Back to Lithia Springs for 5 days

We hoped we could find a site at Fort Desoto in St Petersburg but there were no reservations available starting on a Thursday so we decided to go back to one of our favorite campgrounds, Lithia Springs. We got there at 9 AM on Thursday morning and they said that 5 people hadn’t renewed and maybe somebody would be leaving, check-out time is 11 AM. We lucked out, a camper left Site 37 which was the same river campsite we stayed at last month. It was the only site that became available that day.

We found out that they never cleaned out the log  jam on the Alafia River so if we paddled we would still need to do a portage. We decided to stick to biking around the Fish Hawk Ranch bike trails.

It was really hot so we did two early morning 13 mile tandem bike trips on Friday and Sunday It finally cooled down on Monday and on our last day we did another 12 mi trip. Other than a short in and out all three trips were on totally different trails. Peggy loves the nice curvy paths in the natural areas. For our first time we saw an alligator next to one of the ponds.

One of the trails goes right down the middle of the high tension power lines but most of the trails are in very scenic areas.

We will head back to Cypress Glen campground in the Withlacoochee National Forest on Tuesday, we have reservation for the same site we stayed at in December. They will close this campground after 3 days as they are finally getting around to re-leveling all the campsites. Bud & Pat , who we camped with at WP Franklin, with the Phoenix Cruiser from Highland Hts, OH are supposed to be there when we get there.

Our plans are to visit our friends Paul & Helen in Inverness when we leave the campground, we will then head over to Silver Springs to do a scenic paddle.

The weather turned really warm like last year, the red temps are above normal.

SUN  2/17 Actual Temp 83° /64° Hist. Avg. 78°/56°

MON  2/18 Actual Temp 85° /71° Hist. Avg. 78°/56°

TUE  2/19 Actual Temp 89° /68° Hist. Avg. 78°/56°

WED  2/29 Actual Temp 83° /70° Hist. Avg. 77°/56°

THU  2/21 Actual Temp 82° /70° Hist. Avg. 73°/55°

FRI  2/22 Actual Temp 86° /72° Hist. Avg. 73°/55°

SAT  2/23 Actual Temp 86° /72° Hist. Avg. 74°/56° Bike 13 Mi

Starting Our Last Week at WP Franklin

Warm weather returned,. We got in two nice bike rides and a paddle up the Caloosahatchee and then up Hickey Creek past the park area since the river had more water from Wednesday’s 1” rain. There was not much wildlife except for a few turtles. But it is a worthwhile scenic paddle.

The cool thing was three more Phoenix RV’s showed up with old friends, that we had camped last year at the same campground with Barry & Sue from MI and Fred and Joan from VA but the big surprise was Bud & Pat from the Cleveland area. It turns out they came to our home 3 years ago to see our RV to see if they liked our choice and bought the same model.

We were in Campsite 7

Barry & Sue were in Campsite 13

Fred & Joan are in Campsite 10 and Bud & Pat are in Campsite 9

Today we took a little short paddle over to the Franklin Locks which is adjacent to our island campground.

We watch the lock fill adding 2.5’ so that the boats could head upstream,  Here is a sailboat proceeding out of the lock.

We stopped at the nice visitor center and then paddled the 1/2 mile back to our campsite. If you camped here without a boat it would be a 13 mile drive since there is no way to walk across the big lock.

The weather finally turned warm, red temps are above normal.

SUN  2/10 Actual Temp 84° /63° Hist. Avg. 77°/55° Bike 13 Mi

MON  2/11 Actual Temp 85° /65° Hist. Avg. 77°/56°

TUE  2/12 Actual Temp 84° /68° Hist. Avg. 77°/56°

WED  2/13 Actual Temp 73° /56° Hist. Avg. 77°/56° Rain 1”

THU  2/14 Actual Temp 78° /48° Hist. Avg. 77°/56° Canoe 8 Mi

FRI  2/15 Actual Temp 79° /58° Hist. Avg. 77°/56° Shopping

SAT  2/16 Actual Temp 80° /59° Hist. Avg. 77°/56° Bike 12 Mi

Hot weather finally comes to Florida

After two weeks of cool weather everything changed. The highs for the next two weeks are forecast to be in the low 80’s.

We left our Tampa Bay campground on Monday morning and headed to a Pioneer Park, a county park campground, on the Florida Cracker Trail. We came here because it is on the Peace River, a popular canoe trail, that flows south from near Winter Haven down the center of the state to Port Charlotte. During the dry season it has all sorts of shallow limestone shoals and sand bars. However the heavy rains about a week ago brought the river way up so we had 1000 CFS at our campground in Zolfo Springs.

With the high water we wanted to do at least an 8 or 9 mile trip and there is only one outfitter and only runs shorter sections, and wanted $30 to do a special shuttle to take us up to Paynes Creek. This would be a 11 mile paddle.

Each nite hundreds of vultures would nest for the night in the big trees. This is about 1/5 ^th of the group we saw.

We were really disappointed with this campground which was just a big field with all the campers right on top of each other but they had 50 amp electric & water hookups. They have a nice primitive campground right along the river with lots of shade but Peggy likes to have power.

One good thing was that the RV right behind us was from Ohio and they offered to shuttle our canoe and us upstream to Paynes Creek State Park on Tuesday morning, using the rack on their Subaru Outback.

It was a easy shuttle up the state highway to a highway put-in next to the park.

