On Sunday morning we left our Walmart overnight in Silver Springs and got to Juniper Springs by 8 am. It was full from Saturday night campers but the place would be pretty empty by noon checkout time. But I was then informed that we could not canoe Juniper Run because of a bad bear somewhere in the Nat'l Forest north of SR40. They also said that none of the through hikers on the Florida Trail could come into the forest and had to make a new trail to bypass it. This is a really stupid policy. If a bear got used to people having food in the back country and is bothering people the bad bear should be euthanized. They decided to eliminate the people who are hiking & canoeing. This is not a common policy in National Parks. If a bear goes bad, they are eliminated. I hope somebody reviews this policy. This park does some weird things like last year taking two full years to fix a boardwalk damaged in a hurricane. It could have been fixed in a month if they wanted people to enjoy the park.
So we went over to nearby Alexander Springs for two nights. It’s been at least 10 years since we stayed here. It is not that good for biking or canoeing. Most people just paddle near the spring and take out where they put-in. We used to canoe the river from the bridge on 445 down to 52 Landing. You need to run your own shuttle and the sandy roads didn’t look that good after the rain. The park volunteers had no information about road conditions. After the weekend crowd left the campground was pretty empty. It is near the Paisley mountain bike trails but we don’t do single track with our tandem on the deep sandy trails.
So We left early Tuesday for Ocean Pond National Forest campground near Lake City. We drove through some light rain on our way and found out that they got flooding rain for the past two days, we only had a nighttime rain at Alexander Springs. It’s only a 3 hour drive north to the Osceola National Forest. We got here on March 5th, about the same time as last year but last year we were never able to get a campsite with power hookups. There are only 19 power sites and 30 without power but have water hookups and 18 rustic sites.. All the campsites with power were full but an hour after we arrived an RV pulled out of a power site 3 days early which we quickly snagged making Peggy very happy. We will be here until we have a good driving window for Cleveland, Probably not until 3/12 at best.
A cold spell hit on Tuesday. Red temps are above normal.
SUN 3/03 Actual Temp 86° /61° Hist. Avg. 74°/48°
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MON 3/04 Actual Temp 81° /63° Hist. Avg. 74°/48° Night Rain |
TUE 3/05 Actual Temp 54° /36° Hist. Avg. 72°/48° Light Rain
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WED 3/06 Actual Temp 57° /35° Hist. Avg. 72°/48° Sunny |
THU 3/07 Actual Temp 67° /43° Hist. Avg. 73°/48° Bike 14 Mi |
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