Wrapping up our winter trip at Ocean Pond Campground

John & Peggy at Cypress Glen

We got a nice early start from Cypress Glen campground at sunrise, 7:30AM on Monday morning. We stopped at Walmart, Aldi’s and Sam’s Club near Ocala then headed north on US-301 to Ocean Pond campground in Osceola National Forest near Lake City, FL. We were hoping to get one of the 19 sites with electrical hookups and we lucked out. When we got there at noon, someone had just pulled out of site 11. These sites are full everyday but usually from Sunday to Thursday if you get here by 10 AM you can get a site. It seems like these sites are always full on the weekends. There are three camps, the second one has water only and the last one in in a nice woods but not water, better for tent campers. On Friday mornings the three camps are usually full for the weekend.

Ocean Pond Campsite 11

We did a short 11 mile bike ride over to Olustee Civil War Battlefield where every February they do a large reenactment. We like this ride since only about 2 miles are on the paved forest road. The remainder of the ride is om narrow hard pack dirt roads. We came back via Cobb Campground a popular boondock area.

On Friday we took our last bike ride of our winter trip, a short 9 mile ride to Hog Pen campground. This is another rustic National Forest campground on Ocean Pond with individual sites and a latrine.

We biked 475 miles on our tandem bike this winter and we canoed about 110 miles.

We enjoy the old roads without all the fast truck traffic and it takes about the same time since it is a shorter distance than I-95. You feel like a tourist from the past with the little motel-cabin strips and roadside attractions along the way.

You need to slow down in a few towns but the traffic is very light and no big interstate accident delays.

We hope that on a Saturday afternoon the traffic through Charlotte, NC won’t be too bad and we plan to get to Mooresville, NC by dinner time and stay overnight at a Walmart.

We plan to leave early on Saturday 3/14 before sunrise. We love US-301 and will take it all the way north though Georgia and pickup US321 in SC and then to Columbia, SC where I-77 starts.

It has been another warm week with no rain and their forecast is for more of the same for another week.