Bezabor: Payne’s Prairie (FL), Amicalola Falls (GA), Rock Hill (SC) (posted from Panera Bread Co., Rock Hill, SC)

Wednesday, March 29-
We woke to a wonderfully clear, warm day and decided to drive up the back way to Springer Mountain. We had seen a wall-sized topo map of the area in the Visitor’s Center showing the route so I asked a ranger and she provided a small map and directions. The trip was over thirty miles of roundabout country road, including seven miles of dirt forest road but we were just happy to be out there looking around. Rural Georgia looks a lot like rural Pennsylvania this time of year. The trees are budding and there are lots of redbuds and dogwoods showing off on this blue-sky Spring day.
We had gotten underway around 0900 and by 1000 were on the forest road. It took another half-hour or so to negotiate the very narrow dirt road and the drop-off on the right side was so precipitous that Labashi didn’t want to look and I heard her mutter “Sure, you’re brave when the drop-off is on MY side”. Fortunately, we met only one oncoming car and that happened to be in a spot where I could pull over enough to let him pass. After what seemed a very long time we finally got to the dirt parking pull off and there were already five or six vehicles there so all of a sudden it didn’t feel so remote after all. Labashi wanted to eat so as she worked on that I went over to the map posted nearby. In doing so I passed a group of five or six backpackers who were thanking a guy for bringing them here and it occurred to me he must run the shuttle. I had read somewhere that it was possible to avoid the long, steep backpack to the start of the trail by catching a ride with a local business and sure enough, that’s who it was. The guy was from Hiker Hostel, out of Dahlonega. You can make arrangements to fly in, or take a bus in, to Gainesville, GA, where the Hiker Hostel guy (I didn’t get his name) will pick you up and put you up for the night at the hostel. In the morning, he will drive you to the Springer Mountain parking lot and drop you off. The rest of the trip to Maine is up to you.
Since the guy had just finished up with his group I started chatting with him and he turned out to be a fountain of knowledge and he was in no hurry to go. So I learned some interesting things. One is that about five percent of thru-hikers drop out before they ever actually finish a mile of trail. They either turn around on the Approach Trail and go back down to Amicalola Falls State Park, or they make it as far as the parking lot we were in and either catch a ride with the shuttle guy or catch a ride with day-hikers like Labashi and me. The shuttle guy was also handing out business cards to the half-dozen or so people who arrived or passed through while we were talking. He was letting people know they could call him at the road crossings in the next thirty miles and he would come pick them up. If they were ready to get off the trail, he would take them to the airport or bus station (after a night in the hostel). If they just wanted to spend a night in the hostel, he would take them back to the trail where he had picked them up. As part of his service he also advised the newbies on anything to do with the trail. He would attempt to get them to cut pack weight since that is the single biggest reason for injury and quitting the trail. He told me he was concerned that one of the guys in the group he had just dropped off was carrying fifty pounds and would probably not last long on the trail. He was exactly the kind of guy who should be doing this type of job… he wanted everyone to achieve their dream.
The parking lot is actually about a mile toward Maine from the starting point of the trail. Therefore, you have to backtrack to the starting point if you didn’t come up the Approach trail. I’d think that all hikers of course want to go to the official starting point of the trail but they have to decide whether to take their pack. In other words, each must decide what his or her own definition is of ‘the rules’. We saw it go both ways. As we chatted with the shuttle guy, a group of four came in from the trail starting point, opened the trunk, threw on their packs, and headed for Maine. Obviously their interpretation is that they don’t have to carry a pack the entire way--- it’s the person making the trip, not the person and the pack. Others apparently believe you should take your pack with you, even though you have to hike back a fairly strenuous uphill mile to the terminus only to turn around and pass this very same parking lot an hour or so later. Those people may believe it’s important to carry the pack every step of the way--- or maybe they were just shuttled in and don’t have a safe place to store the pack. And, come to think of it, the pack is very important to them since it contains nearly everything they own at the moment. Interesting, interesting.
We also saw a vehicle drive up with Maine plates. The three guys got out and pulled one pack from the trunk. They shook hands and the one guy donned the pack and headed for the terminus. The other two got back in the car and drove off—they were just dropping off their buddy. Perhaps they were spring-breakers dropping off their friend who decided to take some time off from college or perhaps he had just graduated, who knows. Wouldn’t it be interesting to just collect each person’s story as they start out on this monumental journey?
Since we were this close to the terminus, Labashi and I had to see it. We hiked south, greeting the five or six oncoming thru-hikers we saw with good luck wishes on their big adventure. On the way in we also met the guy with the fifty-pound pack coming back out—more on him later.
We arrived at the terminus to find a genial older gentleman who asked us if we were just day-hiking or were we thru-hiking? He keeps a register of thru-hikers and had just a few minutes ago added his seventeenth thru-hiker for the day and four-hundred-seventy-fifth for the new year.
As we talked, we learned that he knows Stumpknocker, the thru-hiker we met at the Pennsylvania Ruck in January and at the Florida Trail Association meeting a week or so ago. He was “ManySleeps”, a 70-plus-year old AT Ridgerunner and friend to Stumpknocker. ManySleeps (a/k/a Roger Dunton) told me that his picture had been taken in this very spot with Stumpknocker and I remembered that I’ve seen that picture in Stumpknocker’s journal on TrailJournals.com. Very cool! We asked him how Stumpknocker had broken his arm and learned that he fell on rocky trail near the Nantahala Outdoor Center in North Carolina and that the bone had broken in two, not just cracked. He had just entered a sharp downhill, very rocky area and just had time to think “I’d better be careful here” when he fell. We also learned that Stumpknocker recently brought ManySleeps some chicken and burgers here at his post at Springer Mountain. He no longer wore the sling we had seen him wearing at the FTA conference. He is on his way back to the trail and will slack-pack to Fontana Dam (in the Smokies) from where he believes he will be able to once again carry his pack.
ManySleeps also told us a story about his trip to Alaska last year. In Denali National Park he was asked by a Swedish tourist whether it would be okay for the tourist to take his picture. The gentleman had a lot of complex gear and fussed with it quite a long time to get a series of closeups of ManySleeps’ craggy features and long white beard. When done, he confided that he was very happy now because back in Sweden he had imagined just what a true Alaskan would look like and here he had found just what he had imagined. ManySleeps then smiled at us and said “I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’m from South Carolina”.
I asked ManySleeps how many thru-hikers he has registered so far this year and he said that the 50-pound-pack-guy we had just passed on the trail was number 475 for the year and number 17 for the day (and it was still morning!). (He also said he didn’t think the 50-pound-pack guy was likely to be one of the 17 per-cent of thru hikers who make it the entire way). The greatest number of thru-hikers hail from Pennsylvania and I believe he said the second-most-popular state was North Carolina. At the visitor’s center, the ranger had told me that Pennsylvania was number one and Ohio number two. I had noticed a number of PA, Ohio, Florida, South Carolina, plates and an Illinois and an Alaska plate. These were on cars in the long-term parking lot. Here’s a deal for you: you can leave your personal vehicle in the long-term parking lot at Amicalola Falls Visitor Center for $3 for up to six months!
After saying goodbye to ManySleeps we began our mile-long hike out and it wasn’t long until we came to the 50-pound-pack guy. He was a large man and was struggling awfully heavily for going down a gentle hill. But he was congenial when we spoke to him in passing so perhaps he’s just taking the advice of the shuttle guy to “hike your own hike”… in other words, do it your way.
After we got back to the van we headed down-mountain and that went pretty well. I kept the transmission in first gear and that slowed me down enough to prevent over-heating the brakes. We passed three vehicles coming up but, again, at good spots for passing.
Then we headed for our storytelling event in South Carolina, some 250 miles away. We drove the remainder of the day and finally made it to a Wal-Mart in York, SC. We checked with the manager to be sure it would be ok to park in the lot overnight and it indeed was so long as we parked on the outer fringes of the lot. That turned out to be a great spot. It’s a very large lot and led to one of the quietest nights we’ve spent yet at a Wal-Mart. Temperatures were in the low Sixties in the evening and dropped to a comfortable 43 overnight.


