Back to Cypress Glen for one week

I left early Sunday morning to head north to Cypress Glen Campground. I got to my campsite-48 at 11:30am. 

My plan was to take the Good Neighbor Bike Trail to Brooksville on Monday. It's normally a nice 26 mile flat rail-trail ride, but right before town the trail was blocked and I was detoured to the road, no bike lane and a big hill. I tried a different route back around the detour but it was still hilly. It added a about a mile to my bike ride.

I checked the river level and was surprised that the low water in December (50 cfs) caused by the Fall drought was gone and the winter rains brought the level way up to 240 cfs. It was the wettest winter ever.

I decided on Tuesday I  would see how far up the Little Withlacoochee River I could paddle. After about a mile I eventually got blocked by a tree across the narrow river, so went back and then up the main river to Crooked River Park. I scared an alligator who then scared me by jumping into the river next to my kayak.

On Wednesday my daughter Joan and my grandson Jake flew in to paddle with me on Thursday at Weeki Wachee Springs. They got a motel room nearby and picked me up. No car rack so I couldn't take my kayak. We rented a single and a tandem and got an early start so it was not crowded when we paddled up the river from Rogers Park about 2-1/2 miles. We hoped to see some Manatees but no luck, they didn't need to come upstream to the warm spring water.

We all loved the crystal clear water, and it was sure easier going back downstream with the current. We ran into dozens of paddlers now comimg up the river, I'm glad we got an early start.

Jake takes a break on a small sandbar.

Here we are back at my campsite, it was a fun visit but they had to head back to Tampa for a party with Brian's mother to celebrate Joan's and her birthdays.

Joan brought me some birthday gifts including this Biking Jersey.

I wore it with my biking shorts on Friday for my 32 mi roundtrip ride to Floral City. I set a personal record of an average speed of 12.8 mph,  one mph faster than when I did the same ride in December. Must have been the jersey.

Peggy in February 2021 on Weeki Wachee Springs River

I was able to leave by 7:30 AM on Sunday morning for a sunny 3 hour drive to Ocean Pond National Forest Campground between Jacksonville and Lake City, off I-10. They don't take reservations but even though it is now Spring Break time, I found 3 open sites in the camp with 120v power, but those sites all had the power broken so they were only charging the same as the non-power sites, $10/night, I grabbed a favorite site #11 and saw that the camper behind me was using the 50 amp power plug in his site, so I asked him if I could run a long 30 amp cord to his unused 30 amp plug. He said fine, that's what he did last week when he was in #11 and then moved to #6 when it became available. I was in site #6 for 10 days last November. Both these sites are large and nobody is around you. I noticed there were a dozen empty water-only sites available when I arrived.

Here is a Link to my Blog when I was here in November.