He took this picture when we launched.

The current was fast and even with a stop for lunch at a wayside park near Wauchula, it only took us 3 hours. We saw at least 12 alligators basking along the banks on this sunny day. At this level there were no shallow spots, just a few trees here and there to avoid.

Peggy at our lunch stop. There was nobody else on the river. The section from Paynes Creek to this wayside park in Wauchula was very remote and pretty, after this point there were many homes along the way to the take-out in our campground.

We brought our lightweight canoe cart with us so we could pull our canoe back  to our campsite you can see in the distance.

Adjacent to the campground is a nice museum and a series of old FL buildings.

Known as the Florida Cracker Museum, it has stories and artifacts about the original settlers called crackers. They say the name was from the crack of their buggy whips. Each year during the last few weeks in February a big festival is held here.

We got to one of our favorite, but hard to get in without reservations, campgrounds which is on an island next to the Franklin Lock in the big cross Florida river called the Caloosahatchee.

We  got site 7 which has a beautiful view of the river and big tree that often has Bald Eagles looking for fish.

On Friday morning we took the nice paddle one mile downstream and then up Telegraph Creek for two miles which is a tiny creek that passes through a small neighborhood and then into a wilderness setting. There are lots of trees across the river but it can be navigated with no portages. Hover it was much more work then our 11 mile float down the Peace River.

The weather finally turned warm, red temps are above normal. No rain.

SUN 2/03 Actual Temp 81° /60° Sunny Hist. Avg. 72°/53° Ruskin

MON 2/04 Actual Temp 70° /61° Sunny Hist. Avg. 75°/48° Zolfo

TUE 2/05 Actual Temp 77° /54° Sunny Hist. Avg. 75°/48° Canoe 11 mi

WED 2/06 Actual Temp 82° /52° Sunny Hist. Avg. 75°/48°

THU 2/07 Actual Temp 83° /60° Sunny Hist. Avg. 76°/55° Ft Myers

FRI 2/08 Actual Temp 81° /63° Partly Cld. Hist. Avg. 76°/55° Canoe 7 mi

SAT 2/09 Actual Temp 81° /63° Partly Cld. Hist. Avg. 77°/55°

Another Week at E.G. Simmons

My last blog was posted on Wed 1/23 which was our last warm day until Fri 2/01. In addition every day was very windy so it would be no fun to try canoeing out in Tampa Bay or taking long bike rides.

So we decided to relax here and enjoy not being home dealing with the Polar Vortex.

For a break we took our RV on a shopping trip to Sun City Center, which is only 9 miles away. This is an old Dell Webb. 55 years old and up, community where everybody drives golf carts like in the Villages. The traffic was terrible but we got to Aldi, Walmart, Walgreens, Home Depot and Belles. We were happy to be back in camp and out of the congested area.

They rent kayaks here and they have a nice canoe trail marked with signs like above so you don’t get lost, which would be easy to do around the mangrove islands.

When you are out in the bay you can see the power plan that we rode our bikes to, last week. It looks so close but a long time ago we tried to paddle over to it and found out that we took all day to paddle there and back and never did see any Manatees.

Our Friday’s 4 mile paddle is shown in Red. We paddled down the bay on Saturday, it was not as interesting and there was a lot of boat traffic out on the bay. It was about a 3.5 mile, 1-1/2 hour paddle. It was sunny & hot.

Here are the actual weather records for the period when we were at E.G. Simmons campground. The only temperatures that were above normal are shown in Red.

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SUN 1/20 Actual Temp 68° /45° Windy Hist. Avg. 70°/51°

MON 1/21 Actual Temp 66° /36° Windy Hist. Avg. 70°/51° Biked 6 mi

TUE 1/22 Actual Temp 73° /43° Windy Hist. Avg. 70°/51° Biked 13 mi

WED 1/23 Actual  Rain 81° /50° Windy Hist. Avg. 70°/51° Biked 23 mi

THU 1/24   2”  Actual 73° /54° Windy Hist. Avg. 70°/51°

FRI 1/25 Actual Temp 63° /43° Windy Hist. Avg. 70°/51° Biked 8 mi

SAT 1/26 Actual Temp 63° /43° Windy Hist. Avg. 70°/51°

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SUN 1/27 Actual Temp 52° /45° Windy Hist. Avg. 70°/51°

MON 1/28 Actual Temp 63° /43° Windy Hist. Avg. 70°/51°

TUE 1/29 Actual Temp 66° /39° Windy Hist. Avg. 70°/51° Shopping

WED 1/30 Actual Temp 60° /46° Windy Hist. Avg. 71°/52° Biked 6mi

THU 1/31 Actual Temp 65° /48° Windy Hist. Avg. 71°/52°

FRI 2/01 Actual Temp 75° /46° Calm-PC Hist. Avg. 71°/52° Canoe 4 mi

SAT 2/02 Actual Temp 77° /52° Calm-PC Hist. Avg. 71°/53° Canoe 3.5 mi

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It looks like the cold spell is over and we plan to leave after the Super Bowl on Monday morning 2/04.  We will head inland and south to try to get a campsite at Pioneer Park It is a county park, on the Peace River in Zolfo Springs. On 02/07 we have reservations for two weeks at W.P. Franklin, Corps of Engineers campground, by a lock and on an island in the Caloosahatchee River near Ft. Myers, FL It looks like the weather will be in the 80’s when we get there.