Tuesday, March 28-
Today we awoke to our first rain of our trip. We had expected rain several times a week in Florida but it never happened. The rain is very light and it starts and stops. Here in Georgia you must have your headlights on when it’s raining and I was turning them off and on but finally just left them on. If it wasn’t raining now, it would be soon. We drove to Amicalola Falls State Park, near Dawsonville. As we got closer, we started seeing lower and lower clouds and by the time we reached the park we couldn’t see the mountains around us at all. We stopped at the Visitor’s Center to get oriented and then headed up the steep road to Amicalola Lodge and to the campground. As we checked out the lodge, I decided on the spur of the moment to stay at the lodge rather than in the campground. It would be our first (and probably only) hotel night of the trip. I’ve read a number of accounts of AT thru-hikers starting their long trip northward from the lodge and I thought we might run into some 2006 thru-hikers. After checking into our room (which had windows facing the now-fogged-in mountain valley), we drove to the campground and checked it out too. The campsites are new and very nice. The campground has RV sites for $25 and tent sites for $20 per night and I believe the only difference is that you don’t have hookups in the tent sites. Otherwise they have the same layout. Then we toured the remainder of the roads in the park and went back to the visitor center for a closer look. We spoke at some length to the ranger on duty and learned that it has been a busy year already. They have a wall of photos of the ‘Class of 2006’ and already had several dozen photos.
In back of the Visitor’s Center is a stone arch which marks the start of the AT Approach Trail. From there it’s an 8.7 mile uphill struggle to the official starting point of the Appalachian Trail, a plaque and the first white blaze on Springer Mountain. We learned that there would be an owl program in the evening at the Lodge so we planned the rest of our day to be back for that. We drove back up to the Lodge parking lot and from there hiked for two hours on the Approach Trail to see if when they say “strenuous”, it really means just that. The first half-hour was indeed strenuous (and we only had daypacks) but then we topped out and it turned into a nice ridge walk in the falling light. We had started the day in rain but that had ended about 1430 and by 1630 we even had glimpses of the sun so we had it very nice.
That evening we were entertained by Ranger Sam, who had along ‘Zeus’, a great horned owl and ‘Gizmo’, a red-phase screech owl. Both are rehabilitated birds which have problems which prevent them from returning to the wild. Gizmo, for example, lost an eye and now has a false right eye.
After the program we had dinner in the Lodge restaurant, and watched the valley slowly go dark. The rows and rows of small valleys across the large valley each filled with mist and then slowly darken, making a very pretty sight from our dinner table.
We then went back to our room and watched a very good PBS special on robotic vehicles before fading for the night.


Monday, March 27-
After a wonderfully quiet but colder (34 degree) night at Payne’s Prairie campground we did our chores, getting our showers, making use of the dump station, cleaning out the van, and stowing everything properly. Ahh—much better. It’s wonderful how even with a cold night, the day warms up quickly and by 0900 it’s shirt-sleeve comfortable.
We had checked the lake last evening to see whether we’d be interested in kayaking it today but it didn’t look interesting. There was a yacht club or something similar on the far side and we couldn’t see any shallow, reedy areas to explore, so we decided to skip it and move on.
We went into Gainesville this morning, which seems to be a very nice little city. We hit the local Starbucks and then the AAA, where we picked up a new Florida guide to replace our original one--- we must have left it at Mark and Sue’s house or dropped it outside the van and didn’t notice. We started planning the remainder of our trip and at first thought we’d go north to White Springs and check out the Suwannee River and the Stephen Foster Folklore Center. But as we started counting out the remaining days, we realized we had better bypass that and make tracks for northern Georgia. The plan has always been to include a side-trip to Georgia’s Amicalola Falls State Park, which is close to the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, and see what’s happening. It’s prime starting time for AT thru-hikers to start their trips north and we’re just curious what the area is like. If we’re going to get that in and still make the storytelling event in South Carolina by the end of the week, we need to move on.
So we drove north out of Gainesville, through Lake City, and past the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and up Route 441 to Milledgeville. We stopped there at the Wal-Mart parking lot for the night and will carry on tomorrow. The trip up from the Georgia-Florida line was very interesting. The first section was almost exclusively pine tree-farms, probably for pulp-wood. They were on both sides of the road as far as you could see and went on virtually unbroken for the better part of 100 miles of Route 441. Then small towns started and the area became a rural farming area, still with lots of pine but now looking a lot more like home.


Sunday, March 26-
We had thought we might kayak this morning but we were still a little sore from yesterday’s bike ride so decided we would move on to a state park in the Gainesville area. Our night had been much better at Chez Wal-Marte’ and we had slept very heavily, though Labashi had sat up watching some type of police action going on in the wee hours in our parking lot—probably just a couple of the boys passing a slow midnight shift by hanging out together at the Wal-Mart and watching over us tourists (there were five or six RV’s in the lot). Our goal in the Gainesville area was the Payne’s Prairie State Preserve, a 21,000 acre nature preserve and state park. We got there shortly after noon and found there were only two spots available even though it was a Sunday. We learned it’s volunteer appreciation weekend and apparently some of the volunteers are staying over tonight.
Payne’s Prairie is an interesting place. It includes a very large open area devoid of trees and consisting of lakes and swamp. It was created (according to the film in the visitor’s center) when percolating ground water created caverns below the ground surface and over time the caverns fell in. Water and swamp vegetation filled in the void. The area has a unique connection with groundwater movement. There’s a large sink (the Alachua Sink) where water exits the prairie. In the 1871 the exit clogged (with logs and debris, it’s thought) and a lake formed. Locals started using the lake, transporting goods and people across it and, after a while, they enjoyed good fishing. But then one day in 1892 the log and debris jam cleared and the lake drained in three days, leaving the fish marooned and the boats high and dry and returning the prairie to its former state.
Bison once lived in Florida so the state started a program to restore them and in the Seventies they imported ten bison from Oklahoma. The herd grew to thirty individuals but then the herd was struck with brucellosis. Today there remains only a few individuals. We happened to see one of them from a lookout tower near the visitor’s center and it was fascinating to see him or her wander off into the scrub. Imagine coming across one of those out in the scrub!
We decided to take a hike and chose the Chacala Trail, which had loops of two, three, and six miles. We chose the three-mile loop but at the turning point we felt we hadn’t been out long enough so we extended to the six-mile loop. That loop took us near Chacala Lake but to actually see the lake you had to take a .3 mile side trail. By the time we reached that side trail, we were pretty tired but wanted to see the lake so we figured the extra half-mile wouldn’t kill us. By the time we got back to the van we were tired puppies. This was Labashi’s first try of her new hiking boots and they worked well. The hike took us through beautiful open fields and wooded areas but we didn’t see much wildlife, only one turkey running up the trail ahead of us. We headed back to the campground for a good meal of Chili’s leftovers from last night. Black beans and rice and the leftover fajita fixings never tasted so good. Ah, yes, the life of Riley… We’ll sleep well tonight.

Bezabor: Rainbow River, Homosassa Springs, Crystal River (posted from the Wal-Mart parking lot in Homosassa Springs, FL)

Saturday, March 25-
Today it was once again too windy for kayaking in open water so we decided to bicycle the South Loop bicycle trail in the Crystal River Preserve State Park (very close to the Archeological State Park). The trail was a dirt-and-sand nine mile loop through dense Florida scrub--- you wouldn’t want to have to get off the path for it was all swamp and sawgrass and palm and palmetto and pine and a few big Spanish-moss-strewn live oaks. For the first few miles we stopped a couple of times at likely-looking swampy areas but didn’t see any wildlife or even a decent set of tracks or gator-trails. Then we got lucky; as we passed a small body of water on our right, there was a river otter—and he hadn’t seen us. We stopped and Labashi made a mad dash to unload the camera. In the meantime I got a good look at him (or her, come to think of it) chasing minnows, I think, within fifteen feet of us. But he spotted us and took a good look, then seemed to. dive under to continue chasing the minnows. But that was it, we never saw him again. He was in a pool of water that wasn’t 20 feet across and started right at our feet. There was no way out without us seeing him. But we never saw him again, even after waiting what seemed a long, long time for a breath-hold.
We re-mounted the bikes and took off again and hadn’t gone more than 50 yards or so when Labashi made a sound of surprise and came to a quick halt. I was ahead on my side of the two-track path and yelled back to see what it was and she said there was a snake. And there on her side of the two-track was a spectacular multi-color banded snake. It was black, yellow, and red. It had halted but as I approached (and Labashi raised her camera), it eased off the road but stopped in some shade. Labashi shot a few pictures but wasn’t very happy with the mottled background the snake was in, knowing it wouldn’t show up very well in the picture. We knew that there are both poisonous and non-poisonous variants of this snake so looked closely… the key was the color of the nose. This one had a black nose and the black was followed by a wonderfully-perfect yellow band, then a red one… that should be enough to identify it when we got back.
Continuing down the path, we came, at about Mile 3.5 to rough road. For the next mile and a half we couldn’t ride the bikes, we had to walk them. We almost turned around but decided to press on, hoping the rough road would end. For some reason the state had used a field rake towed behind a tractor to rake the path when it was somewhat wet and now the furrows were awful for riding a bicycle. Just before the five mile mark we came to a very pretty little pond and we parked our bikes to walk to the edge. As we neared, we heard two splashes and Labashi saw two baby alligators. We looked closely around us to be sure Mom wasn’t nearby and then moved around along the pond’s edge a few yards to get a better view. As we stood there, a large bird shadow passed over us, approaching from behind. We looked up to see what at first looked like an oddly-colored whitish tail on a large brown bird but in a moment he turned and there it was—a bald eagle. The eagle circled a time or two and we thought we might see him go after one of the baby alligators but he moved on. Now we turned our attention back to the alligators and noticed there were not two, but four of them. No, there are more of them coming from the other side and there are six of them--- no, there were eight of them—eight baby alligators, each about twenty inches long to the tip of their long tails and no mother in sight. So we named the lake “Eight Alligator Lake” and here-ever-after shall it be so called (at least by us!).
The trail improved after Mile 5 and we finally worked our way back around to our parked van near the visitor’s center. We went in to see the ranger and identify the snake. He said there’s a saying to tell the non-poisonous from the poisonous but he couldn’t remember the saying and we had probably seen a scarlet king snake. He was talking to someone but let us borrow his book to look it up. We looked it up but the scarlet king snake had the wrong color head--- its head was red. Then we turned the page and there was ‘our’ snake, it was a coral snake, the poisonous one! The ranger told us we really weren’t in any danger (and we hadn’t felt we were in any danger according to the snake’s body language). The coral snake is not a pit viper so it does not have fangs. It has teeth and must chew to pass the poison. And the coral snake is not, as we saw, a mean-tempered snake—it will get out of your way if at all possible. So seeing the coral snake was a great privilege for us. And when we showed the picture of the coral snake to the ranger , it jogged his memory and he said, "Oh, yeah, 'black before yellow will kill a good fellow'." Very cool!

