Eight nice days at Cypress Glen

After paddling at Weeki Wachee Springs on Monday we headed to our reserved campsite #46 at the Cypress Glen campground on the Withlacoochee River and 46 mile bike trail. We were here in early December on our way south and we are now starting to head north,

After relaxing for a couple of days we took a 21 bike ride North on the Withlacoochee State trail on Thursday.

When we were here in December they were only using half the campsites due to the Covid virus, but now all the sites are full on the weekend.

This year many Florida campers are enjoying their parks since there are far fewer out of state campers.

We like this site since we are right next to where we can launch our canoe to paddle either upstream or downstream. There is very little current in the river. We decided to avoid the weekend crowd and paddle on Friday and relax in camp on Saturday.

We decided to paddle past the third campground in the Silver Lake complex, Crooked River. It is a 1/2 mile walk to campground but a 2 miles upstream paddle.

We paddled another mile upstream past the camp and finally turned around. We saw one really big gator and a few turtles but not many birds. Then on Sunday we decided to take the newer Good Neighbor Trail all the way to Brooksville. This is a 26 mile round trip ride and a good workout for us. There is a nice park at the end to relax or continue up the street to some local restaurants.

Helen & Paul our friends from Inverness suggested that we come and visit them.

So we left a day early on Tuesday and camped there before heading to Ocala to try a 9 mile section of the Marjorie Carr Cross FL Greenway.

We biked from the 49th street access in December but this time we wanted to begin right where the paved trail ends at US200 and peddle past 49th to the Land Bridge over I-75.

There is not good parking on US200 but there is a good 1/2 mile long sidewalk & bike lane from a nearby Walmart.

This is a very pretty trail with lots of hills and curves, so the 18 mile ride was a good workout for us. We enjoyed this ride and they put tunnels under two highways so you don’t need to cross any busy roads. If they had a nice parking lot and access at the start it would be perfect. The trail some day is supposed to connect with the Withlacoochee State Trail.