Cool Days at Lithia Springs Park

We left Cypress Glen Campground almost a week ago, on 12/19. We did a 20 mile round trip bike ride on the Van Fleet State Trail that runs from Polk City, FL to a place called Mable on SR-50. It is a 30 mile long paved rail trail and goes through a wilderness area which is the headwaters of the Withlacoochee River. The trail has parking at both ends and two places 10 miles from either end. It has one curve and is flat so it is a little boring although it goes through a beautiful wild area. It is popular for group rides. We had peddled it twice before, once from each end, so this time we started in the middle which allowed us to complete the entire trail, we made good time on the trail and averaged over 13 mph.

We were able to get some Propane in Polk City, did some shopping in Lakeland and spent the night at a Walmart in Valrico. We didn’t want to try to get a campsite on a Saturday afternoon so we got to Lithia Springs County Park at 8 AM on Sunday morning, to make sure we would get a nice campsite when the weekend campers left.

 

There were two empty sites and by the end of the day the place was very empty. Christmas week must not be popular for camping. We took site 36 which has easy access to the river. However the next day we got 2” of rain which brought the water flow up from about 200 CFS to over 1000 CFS, we decided to wait until it had dropped to below 600 CFS before we tried to paddle. We took  4 bike rides on the nice concrete trails that start at the campground and find their way through the big housing complex called Fish Hawk Ranch. It is over 3000 acres and has over 6000 homes, but it has many natural areas and retention ponds.

Most of the bike trails are very winding and pass through these natural areas where you can see Egrets, Ibis, Sand Hill Cranes, Turtles and Alligators.

Some of the trails pass over wooden walkways and along residential streets as well. We are always surprised that more of the residents are not on the trails.

Judi and Larry Fordyce our paddling and traveling friends for years, stopped by for two nights and took the campsite next to us. They were not interested in attempting to paddle the 60^oF water since they only had sit-on-top kayaks.

We joined them on a 10 mile bike ride through Fish Hawk, they were surprised how wild most of the area is. If you look at the map you can see our 60 miles of bike rides and only a few of the trails were duplicated.

On Christmas morning when Judi & Larry left, it had cooled to the low 40’s and on Saturday it is supposed to go down to the 30’s. At least we don’t have a 10” snow like they got last night in Cleveland.