After our adventurous bike ride we drove over to a local park and relaxed and read, figuring out where to go next. Then we drove to the local Chili’s and ordered fajitas to go and took them back to the Homosassa Springs Wal-Mart parking lot to enjoy.


Friday, March 24-
Today was a recovery day from yesterday. We drove from Rainbow River (at Dunnellon) to Crystal River and visited the Crystal River Archeological State Park. We learned about the native American culture that lived in the area from 500 BC to 900 AD and about their ceremonial and burial mounds and village along the Crystal River. On the way into town we had stopped at a kayak shop (Aardvaark’s Florida Kayaks) and they were kind enough to give us a good map of the area showing launch ramps and local parks. It was too windy to kayak this afternoon so we drove around checking out the launch ramps which gave us quite a tour of the area. Late in the day we stopped at the Yulee Sugar Mill Ruins Historical State Park for a brief look around. We spent the night at the Homosassa Springs Wal-Mart which was very noisy. The parking area where RVers are supposed to park is right beside a fruit stand which uses a refrigerated trailer for storage and the reefer unit was very loud. We were also entertained until the wee hours by the Floridiots-in-training, dozens of local guys with their muffler-less pickups and extra-loud rice-burners and boom-boxes zooming through the parking lot and gathering within a few car-lengths of us. It’s also amazing to me how many vehicles need to stop in the parking lot of the closed-for-the-night Wal-Mart and gun the engine a few times at three or four in the morning. Given it was a Friday night I figured it was going to be noisy so I thought I’d try a trick I read about somewhere for noisy conditions. I had a small sports radio with earbuds and tuned between stations to provide a white-noise cover for all the racket. That worked somewhat but the earbuds allowed in too much of the racket so I reverted to soft ear plugs and that worked better. Labashi says the earplugs work fine for her and she seems able to get a good night’s sleep even when we are being entertained by the locals.

Thursday, March 23-
It’s been a busy day today. Our night was a very comfortable 55 degrees and today dawned cloudy. We offloaded the kayaks at the campground put-in and paddled upriver for about an hour to the state park. The river was spectacular in this area— ultra-clear, some sandy bottom, some grassy areas, lots of fish, turtles, and cormorants to be seen. The turtles were comical. We would see their heads sticking out of the water as we approached and then they’d take a panic dive. The water was so clear we could easily follow their movements. The current appeared pretty strong and I thought it might be a struggle to paddle against the current but it was fine— it was even possible to rest a little and still maintain some forward momentum.
We were surprised to see the headsprings is now in the state park and in fact has a swimming area roped off. In the eighties we had taken a scuba diving trip up the Rainbow River with a dive shop out of Crystal River. We boarded a pontoon boat with our dive gear and were taken upstream a few miles to the headsprings. There we rolled in and were surprised to have 300-plus foot visibility. We could see the whole way across the spring and were mesmerized by the ultra-white bubbling sands on the bottom. Back then our group was all alone at the headspring and it was wilderness area. Today, it’s a state park--- a very nice state park but it’s not the same. The west bank of the river is now lined with vacation homes but the east bank is still pristine. And it was on the pristine eastern bank that we had a highlight of the day. Labashi saw some beautiful flowers (which we later learned are ‘spider lillies’) and wanted to get in close to take pictures. As she nosed her kayak into the weeds, something moved in the bushes on the bank--- river otters! We’ve not seen otters in the wild since the late nineties when we saw a small group of them as we crossed a bridge in British Columbia. But these five were up close. They moved upstream along the bank, ducking in and out of the weeds, then they started out into the river. They thought better of it, though, and headed back, right towards us. In attempting to slow them down a little and give Labashi more time to get the camera ready, I got a little too close and two of them snorted air at me (a little puff through their nostrils) when they surfaced a few feet in front of my kayak. It wasn’t a very forceful gesture but it did make me realize I might be stressing them unnecessarily so I backed off. Hopefully Labashi’s pictures will come out.
We got back to the put-in after about two hours of paddling, much harder upstream than down, of course. We took a lunch break and then headed downstream for another half-hour and then back up to our starting point in about 45 minutes.
We then did our chores, taking care of the porta-potty, getting our showers, getting ice, etc. before heading to the other part of the park. We were staying at the campground which is about seven miles away from the day-use park. On the day-use side, we visited the headsprings by foot this time, and took some very nice paved trails to several waterfalls and the native-plants garden. Then we took a two-mile hike on the nature trail. We enjoyed the remote feeling of the nature trail but the only animal we saw was an armadillo. Unfortunately, we spooked him before we could get a picture.
By that time is was supper time so we went to Dunnellon and got take-out barbeque at a very crowded little place called “Skeets’ Bar-B-Q” and took it back to the Wal-mart parking lot and had a feast of pulled-pork and wine-in-a-box (the good stuff!).
Once again we ran into something new at the Wal-Mart. This time it was the sprinkler system coming on at midnight to water the grass and spraying loudly against the back of the van. We looked out and noticed an area where the sprinkler system was not spraying onto the parking lot and moved Mocha Joe over there.

Wednesday, March 22-
We reluctantly said goodbye to Mark and Sue last night and took off this morning after a restful sleep in the driveway (in Mocha Joe, that is!). We went to West Marine looking for a replacement cooler but they didn’t have any with the features we wanted. We also went back to Mazzaro’s Italian Market to get some of their good bread and a bit of gelato. Then we went to Haslam’s Book Store hoping to find some of the titles we have learned about from our new acquaintances of the last few weeks as well as some recommendations Sue made to Labashi… but, alas, no luck. Those visits got us a late start out of town and then we decided to avoid the interstate and just take US19 north toward Crystal River. Along the way we stopped at a county park in New Port Ritchey for lunch and a walk on their nature trail. By the time we got to Crystal River it was getting late in the day so we decided to press on to Rainbow River State Park and hit Crystal River later. We got in to Rainbow River around 1630 and were given a nice site near the river. We took a walk to the far end of the park and got back just before dark. After supper we took another walk around the campground and picked up a local newspaper to see what’s going on in the world and headed back to the van for the night.

Bezabor: Florida Trail Association meeting, St Petersburg visit (posted from Mark and Sue’s home in St. Petesburg, FL)

Tuesday, March 21-
Today we had the same wonderful weather. Labashi and I went to the Dali Museum in the morning (GREAT museum!) then in the afternoon we had lunch at Mazzaro’s Italian Market before touring the St Petersburg Pottery Guild and then Sunken Gardens. Mark had to work for a few hours in the evening so Labashi, Sue, and I called for a pizza and Labashi and Sue played a hot game of Scrabble while I did some web stuff.


Monday, March 20-
Well, Happy Spring, everyone! It was 75 degrees when I got up this morning and checked the weather to see that the high today back home is just above freezing and Washington DC is expected to get an inch of snow today. Mark and Sue took off at lunchtime from their jobs and we went to Fort DeSoto, Pass-a-Grille, more St Petersburg (lunch at Woodies Beach House), Sawgrass Park, and then had supper at the fantastic Habana Café. The high today was 84 which is a little hotter than normal but the 20-25 knot winds keep it very comfortable.

