Second Week at Lithia Springs

We are still waiting for the park to clear the two log jams out of the Alafia River. Peggy didn’t want to paddle again and portage through the mud. They are promising now they will have it clear by this coming Wednesday, so we hope to paddle it on Thursday if we can get somebody to shuttle us with our canoe back up to Alderman Ford.

So we biked the Fish Hawk Ranch trails for 4 more days, covering another 50 miles. We have tried to follow all the different bike trails that go through the natural areas of the large housing development. Fish Hawk is in Hillsborough County a suburb of Tampa with a population of 18,000. The average home cost is $350K. Many of the individual developments are gated communities, but we sneak in behind cars or on bike paths.

The trails are 5’ wide concrete sidewalks. There are lots of curves, hills and valleys which keep our average speed below 9 MPH. Except for the weekends not many people use the trails.

There are all sorts of large birds like Egrets, Sandhill Cranes and ducks, I’m sure there are alligators in the ponds but we haven’t seen one yet.

We had two cool days but the weather has been great with no rain.

MON 1/7 Actual Temp 79° /46° Hist. Avg. 70°/51°

TUE 1/8 Actual Temp 79° /52° Hist. Avg. 70°/51°

WED 1/9 Actual Temp 73° /46° Hist. Avg. 70°/51°

THU 1/10 Actual Temp 63° /41° Hist. Avg. 70°/51°

FRI 1/11 Actual Temp 73° /37° Hist. Avg. 70°/51°

Sat 1/11 Actual Temp 79° /50° Hist. Avg. 70°/51°

SUN 1/12 Actual Temp 80° /54° Hist. Avg. 70°/51°

We have one more week here and then we plan to try to get a campsite on Tampa Bay at another Hillsborough County Park, E.G. Simmons. It is always full and it may be buggy, but we will give it a try early on Sunday 1/20.