We really enjoyed our long 16 day stay at Ocean Pond Campground. Since last blog we got in one more 13 mi bike ride. Our legs and tooshes are finally getting used to the biking. So now it is time to try some canoeing. One of the prettiest river not far from here is the Ichetucknee Springs which we try to paddle if we are nearby. We left our campground on Thanksgiving morning and found room at the take-out to park our camper.
I guess a lot of people like to paddle on this 3 mile long river on the holiday. Almost all were starting at the spring and paddle the 3 miles to the take-out. We avoid a shuttle and paddle 2 hours upstream against the current and coast back in less than an hour.
I forgot my camera and I’ll bet we saw 1000 tame turtles on every tree in the water sunning themselves. And they just sit there even when you are next to them.
There are many large birds here also like Ibis, Egrets, Great Blue Herons but our biggest thrill, especially today being Thanksgiving, was watching 8 turkeys fly across the river right in front of us. There is no fishing allowed on the Ichetucknee and no food or drinks except in personal bottles, no drink bottles, which made the area very clean, even though 1000’s of tubers float the river on warm days, the water is always 72oF.
After we paddled, we headed west, as per our plan and stayed overnight at a Walmart in Perry, FL. We didn’t realize that Black Friday started at 6 PM. We found a place to park for the night way in the back for their trucks and ignored the frantic shoppers.
We left early in the morning while it was still very cool to try to avoid any crowds on the Wacissa River. It was a short drive and we were on the water by 9 am. This is another beautiful clear river formed by large springs. However it is totally different. Didn’t see any turtles on our cold morning start but plenty of big birds including anhinga's. The river was very wide and shallow. We did get a thrill seeing about 5 otters playing right in front of us.
If it wasn’t hunting season you could paddle about 10 miles downstream to Goose Pasture Campground, a primitive first come campground on the river. So our paddle was another up and back trip. We paddled to the dam and back about 7 miles. At the dam turnaround the temperature finally got into the mid 70’s and it was very sunny.
We did not enjoy this river as well because of the fishermen in little motor boats. But it had a great parking lot with plenty of room which was right next to the water. So by noon as the day got warm many more boats began to arrive. We had a short drive to our next campsite at Newport County Park. We got a nice site #14 with power and water and there were opportunities nearby for boating & biking.
We have been camped at Ocean Pond campground in Osceola National Forest for the past 12 nights. Our plan is to leave on Thanksgiving morning. The weather has been sunny everyday this week. The high temperatures have been between 68 to 75oF, the lows have been in the high 40’s.
This is the perfect temperature for taking rides on our tandem bike. It’s been 3 months since we have done any riding and besides being out-of-shape our hard seats have been punishing our soft tooshes.
Except for SR250A and the campground roads all the forest roads are packed sand with lots of little potholes that we need to keep dodging. So we bike one day and rest one day to get used to the bike seats. So far our 4 rides have totaled only 56 miles and our average speed is just over 8 mph.
We see an occasional car but these are pretty safe rides unless some hunter mistakes us for a deer, it is hunting season here in the forest.
We left home early due to the bad weather and plan to stay here at Ocean Pond campground in Northern FL until Thanksgiving day.
We then will be paddling our canoe in some FL Springs; Ichetucknee, Wacissa, Juniper, Silver Springs and the Withlacoochee River and work in some Rails to Trails; St Marks, Nature Coast and the Withlacoochee State Trails.
We decided to head back to Florida again this fall & winter and bring our lightweight Mad River canoe and our Burley Tandem Bicycle, along with my mountain bike.
We love all real Florida Parks where we can canoe and bike. As usual our itinerary does not include any private campgrounds. We stay in State Parks, National Forests, County Parks, State Forests and Corps of Engineer campgrounds. When we are traveling to and from FL we use Walmart parking lots to spend an overnight.
We did all our trip planning and campground reservations starting in December until the end of February since the weather in November is a big factor in where we will head and when we will actually leave.
The last couple of years we spent time in SC & GA, but this year the weather forecasts started to look bad. We wanted to leave about November 11th after our big family party and pre-thanksgiving celebration.
This year everyone came to Joan and Brian’s new home to also celebrate our 60th wedding anniversary.
I think we have aged a little, can’t see well and forget things.
When we woke up on Sunday 11/10 the weather forecast was predicting the start of a big snow event and low temperatures.
We quickly finished packing and left at 10 AM. We drove in beautiful warm and sunny weather almost 400 miles to Wytheville, VA by 5 PM. We actually used a Loews parking lot next door to the Walmart. It was much quieter and had better free internet.
Since the forecast was predicting that this storm would push south all the way to FL, we decided to skip visiting our friends Greg & Sandy Lewis in the SC Highlands and biking in GA. We took I-77 from Cleveland all the way through Charlotte to Columbia, SC and then jumped off the interstates the rest of the way to FL. We lost 30 min due to road construction north of Statesville, NC but had no delays in Charlotte. They finally finished the roadwork North of the city and are almost done if you drive through the city on I-77.
Our itinerary for Monday was to drive 8 hours to Jesup, GA. From Columbia, SC to Ocean Pond campground in northern FL is 340 miles by all interstate highways and it is 20 miles shorter taking US301 the old main North South route which goes all the way to the southwest coast of FL. It is part 4 lane divided and part two lane. There are some school zones and a few small towns with traffic lights. But there is NO traffic and very few trucks. It reminds you of traveling 50 years ago when little strip motels and two pump gas stations lined the route. It is a very relaxing, scenic drive and believe it or not, it only takes 10 minutes longer, and that’s if there are no accidents or construction on the interstates.
We did get to Jesup, GA by 3:30 PM and spent the night at a quiet Walmart. It was a sunny drive with temperatures in the mid-seventies. We got an early start Tuesday morning and made it to our campground by 9 AM. With cold weather forecast we figured there would be a lot of travelers moving on and no weekend campers from Jacksonville showing up yet. It is still two weeks to the busy Thanksgiving weekend here. We had no trouble getting a campsite with electric power & water.
Our only problem is we still have 4 weeks to kill before arriving at Silver Lake near Brooksville, FL. We can spend 2 weeks here and do a lot of bike riding around Ocean Pond.
Some possibilities when we move on are the Okefenokee swamp which has good paddling, the Ichetucknee River which is a nice paddle up and down a spring fed river, A bike trail or two like the St Marks to Tallahassee paved trail or the rivers in the big bend area south of Tallahassee like the Wakulla, Aucilla, Econfina or Wacissa.
However the weather here went from 75o F on Tuesday to 36o F on Wednesday morning with some light afternoon showers. But it’s still a lot better than suffering in the cold back home.
We will be back at Silver Lake - Site 47 on December 9th and then drive to the KOA near the Orlando airport where we will leave our RV in storage to fly home to spend Christmas with our big family.
Any friends that care to join us along the way, now is the time to let us know. On all of our reserved campsites there is room to share with a second vehicle, since we don't pull a car with us.
