One week at Silver Lake

We arrived early on Monday morning 3/2 and plan to leave early on 3/9. After our 17 mile bike ride on Tuesday we were surprised by the arrival of our friends, Bud & Pat, from Highland Hts, OH. They own the same model Phoenix Cruiser that we do.  They had hoped to spend the winter in FL but a serious illness in their family kept them at home until a few weeks ago. So now they were just heading south while we were heading back north. They plan to camp here at Cypress Glen Campground until Saturday. 

On Wednesday we biked with them on the Good Neighbor Trail to Brooksville, FL like we did last year. It is a 27 mile round trip ride and we stopped for lunch at the Main Street Café in the downtown. They both had new bikes, Pat had an E-Bike so she had no problem keeping up with our tandem bike. You have to peddle to make it go but on the level trails it can go 100 miles before recharging. In fact after we came back they both kept biking for another 10 miles or so. They even took a longer ride on Thursday while we rested and read our Kindle books.

Bud and Pat went biking again on Friday. It got cooler and we planned to paddle down the Withlacoochee River. We were dressed for the cool weather but the 25 mph wind made us turn around. It was still windy Saturday but it was supposed to be warmer on Sunday so we decided to paddle on Sunday and stay here one more night.

It was still cool at noon when we paddled downstream to Hog Island. But on the way back it was warm enough to take off our jackets. The last mile of our 8 mile trip found us going into a strong head wind which took us twice as long to cross the lake which was starting to have whitecaps.

The weather the past week and a half was cool to start and finish. But for most of the week it was again above normal temperatures near Brooksville.

When we leave here Monday we plan to do some shopping in the Ocala area and then drive all the way to Ocean Pond Campground in Osceola National Forest near I-10 in Northern Florida. It is only a 150 mile drive. We hope we can get a campsite there with electrical hookups.

We plan to stay there about 5 days while watching the weather reports for the driving conditions for our 950 mile two day trip back home.