesday was cool but sunny so we decided to try the new Good Neighbor Trail that just opened 3 weeks ago. It is a ten foot wide paved trail in the middle of the state forest. We saw a Deer and a Gopher Turtle. We turned around before Brooksville making our round trip ride 19 miles long.

Tuesday afternoon we took our canoe for an easy 4-1/2 mile paddle upstream and back to the Crooked River Camp beach. Lots of turtles, heron, anhinga and a few deer.

Ichetucknee Springs & Paynes Prairie

We left Ocean pond early and did a lot of grocery shopping in Lake City and decided to paddle first before checking into camp at O'Leno State Park.

We headed to the Ichetucknee River which one of the prettiest river in the state. The 72^oF water is crystal clear and originates 3 miles upstream.

So This up & back trip is slow fighting the 3 mph current while going upstream and then an easy float back downstream. In the summer weekends this place is crowded with hundreds of tubers floating down the river and would not be a pleasant place to paddle.

There is abundant wildlife here, Deer, Ibis, Egrets, Great Blue Herons and hundreds of Turtles but we did not see one gator. I guess that’s good for the tubers. The river is so clear you can watch all the fish swimming by, no fishing here.

It took us 2 hours to paddle upstream and less than an hour to paddle back. There is a nice parking lot right off of US27 with a paved path to the launch area, which made it easy to roll our canoe on our light weight cart.

We were off the river by 3 PM and had a short drive over to O’Leno State Park where we were just staying overnight.

Our next destination is Paynes Prairie State Park where check in time is 1 PM so we decided to take a bike ride that is on the Hawthorne Trail south of Gainesville, FL and on the north side of of the 22,00 acre wilderness.

It is interesting that they have reintroduced Bison and wild horses along all the normal FL wildlife. The place sometimes looks like a large grassy prairie and during rainy season like a series of connected lakes. This year is the wettest we have ever seen it.

Th2 12 mile ride has a few hills & hammocks that got us down to our lowest gear to speeds of over 20 mph. Lucky it was cool because I worked up a sweat on the little hills.

We enjoyed all the scenery of the trail and saw about 4 other bikers. We almost ran over an Armadillo slowly crossing the trail.

It’s an easy 5 mile roundtrip bike ride from camp to the visitor center & tower.  We did it a second time since I forgot my camera and wanted to show.

Where the Buffalo Roam.

The picture above is from the park tower overlook in dry season.

The one below is this year which was very wet.

Wild Horses grazing close by.

Tomorrow morning we will head to Inverness to see our friends Paul & Helen. It is supposed to be another rainy day, then we will head to Silver Lake.

Eleven Days at Ocean Pond in Osceola NF

The weather has not been the best this year. This week started very cool but sunny. When it finally warmed up on Thursday we took a 14 miles ride around the lake.

The map above above shows the various bike routes that we have taken. Most are on sandy forest roads and a few are on paved park roads without much traffic.

We stopped by the Train Station Museum in Olustee but it was closed. The sandy roads were not too bad this year and we visited the rustic Hog Pen camp, which keeps getting bigger each year but it only has a pit toilet and no water for $2/night. It was full.

On Friday we took a ride over  to Olustee Battlefield Historic State Park. Each year they say a bigger visitor center is coming but nothing yet. This year they had an excellent new movie that described the one day battle where the Confederate troops drove back the Union army back to Jacksonville. Each February the have the largest reenactment in the Southeast. We stopped by another rustic but popular campground called Cobb to complete our 12 mile bike ride. It was also full. After a very rainy weekend we decided to go around the lake again on Tuesday for a 13 mile ride. We stayed on the main highway to avoid some of the sandy roads but because of the rain the road north was very hard to pedal through the sand so our speed on that road was cut in half.

The map on the left shows our routes from 1.Okefenokee (Stephen Foster SP) to 2.Ocean Pond NF Campground near Lake City, then on Thursday to paddle the Ichetucknee Springs River and then over to camp at 3.O'Leno State Park and then to 4.Payne's Prairie State Park just outside of Gainesville for next weekend.

The distance as the crow flies is only 80 miles but by our routes it is about 175 miles.

This part of Florida is very scenic but on the cool side in November. It could go down to freezing and as high as the low 80’s. But for biking and canoeing, temperatures in low 60’s are great.

It’s been cooler and wetter then normal so far this year, if it were not for the camping reservations we made we should of headed south sooner. It’s better to be reservation free to remain flexible but the further south you travel the harder it is to find a campsite.