Sunday, March 19-
We packed up and left the FTA meeting today and headed for St. Petersburg to visit long-time friends Mark and Sue. Mark had worked with me years ago and we had similar interests, including some sailing on the Chesapeake with them. In 1995, Mark decided he wanted to move on to greener pastures and moved to the Annapolis, Maryland area where he, Sue, and their two kids lived on a 37-foot sailboat while looking for a bigger vessel and preparing to take off on a cruising tour. But after awhile Mark was offered a job in Tampa/St Petersburg which allowed him and his family to enjoy a life close to the water while still working a job he liked. Labashi and I had not seen Mark and Sue since 1998 (though I had an evening with them while on business travel in 2002) so it was great to get together and renew our friendship and catch up. We took a driving tour of St Petersburg and had supper at the Fourth Street Shrimp Store.

Saturday, March 18-
The FTA meeting continues today. We first attended a seminar on Human-Bear Interactions which at first disappointed us. The presentation seemed more suitable to a local garden club or Rotary Club in that it really was designed to tell you how to not attract bears to your home, i.e., lock up your garbage, don’t leave pet food out, etc. Labashi wanted to ask some questions but it didn’t seem to be an appropriate time. Later on, however, we hit a gold mine. Actually it might more appropriately be called a scat-mine… but more on that later.
After the bear interactions presentation we saw a good presentation on non-native plants and their impact on Florida. We learned about the ‘rule of tens’. About ten percent of non-native plants will survive and about ten percent of those survivors will become invasive. That doesn’t sound like a lot until you consider that Florida has some 1200 surviving non-native plants and therefore approximately 120 invasive plant species. The presenter had good slides of the plants as well as samples of the leaves and seeds to pass around.
The last seminar of the morning was “Hiker Security” and was presented by Bob Gray, chief ranger of the Appalachian Trail. The Florida Trail Association is considering how to improve hiker security and invited Bob to speak about the AT’s efforts in this area. Bob reviewed the circumstances of the nine homicides that have happened on or close to the AT in its history and discussed how the perpetrators were caught. In general, other hikers assisted law enforcement by identifying hikers who didn’t look like hikers or acted oddly in some manner. The AT has established a 24-hour 800 number for hikers as well as other law enforcement agencies to call. Hikers would be reporting an incident while other law enforcement agencies may need assistance in locating shortcuts to specific areas of the trail or in making contact with people with key information or skills. However, it also became clear that the first-response responsibility still lies with the local law enforcement agency and local trail clubs are advised to make contact with the local 911 agency and work with them to improve their ability to respond. I have to say I was kind of underwhelmed by the AT’s program. There’s still WAY too much left to chance should an emergency arise and too much left to the local maintenance clubs to figure out and then pass on to local 911 dispatchers. My guess is the Florida Trail folks will out-do the Appalachian Trail Conference (now Conservancy) folks by coming up with a better, more comprehensive hiker security program in fairly short order.
As we broke for lunch we decided to stop by the black-bear display being manned by the same naturalist who had made the morning’s presentation. It wasn’t long until Labashi blurted out that we wanted to know everything we could about bear scat. And, as I said, we hit the jackpot. The naturalist has a collection of bear scat samples in her supplies trailer. Fantastic! So we spent the next hour poring through the samples. First was one typical of what we had seen in Maine— a berry-filled, flattened dome, purple in color, typical of berry season. Another was human-like, greenish and filled with left-over corn kernals. Another was very fibrous, filled with palmetto fibers. Another was exceptionally smelly, apparently because the bear had been eating meet (probably carrion). Now we have a lot more confidence in properly identifying bear scat in the woods.
In the afternoon we attended an End-to-Enders Reunion wherein six thru-hikers who have completed the Florida Trail spoke about their hikes. This was one of the key reasons we came and it was worthwhile, though way too short. Perhaps the key factor we learned is that a Florida Trail hike is very much unlike an AT hike. The AT hike is now pretty highly social… there’s a fairly large group of people moving up (or down) the AT and you are seldom alone in camp. On the FT, however, you have more of a wilderness experience and will probably only see a handful of other hikers the entire 1400 miles of trail.
Later we attended an awards ceremony followed by a (boring) keynote speech by the president of the American Hiking Society and then reminiscences of the first trail work session in 1966 by three of the participants. We were a little bored by the awards but we did learn how important it is for a volunteer organization like the FTA to give out many awards and we were amazed at the amount of work volunteers have done in the name of the FTA. We attended the fortieth-year celebration that evening but cut out a little early—it had been a long day.

Friday, March 17-
Today we left the national forest for one of our major trip goals— attending the Florida Trail Association conference near Umatilla. We had attended an Appalachian Trail ‘Ruck’ or meeting back in January and had enjoyed that. When we saw the FTA conference was to be held fairly close to Daytona, we signed up.
Registration wasn’t supposed to start until 1400 so we drove a few extra miles to Eustis to find a car wash to clean off the thick layer of dust on Mocha Joe—and that turned out to be a good idea. The facility where the event was being held was the Florida Elks Youth Camp. We had expected a rustic facility, something like the girl-scout camps we are familiar with back home, but this camp has a long, winding, tree-lined driveway, two beautiful lakes, large modern buildings, several ballfields, a putt-putt course, an adventure course, and a very large camping area under sky-scraping pines—very, very nice. And with the sunny skies and temperatures in the low eighties with a nice breeze, we had it made.
That afternoon we attended three seminars. The first was ‘Archeology and Heritage Resource Management of the Ocala National Forest’. This was done by the chief archeologist of the OCN, who had a table-full of artifacts which he used to illustrate human uses of the Ocala. Then we had an intriguing presentation about how to become a Florida Master Naturalist. Now that’s an interesting one. Florida has a developed a public-involvement program where anyone can earn a ‘Master Naturalist’ certificate by completing three 40-hour courses (costing $200 each) and making an original presentation. The courses cover the three major ecology types of Florida and has quite a lot of interesting information and has received very good feedback from attendees. We want to check whether Pennsylvania has something like that but it also occurs to me that this would be a GREAT excuse to come back to Florida for the next three winters to complete.
The third seminar of the afternoon was “A Good Dog is Worth Three Men: Home on the Swamp with the Florida Cracker Cow Dog”. This presentation was done by a folklorist who had researched the dogs used for herding cows in Florida’s beef-calf industry. We learned that Florida is second only to Texas in the beef-cattle industry. Horses are still used for herding the cattle and the bred-to-the-task dogs assist in this by going into the scrub to chase out the strays and by keeping the cattle grouped together. The cow-dog’s career is often a short one and is indeed a rough one, lasting only three or four years on average.
After supper we attended the ‘past presidents forum’ where we learned about the history of the Florida Trail organization. Interestingly, the original founder of the trail was there. He was Jim Kern, who had had the original vision of a long-distance trail across the state of Florida in 1964. Jim organized the first work party to build trail in 1966 and three of the five original trail workers were in attendance. With this forum and the rest of the weekend we learned that the Florida Trail Association is indeed a first-class organization. They have done a marvelous job with the trail and have built a 5000-member organization which has both political clout and quite a lot of common sense. The Florida Trail currently has 1400 miles of end-to-end blazed trail but there are still significant portions on roads. The Florida Trail has been certified as and is also known as, the Florida National Scenic Trail, one of only eight such trails in the country to have this status. The Florida Trail is also the southern-most section of what is now to be called the Eastern Continental Trail, a continuously-blazed foottrail-of-foottrails running from Key West to the tip of Cape Gaspe, Quebec.

Thursday, March 16-
We drove to Ocala today to visit the Appleton Museum of Art. It turned out to be a gem, surprising us with its very nice collection of 19th Century European paintings. We were also very happy to find a Jean-Leon Gerome painting. Gerome was a mentor and strong influence on Thomas Eakins, whose work we’ve long admired. The Appleton also had outstanding Pre-Columbian art, particularly Mayan work. It was difficult to believe that we were looking at pieces which had been created in the 1300’s and 1400’s. And it only took a brief look at the intricate gold adornments to understand how the search for gold fueled the European voyages of exploration and exploitation. It was a little odd for us to come out of our primitive National Forest dirt roads and drive only a half-hour or so to this beautiful, modern and comprehensive museum. On the other hand, if we had come from the Ocala side, we would only have been a few miles from Interstate 75 and the very nice city of Ocala.
After our visit to the Appleton, we had lunch at the local Panera so we could connect to the internet and take care of our email and blog. Then Labashi spent an hour or so googling for info on the pressing questions of the last few days while I read the Ocala newspaper. The ‘pressing questions’ are questions or topics that Labashi writes down in her notebook as we learn new things in talking with people or visiting new sites. After talking with the hunter who we saw tracking his dogs with a large hand-held antenna, she learned that the radio collars are expensive-- around $450 each. So the hunter we talked to on the forest road (who had five or six dogs in his box and was looking for another nine dogs) had quite an investment out there running the woods.
After our afternoon in the ‘burbs, we headed back to Farle’s Lake campground and that evening were again entertained by the very excellent Murph-the-60s-folk-singer. Murph’s guitar seems to have taken on a life of its own now. Murph had some trouble keeping it in tune the first night but tonight it was right on. We also learned that Murph has spent the intervening years in casinos as a dealer and, at times, a gambler. He noted that he likes being able to go anywhere there’s a casino and easily pick up work. We suspect some life crisis generated his current desire to get away to the woods and just hang out and sing some songs.

