Back to Lithia Springs Park

I decided to update our trip progress and schedule. See the chart on the left.

On Tuesday morning we stopped for our bi-weekly shopping trip on our way to another Hillsborough County Park – Lithia Springs. We were here over Christmas time this winter.

We arrived around noon and found that there were plenty of campsites available. We picked Site 35 across the street from the river since it has an easy area to take-out of when canoeing the Alafia River.  It also has the shortest carry to our campsite.

When we were here in December we didn’t get to paddle the river since we couldn’t get anyone to help us with a shuttle.

I noticed that the campground host, that shuttled us last year, jeep was at his site. So he again agreed to haul us and our canoe to the put-in at Alderman Ford. We really appreciated that he did this even with the Covid protocols, we all wore our masks on the ride.

The rain that fell a few days ago brought the river up a little and on Thursday it was still running at about 275 CFS, which is a nice paddleable level. All the little shallow shoals are covered and none of the dozens of fallen trees are too hard to maneuver around.

Peggy was feeling a little tired and not up to her normal go-go attitude but she still wanted to canoe the 9 mile run. The river has a good current and in the past, depending on water level, it would take us from 2-3/4 to 3 hours with a short lunch  stop at Duck Landing.

Our paddling time was still about 3 hours since the current was a little faster. We did take a longer rest stop for lunch than usual. The sunny skies and warm weather brought out the alligators and turtles who all dove into the river to avoid us as we approached.

On Friday, our old friends Ron & Shelly Tomallo stopped by for a visit and to see what the park was like. They have been travelling with their RV and Toad (A car towed by RV) for the past month. They like the FL State Parks since you can make reservations. However you need to do that 11 months in advance and we never know what we want to do that far in advance. And if you don’t tie down a reservation early you are unlikely to get a site at any State Park south of Ocala, FL.

If you look at our schedule above, the X means they don’t take reservations. 90% of the time it has not been a problem especially if you time your arrival early in the week and early in the day.

Saturday was one of the first rainy mornings that we had on this trip, but it looks like while those back home are getting hammered by snow storms and low temperatures we may get a few unsettled weather days, but no cold spell.

We plan to stay here for 13 days and hopefully the rain will bring the river up a little higher and we will get another paddling trip in on the Alafia River. We also plan to bike with our tandem around the bike trails at Fish Hawk Ranch.