Bezabor: Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, Wekiwa Springs, Birds-of-Prey Center (posted from Panera Bread, Ocala)

Wednesday, March 15-
As we drove back the four-mile sand road to our campsite yesterday, we noticed an approaching front and even had a few sprinkles of rain. We’ve not had any rain since leaving home, which has been a surprise. Back home I had signed onto wunderground.com and checked the archive for weather for this area last March and saw that it appeared to rain every three or four days.
In any case, I welcomed the front. The temps in St. Augustine and Titusville areas had been getting into the high eighties and low nineties during the day and not cooling off very quickly in the evenings. Two nights ago at the Wal-mart in Titusville, it was still above 80 degrees when we went to bed at 2100—that’s too hot when you want to keep the doors closed and just look like another vehicle parked in the lot.
But the front was bringing a fresh breeze yesterday afternoon and that made for a wonderful afternoon and evening. But it also brought surprisingly cold weather. When I woke briefly in the middle of the night it was 37.4 degrees. But by 0830 it was nearly 50 and rising fast. We decided it was too windy to kayak, though, so we decided to take the Florida Trail south to Buck Lake and get a look around. We left at 0930, Labashi in a light jacket and both of us in long pants. But the sun was bright and the sky was a perfect blue and along the trail we had enough protection from the wind that we started to overheat in the first hour. By the time we got to Buck Lake it was time for me to zip off the pant legs and for Labashi to go topless (down to her sports-bra, silly!) and don her shorts. While we were cooling off we saw movement near the lake and there were two beautiful sandhill cranes. They looked big enough to look you in the eye and had spectacular red eye-patches that lit up in the bright sun. Labashi took a few photos and finally spooked them as she got too close. And as we watched them gracefully fly away we noticed a small hawk coming toward us, a snake in its talons, struggling with the wildly-wriggling snake. Very cool. We hiked back to camp via the sand road and checked the time—we had been out four hours.
We spent the afternoon around the campsite, reading the bird guide, the maps and brochures, and blogging and just taking it easy. Then we joined the communal campfire for an hour or so before going to bed. Temps are expected to be in the mid-thirties again tonight but they are still hold in the Fifties by bedtime.

Tuesday, March 14-
On the way out of the Kelly Park campground this morning, the attendant who gave us the ‘unavailable’ site told Labashi not to tell anybody about the park. We weren’t too sure what that was about but suspect that the locals try to keep the park for locals; it’s too close to Orlando and could be over-run by ‘foreigners’. For some reason she was willing to share the sec
We then drove over to the Audubon Birds of Prey Center in Maitland. This turned out to be a great place to visit. We were first in today and shortly after entering a specialist came out and brought out a bald eagle and then a barred owl for us to see up close. The eagle was named ‘Trouble’ and had had a deformity of its beak and, although it had extensive repair work done to the beak, it continues to be a problem because it, like fingernails, continues to grow and in it’s case, grow in such a manner that would cause it to eventually not be able to feed.
We spent the next several hours checking out all the birds which, because of the nature of their injuries, could not be released back to the wild. We were amazed at the variety of birds and hope the Center continues to thrive.
We then headed north, back toward the Ocala National Forest since we have an event to attend this weekend. We stopped at Alexander Springs to see if we could arrange for a reverse re-haul like we had done at Juniper Springs but learned they are temporarily not doing any shuttling—the dirt road is washed out and they have to await repair by the Forest Service.
So we headed back to Farle’s Lake where we knew we’d be able to get a site and we could see some of the folks we had met last time we were there. We made the mistake of taking a smaller sand road (#538) instead of taking the longer hard-road way around. As it turned out, the shortcut was the long way around. About a third of the way in the road narrowed to two-track. Then the branches started closing in. With our higher-than-normal size with the kayaks atop we soon started sweeping aside hitting smaller branches and I was afraid we’d come to one too large to sweep aside and I’d have to back out a couple of miles of two-track or risk trying to turn around at a wider spot but possibly one with soft sand under the pine needles. We also started hitting whoop-dee-do’s, which are potholes that at first look big enough to swallow Mocha Joe but when you right up to them they aren’t that bad--- so long as the whoops are dried out and don’t have a soft-sand bottom. For the most part we were on yellow sand. We did come to a few twenty-yard stretches white sand the locals call “sugar sand” and they looked like they could be trouble but so long as I kept up my momentum, we went through okay. By the time we made it to the hard road, we were very happy to see it and I bypassed another ‘shortcut’

Charley (“the Maine-iac”) had left this morning but Henry and Jane from east of Toronto and Cy and Bonnie from northern Michigan were still there. And after we settled in a new guy, ‘Mark’ also known as “Tie-Dye”, came over to visit. He’s called Tie-Dye because he tie-dyes women’s dresses and sells them at folk festivals and blues festivals and has been doing so since the Sixties. Mark is a very interesting guy and we sat and talked for two hours before winding down. He told us about some of his favorite authors and books about Florida, particularly about the Florida Cracker culture.
After supper we joined the communal campfire at Henry-and-Jane’s site and another newbie was there. He was ‘Murph’ and turned out to be a former folksinger, “back in the Sixties,” he said. He had his guitar and a ditty-bag with seven harmonicas and he would sing a few songs, then Jane-the-Netherlander would play her harmonica rendition of “My Country ‘tis of Thee”. Then Murph would play a few more Jimmy Buffett, Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, or Smothers Brothers songs, and then Jane would again tear into “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”. Ah, Florida… what a great place!

Monday, March 13-
Today we headed back inland. We went directly west from Titusville into the outskirts of Orlando where I stopped and did a search on Street Atlas Plus for any Starbucks. I found there was one in Winter Park which was on the way (sort of…) to Maitland where I wanted to visit the Birds of Prey Center, a raptor rehabilitation facility. We had some difficulty locating the center so called them for directions but learned that they were closed Mondays (which wasn’t in the guidebook!). We decided we’d try to stay at Wekiwa Springs State Park which is nearby so we’d be able to see the facility tomorrow but the campground was full. But they gave us directions to Kelly Park, a county campground about six miles away so we gave that a try. At Kelly Park, we once again saw the “Sorry, campground is full” sign but given our experiences with those signs, we asked anyway. The attendant at first said that the campground was full so we asked whether they had an overflow area or any other out-of-the-way area since we don’t need any hookups and just need a parking place for the night. The attendant then told us to pull over and come inside and proceeded to give us a campsite—we don’t know why but suspect she normally gives campsites to locals only but for some reason pitied us today.
After finding our very nice site, we drove back to Wekiwa Springs State Park and entered as day users. We walked the Wet-to-Dry trail which explains the differences between a hydric (wet) hammock and an upland hammock and walked an hour or so on the white-blazed trail. We then went back to our campground to relax but when supper time came around I suggested we try a Melting Pot fondue restaurant we had passed near the interstate. We had tried to get into a Melting Pot in Towson a few months ago and were unsuccessful so this was our chance to give it a try. Naturally we over-ate and over-spent but we enjoyed the restaurant. I’ve got to go back to try the chocolate fondue dessert, however; we didn’t have room this time.


Sunday, March 12-
After another Wal-mart night in Titusville, we spent all day today in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. We walked the Palm Hammock Trail (about two miles) to start our day, then spent the next several hours driving the Peacock’s Pocket dike roads, looking for gators and birds. We quickly started seeing wildlife. First, we saw a gator or two in the canal paralleling the road and noticed something that looked like the back end of a gator but we couldn’t make sense of the front end. As we watched, there was movement and it turned out that we were watching a momma gator with two tiny babies across her snout. The babies swam away a bit and momma positioned herself between us and the babies and gave us a full profile, as if to say “Come any closer and you’ll have ME to deal with”. A short distance down the road we came to a car pulled off along the road and some birders out with their scope set up on a tripod. They were looking at one of the three bald eagle nests on this giant refuge. In the nest were two adults and an eaglet. Further along we started seeing many alligators, most lying partially out of the water. We could stop almost anywhere and either see a couple of alligators immediately or just wait a minute and you’d see the telltale eyes-and-snout shape pop up somewhere nearby. A little further along we saw birds--- lots of sandpipers and plovers, limpkins, American coots, common gallinules, white ibises, and great blue, white, and green herons. We then stopped at the visitor’s center a second time and walked the visitor’s center boardwalk where we saw a softshell turtle, several other large swimming turtles, and a pig frog. We then drove out to wildlife drive area which had been closed earlier in the day for a prescribed burn, this time trying to follow directions we had found in the visitor’s center for an upcoming event to see a great horned owl’s nest. We never did find the nest but blundered into an active fire area. It was fascinating to watch the fire advance with the swirling winds. Some fifty yards away the fire was roaring up and consuming palms while closer to us it just seemed to steadily advance with a small flare-up when it would consume a bush or grass clump. We weren’t sure whether to report the fire but it soon became clear that this was just some minor left-over from the prescribed burn—we even saw a firetruck go by later and ignore the flare-up.
We then headed down a dirt road trying to find another eagle’s nest and soon came upon a red ribbon tied onto roadside bushes. By scanning the tree line we soon found the nest but this one was empty.
We then took a walk of a little over a mile on the Scrub Ridge Trail which wound through a burned-over area and we tried to guess when the burn had been done since there was now some green growth. We guessed the burn had been done about a year to fifteen months ago.
We continued on to the Manatee Observation Deck on Haulover Canal. We asked if any manatees had been seen and a fellow there said he had seen four in the last half-hour and they were close to the dock. We stayed forty minutes or so but never saw one and the fellow who told us we’d see one any minute now left abruptly, feeling a little foolish, we believe, for his predictions.
It was now nearing dusk but we thought we’d like to see the sunset over the water so we took Shiloh Marsh Road, another dirt road leading back to the dikes. We drove for ten miles or so, passing a few fishermen along the way and not quite sure where we were going. Then we came upon two fishermen and a woman who flagged us down—their battery was dead. As we set up the jumper cables to give them a jump we asked about where the road came out and it soon became clear we’d better turn around and go out the way we had come in—otherwise we were in for miles and miles of traveling on the narrow little dirt road with water on both sides and the refuge closed. So we turned around and followed the now-very-relieved fisherfolks back out to the main road. We drove back to Titusville, where we stopped at a Papa John’s Pizza to get a pizza to enjoy in the van. We then spent another night at the Titusville Wal-mart.

Bezabor: Bike Week, St Augustine, Kennedy Space Center. (This is an updated version for the period through March 5, then new info through today. The original version was posted from Panera Bread Co. in Ocala, FL and has now been deleted. This one was posted from Sunrise Bread Co, Titusville, FL)


Saturday, March 11-
We headed first to the Astronaut Hall of Fame and were first in line when it opened at 0900. The Hall of Fame doesn’t sound all that interesting in concept but it was actually very well done. The first section includes a very complete illustrated timeline of the things going on in the space program on top and events in U.S. history (both political and cultural) on the bottom. There were also lots of artifacts, things like personal possessions and equipment the astronauts used. I enjoyed seeing all the vintage footage of space events covering thirty years… much of which I hadn’t seen before. Then we went into another area where they had ‘simulators’. The gravity simulator was terrific—it takes you on a jet ride as the jet flies at a very low level and then has a problem and recovers at the last second from an emergency spin. We finally left there by 1230 or so and went over to the Visitor’s Center complex where we saw the other movies we hadn’t seen, saw a presentation by astronaut Jack Loumas, toured a full-size shuttle, and saw many static displays of historic equipment and events. We finally left at 1800 and could have used another hour or so to visit.
We then went into Titusville and hooked up to wifi at Sunrise Bakery which was closed for the day but nevertheless had a super signal in the parking lot. We were hungry so only took time to check our email before closing down and heading back to Wal-mart for the night.

Friday, March 10-
Today we headed for the Kennedy Space Center. We didn’t get there until noon but still managed a very full day. We went a little overboard and chose both the Maximum Access Pass as well as the NASA- Behind the Scenes tour. With the options, that added up to $118 for the two of us--- quite a lot of money for us but it gave us access to the Visitor’s Center, the Astronaut Hall of Fame, and the ‘private’ tour. We first saw an IMAX 3D film about walking on the moon then it was off by bus to the launch pads and assembly building. Our guide was Bob, a former NASA engineer who took an early-out and now does these tours in the winter. Bob was great. He was a wealth of knowledge and was great at handling questions. After two and a half hours with Bob, we were dropped at the Saturn V visitor’s center and closed it down, then hung around the main visitor’s center until about six and had our tickets stamped for a return the next day. The tickets are good for up to two consecutive days. We spent the night at the Titusville Wal-mart and it was a relatively quiet night for a Wal-Mart.

Thursday, March 9-
This morning Labashi broke a tooth on a breakfast granola bar so that diverted our plans for awhile. We called our insurance provider back home for a referral to the St. Augustine area and soon obtained a list of dentists to choose from. We chose one on the south side of the city and with an address we knew we could find and told them of our plight. They said to come right over so we got there as soon as we could. Labashi had to fill out several pages of questionnaire but within a half hour of arriving she was called in. A few minutes later she was out—the dentist had advised her that it was going to need a crown and she’d be better off to wait until she got home to deal with it. And there was no charge for her advice or for seeing us!
We soon got back on schedule with our visit to St. Augustine. Labashi had wanted to see the Spanish influence in the area so we went to the Governor’s Museum, the Oldest House in the U.S., and the Spanish Quarter via our bicycles. We took our time with each site and that filled our afternoon very well. As we exited the last one, the St. George Street area was closing down for the day and we headed back to the Faver Dykes campground for the night.


Wednesday, March 8-
Today we did our basic housekeeping tasks, getting things back in order after our kayaking adventure yesterday and taking care of showers, the dump station stuff, and a general cleanup and re-stowing of the van. Then we went back to Daytona to check out the swap meet advertised in bike week literature. I checked my wireless hotspots listing during a stop for ice and found one listed for a restaurant in Ormand Beach but when we got there and fired up the PC there was no wifi. That’s the first time this has happened for us but it’s very understandable. The listing comes from wififreespot.com and they get their info from people reporting the spots to them and there’s no validation or periodic re-verification of the info. So we just had lunch in the parking lot and then headed off to Volusia County Fairgrounds for the swap meet.
The event itself was smaller than I expected but had a great variety of Harley parts, many very old and most in poor shape. It would have been a great event for someone restoring an old Harley and looking for that impossible-to-find part. I was hoping to find some used Concours or KLR650 parts or accessories but that wasn’t in the cards. Afterwards we drove into Daytona Beach and headed up along A1A toward St Augustine. Labashi wanted to shop for a new bikini at a specialty shop she had found while waiting for me to get my Starbucks fix earlier in the week. I’m happy to report that she found the perfect bikini.
On the way north we stopped at a state park campground but they were full. The nice lady explained that they are full most of the year given that they are on the beach and only have thirty-four campgrounds and the non-reservable sites are gone very quickly during Bike Week. We continued north, figuring that we could always head inland 20 miles or so to the Wal-mart at Palatka where we had stayed earlier if we couldn’t find anything else. But the next state park, Faver Dykes State Park, wasn’t so easily accessible for the Bike Week folks. As we entered we saw a ‘Sorry, the campground is full’ sign but we’ve found that doesn’t mean they don’t have a campsite available or won’t let us camp in an overflow area (if they have one) so we thought we might as well try while we were this close. And sure enough they had a site for us, complete with a Reserved sign…they must have been expecting us. As we finished up supper it turned dark but we had a bright moon so we walked the campground road and the road back to the launch ramp. We heard an owl and some kind of very strange sounding bird or spring peeper or something off in the yuccas. At the boat launch we turned on our lights and looked for reflections but saw only a few bright spots reflected back at us— most likely frogs.

Tuesday, 7 March-
Today we took a day off from Bike Week and went kayaking. We took the trip down the Juniper Springs Run. We had a bit of a snafu at the start. The park concessionaire runs what is called a ‘reverse rehaul’ shuttle. What that means is you drop your kayaks and all your paddling gear at the put-in and drive your vehicle to the take-out. A driver brings you back from there to the put-in. That way you end the day at your vehicle rather than having to shuttle both you and your gear back to your vehicle. The other good deal is that you are only shuttling one person, the driver, rather than the driver and the other paddlers in the group, so it’s cheaper—only $6 for me rather than $12 for both Labashi and me and our gear. The only problem was the regular girl was off and a manager was running the show today. She failed to tell me that the shuttle driver would meet me at the take-out, not the put-in. I figured he’d meet me at the put-in where we had just unloaded our gear and while Labashi watched the gear, he’d lead me to the take-out. I had no reason to believe otherwise— they had provided no map or information on where the take-out is and these are often back unmarked dirt roads. So I waited for about a half-hour and went back to check. The manager assured me she had called the guy and he should ‘be there’. After another half-hour I asked again and this time learned where the take-out is and how to get there. Not the best start to the day.
But the trip was a winner, in fact we rank it as our best kayak trip ever. The water was crystal-clear the whole way. The scenery was wonderful—palms and yuccas and live-oaks strewn with Spanish moss. The creek was only a boat-length in width for much of the way and always had a nice current going. We saw lots of turtles sunning themselves and had to pass by within four feet of a BIG alligator sunning himself on the bank with his nose in the water—he had to be at least ten feet long.
Our seven-mile trip took us about five very busy hours. The creek twisted and turned time after time and the current kept trying to sweep our long sea kayaks against the opposite bank so we had to do a lot of paddling to correct. By the time we reached the take-out we were shot for the day.
Afterwards we retired to the Juniper Springs campground for supper. Apparently it rejuvenated us because we felt like taking a walk and walked the campground loops and the nature trail at the Spring. On the way back we stopped to chat with a kid of about 12 or so writing in his journal. Soon Mom and his brother and later Dad came out to talk. Today is the 242nd day of their trip. They too are Canadians from near Toronto. Mom and Dad are teachers on sabbatical and they are home-schooling the boys on this trip. They crossed Canada to BC, down the West Coast with a side trip to Utah, across through Arizona and the southern border states to Florida and they are headed back to Canada next week. They were a delight to talk to. They had an infectious excitement about all the things they’ve seen and had a lot of recommendations for us, particularly in the Everglades. Further along in our walk we noticed a young guy with backpacking gear and no car so we figured he must be hiking the Florida Trail which passes through the park. We asked about trail conditions and learned that some of it is underwater near Hopkins Prairie but otherwise is in good condition. He said he was probably going to have to get off the trail since he thinks he has a brown-recluse spider bite on his foot and it’s too painful to walk. He then asked us if we’d ever heard of the Rainbow People. We guardedly said yes, and he went on to explain that he had never heard of them until this year when he was hiking and ran into the Gathering a month ago and he’s just now leaving--- he said he learned so much there that he just wants to continue walking the Trail to think about all the new, mind-blowing (my words) things he learned at the Gathering. Interesting conversation, that. We think he was a little high while talking with us—but maybe it was the brown-recluse spider talking.


Monday, 6 March-
We went into Daytona today so I could demo-ride some bikes. Labashi was looking forward to a relaxing day in the van, catching up on her trip log and just taking it easy while I took a few rides. We parked in a big open lot behind the Speedway set up for everyone who drove a vehicle other than a motorcycle. While the bikes could park near the displays and, in fact, become part of the show, we had to park in the ‘back forty’ and walk to a tram for a ride to the displays. But that was OK— there were surprisingly few vehicles in the giant grassy field so it gave us a nice place to park the van well away from the busy street and extra-noisy traffic and that gave Labashi some expectation of privacy as well as gated security--- all for free.
I took the tram around to the demo area and since the first area was the Harley area I thought I’d try then new V-Rod with mid-controls (called a Street Rod) and maybe a Buell. I got lucky—when I asked about trying a Street Rod, the girl running the show said she had one in the next group that a guy had asked her to hold for him while he went to get his friend but that was a long time ago and his time just ran out so if I wanted the Street Rod I could have it. I took that one and also scheduled a Buell Ulysses adventure bike for an hour later. These demo rides were done in a group. The only rule was that we could not pass the group leader. As we left the demo area the group leader accelerated hard and we all did the same. Then we took a twenty-minute tour of the roads around the airport, a nice mix of two-lane straight-aways and a few twisty sections for good measure. I liked the Street Rod but it’s too much of a cruiser for my taste—made for going around the peanut circuit and blipping the throttle a lot. The Buell was a 1200 cc bike so had a lot of oomph for an adventure bike but seemed to run rough and the brakes were poor—or maybe I was just expecting too much.
Afterwards, I went looking for another ride but it soon became clear that I had made a mistake in not getting there extra early and scheduling bikes throughout the day. I checked at Triumph, Kawasaki, Moto Guzzi, and Suzuki and it became clear that the interesting bikes were scheduled up quickly and you could get a less interesting one but only if you waited around a couple of hours.
I had noted back at the Harley area that the tour bikes didn’t seem to have a long line so I stopped by there and just as I walked up a bike came in and the girl asked the half-dozen or so of us if anybody wanted that one—a standard Electra-Glide. I jumped at it and enjoyed that ride. In this case you went out on your own, following a course of orange arrows strategically placed at intersections along the way to tell you whether to turn or go on through. Again, it was about a 20-minute ride but it was nice to not have to pay the strictest attention to speed limits or passing zones--- Harley-Rider-in-Training, you know.
As I rolled back in with that one and got off the bike, I heard someone say they’d have to start closing things down for the day soon so I got back in line and they cut it off just behind me. This time I took a fancier version of the Electra Glide, fully dressed out and ready for the interstate.
After the rides I headed back to the van and Labashi was hungry so we had dinner there in the van before heading back out to the National Forest. That night we were invited over to the campfire of the wintering folks. Our new buddy Charley-from-Maine was there and he introduced us to Bonnie, Cy, Henry, and Jane. Henry and Jane are native Netherlanders who emigrated to Canada in the Fifties and their home of record is near Toronto. We didn’t catch where Bonnie and Cy were from but judging by their accent they too are Canadians. They asked what we had been doing and we explained, then we asked what we had missed at the campground today. Turns out the big excitement was the Navy had posted someone to stop traffic from going past the campground. The road leads to a Navy bombing range and the story was the Navy was testing a new sighting device and it’s not working properly yet so it’s too dangerous to drive close to the bombing range fences. We enjoyed our company and headed back to the van at bedtime—about 2100 for these folks.

Sunday, 5 March—
It was COLD last night! The weatherman predicted mid-Forties overnight but when I woke at 3 a.m. I saw it was 33.4. At dawn it was 30.6. Yet by 0830 it was forty and rising fast and the sun was hot enough that I could sit at the picnic table in a short-sleeved shirt. What amazing weather.
We met two of our fellow campers this morning—one whose name I didn’t catch and the other was Charley. Both are full-timers, living at Florida campsites all winter. The first guy was a wealth of information about the National forest and the St. John’s Water District. It has taken us a day or two and this guy’s assistance to realize that there are five different authorities in the area and each has its own infrastructure and rules. There’s the National Forest folks, the State Forest folks, the State Park folks, the St John’s Water District folks, and the Cross-Florida Greenway folks. Each has its own set of maps and set of rules to abide by. The good news is each has facilities available for recreation and it’s not all that hard to figure out whether they are of interest to you.
The people we’ve met out here have had many stories to tell. We’ve seen several hunters running these back roads with dog boxes on the back of their pickups. Yesterday we talked with one who we had seen using a tracking antenna to locate his dogs. When we had been checking out the Farle’s Lake campsite yesterday we had seen three hunting dogs with antennas on their collars wandering the road so when we saw the hunter in the same area later we stopped to tell him we had seen dogs and presumed they were his. This led to a chat about his dogs and his tracking equipment. This was around noon or so when we ran into him and he said he needed to find his dogs and catch a few hours sleep; he had been out since 11 the night before. He said his tracking antenna could pick up his dogs’ radio signals as far as 12 miles away in the right conditions and terrain and could lead him to right up to a dead dog if it came to that. He had six dogs in the box and he was still looking for another nine. He also told us some stories about what he called ‘the rainbow people’, stories that remind me of stories I’d heard in my youth about the ‘gypsies’—itinerant groups of ne’er-do-wells who would steal everything not nailed down and wouldn’t hesitate to stick a screwdriver in you if you crossed them. He told us how they had taken over the nearby campground last year and he wouldn’t have anything to do with them. He also said a hunter friend of his had had a dog approach one of the Rainbow People and the guy took off his radio collar and put it on himself, thinking it was funny. His friend promptly loaded the guy into his dog box and locked him in there for two days, giving him only water, and told him he was going to be there until he found his dog. The story-teller said he told his friend he might get in trouble for doing something like that but his friend, said “No, not me—I’ll bury him first”. But apparently his found his dog before it came to that.
Our next font of local information was the guy who told us about the five authorities governing land in the area. And he too went on to tell us about the Rainbow People and how wicked and mentally unbalanced they are. He says this year they are down at another campsite in the forest called ‘the Block’. He also was a wealth of information about the local fauna. The most dangerous animal in the forest, he says, is the golden recluse spider. He says it puts a stinger deep in your flesh and that injects a painful poison that makes you very sick and if perhaps kills you. But generally people are bitten by them only when they do something dumb like stick their hands in a pile of firewood or brush, he said. He then told us to keep an eye out for the pygmy rattlesnakes. They look like a small pine branch but they curl up in the sun into a coil, generally around oak hammocks. Just give them some space and go around them—no big deal, he said. Then he said he’d better not tell us about the timber rattlers… they’re thicker than your arm and have a nasty disposition—but don’t worry about them, they’re generally found around building foundations and ‘anywhere there’s heat—they like the heat’. He also spoke of water moccasins and said they’d come after you. He claimed to have been bitten twice while swimming in nearby Alexander springs/ “Stay away from the grasses”, he said. His bites caused him to be very sick for a day and sick for a week. But he did offer a way to protect yourself in camp—just pee a circle around your camp and the snakes won’t cross that line. He even gave me tips on how to walk and pee at the same time to make the circle. This guy is living in a pickup truck with a topper. He has an RV rollup-awning attached to the topper and roof and apparently rolls that out for shade when he needs it. He’s a very nice guy and, as I say, a wealth of information.
The next guy we spoke with was Charley from Lincoln, Maine. After our trip to Maine last Fall we had a lot to talk about with him and I think he enjoyed our chat. Charley is an old-timer—probably 75 or so-- who winters here in Florida every year. He had been a truck driver, a Teamster, and he was glad to know I had once been a Teamster too. Charley is living his winters in a little Chrysler mini-van, a 50 cc scooter on a receiver platform on back and a large Sears rooftop carrier on the roof. He doesn’t walk very well; he just hobbles over to visit his buddy on the other side of our little campground. Through the day today, we only saw him doing his chores, reading a bit, and sitting at the picnic table watching the world go by. Charley seemed a little more charitable on the subject of the Rainbow People. He said they have a Gathering every year and the Forest Service assigns them a large camp area. They smoke their mushrooms and do their drugs and for the most part leave others alone but of course there are some bad apples in the bunch and there’s the occasional knifing.
Later that morning we took a walk on the Florida Trail, northbound from Farle’s Lake. The trail is beautiful. We of course were on the lookout for spiders, snakes, alligators, and Rainbow People and didn’t see any of those. But we did come upon a large bear scat in the trail but it was dried out and pretty old.
That afternoon we drove into Ocala to get ice and connect to the internet. We had an early supper at a Panera’s restaurant and then set up the laptop to check our email and I filed a blog entry.
Then we returned to Farle’s Lake and took a walk around 7 p.m, just after dark. We walked southbound and in just a short while came upon a very fresh (and large) bear scat. That was enough of that, particularly with this thick undergrowth all around and us not all that familiar with the local bear population’s tolerance for tourists wandering into their homes after dark. It’s nice to be back in the van writing this!

Saturday, 4 March-
Today was another Bike Week day. We spent most of it at Riverfront Park, where a large crowd was checking out all the bikes and accessory vendors. We found free parking near the center point of the area and that made it nice—we would walk for a while then circle back to the van for a break, then make another loop in a different direction. We also stopped at the Speedway on the way out of town but by that time things were closing up for the day so we headed for the woods. That morning we had checked out the Juniper Springs’ canoeing area. We had a long chat with a ranger there. As he was telling us about the recreational opportunities nearby, he mentioned the Florida Trail. Then he blurted out: “Did you hear about the recent murders?”. It seems that some mentally-challenged individual had bought himself an AK-47 assault rifle and wanted to kill someone with it. So he came to Florida and set himself up along the trail and shot two backpackers and threw their bodies into Hidden Lake. Then he walked out of the forest and hitch-hiked back to his hotel with the gun in a duffel bag. When the news came out about the killings, the guy who had dropped him off at the hotel called the police and they caught him.
The ranger then went on to tell us what a wonderful place Florida’s national forests are for recreation. He and his wife are originally from Wisconsin and have been wintering in Florida for years. It seemed incongruous to be talking about the recreational opportunities just a few minutes after the talk about the grisly murder but of course the same types of things have happened back home on the Appalachian Trail. Statistically, of course, you are very safe to walk both the AT and the FT—but it’s very difficult to reconcile the statistics with what happened to the completely innocent backpackers who just happened to run into the wrong guy.
On our way toward Daytona we also checked out nearby Farle’s Lake campground in the Ocala National Forest and hoped there would still be a spot available by the time we got there. This campground is back in three-and-a-half miles of sand road but, like Delancey Lake, once you get there it’s worth the trip. There’s a nice open, grassy area, pit toilets, and an iron ranger. But the ranger only needs $5 for the night so it’s a good deal. We had also seen a free designated site just off the sand road but when we checked it out we saw a stack of junk in the campsite. The junk was the removable contents of a mini-van, complete with child’s seat, toys, school papers, etc, and the two rear seats from the van….probably the work of thieves who stole the van, dumped the contents and were looking to use the van for hauling. The dates on the child’s papers were the end of January so it didn’t happen long ago. That made up our minds for us--- we decided to move on and thank goodness we did and found Farle’s Lake.

Friday, 3 March-
This morning we headed once again for the Ocala National Forest but a few miles before it we came upon a sign for a visitor’s center for the Cross-Florida Greenway. We had never heard of it but thought we’d check it out. The greenway turns out to have been developed because of an abandoned cross-Florida canal project which started in the 1930’s and was finally abandoned in 1971. It’s a 110-mile-long band of greenspace (water trails, hiking trails, mountain biking trails, and camp sites) across the state and looks very interesting. We decided this would be an excellent area to explore later—but for now we were going to Bike Week. We continued into the Ocala National Forest. Along the way we drove back a dirt road to check out the Delancey Lake campsites and saw that they were virtually empty and cost only $6 a night but then again they are a long way from Daytona-- but they’d serve as a backup if we couldn’t find anything closer. We drove on to the Salt Springs visitor’s center where we bought a map of the Forest and discussed camping possibilities. It looked like Juniper Springs would be about as good as we could expect to do if we weren’t willing to spend $30 a night or more and also listen to lots and lots of motorcycle noise. We made it to Juniper Springs by noon or so and happened to get one of the last camping spots available. The cost was $17 but only one night was available. But that would at least allow us to have showers and, if we wanted, we could paddle Juniper Run, one of the nation’s top five canoeing trips (according to Juniper Springs!). After securing our spot for the night, we drove on into Daytona to get ourselves oriented. We first stopped at the speedway and walked around the ‘fanzone’, checking out all the chopper builders’ displays and those of the accessory vendors. Then we went to the Sunshine Mall for more vendor areas. This one seemed to concentrate on Gold Wings and we were amazed at the variety of gear available for the ‘Wingabago’ (sorry, Clyde!). Then we headed downtown to Main Street. We had to pay $10 parking but were only two blocks from the strip. The strip was a hoot. By that time it was late afternoon and things were getting started for the evening. The bikes were showing off on Main Street (which is closed to anything but bikes) and it was lots of fun. Loud fun, but fun nonetheless. We also happened to be walking along behind a flasher--- not a blinking light but a drunk-out-of-her-mind silly woman who kept dropping one or the other of her bikini cups to anyone who would pay attention. The view over her shoulder (at the crowd!) was hilarious. But it didn’t take long for her to run into a problem—she was dumb enough to flash near a LEO and the last we saw her she was trying to talk her way out of it and he was having none of it. The other silly thing we saw was The Naked Cowboy—the guy who wears a cowboy hat, his tighty-whities and big cowboy hat while strumming a guitar in Manhattan. We had decided there was no way to get a meal on Main Street so had walked a few blocks down to Wendy’s. And while we sat there eating our burgers and watching bikes go by out the window—there went the Naked Cowboy walking along at a fast clip toward Main Street. Walking with him was a young lady with a clipboard and trailing behind was a TV cameraman. We later saw the Cowboy entertaining a group of giggling tourist ladies on Main Street. But it was nice to get out of town and back to our nice, quiet campground at Juniper Springs.


Thursday, 2 March-
After another day of driving we dropped into Jacksonville to find a bookstore to buy a Florida Gazetteer and weren’t having much luck when we happened upon a Starbucks. I asked there while ordering a well-deserved Mocha Frappacino (Affogato style!) and learned there was a bookstore nearby. Good thing we stopped—we wouldn’t have found that hidden-away store on our own. By the time we got out of town and headed down Route 17 for the Ocala National Forest in hopes of finding reasonable camping, it was getting dark. So when we happened upon a Wal-Mart at Palatka, we decided to see if overnight parking was permitted there. As we drove into the lot we saw signs saying overnight parking wasn’t permitted but also saw a security car there so I thought I’d ask. We were happy to learn that while there is a local ordinance forbidding overnight parking, Wal-Mart security says it’s not enforced in practice and in fact is unenforceable because it’s private property so we were welcome to stay. At the edge of the lot was a Chili’s so we bought a take-out meal of fajitas from there and enjoyed that in Mocha Joe--- that kept us from being tempted by the expensive drinks in Chili’s and we could enjoy some of our cheap-but-good box wine with our meal. Livin’ large at the Wal-mart!

Wednesday, 1 March-
We left for our long trip to Florida at 0930 and drove for nine hours, ending up in Lumberton, NC, where we spent the night in the local Wal-mart parking lot. It was noisy but the price was right! When we stopped for gas, I checked my gas mileage and saw we had averaged 16 miles per gallon—not bad for doing much of the trip at 65 miles per hour and carrying the kayaks atop the van. Roads were good and our only hangup was on the Washington beltway—about a half-hour’s delay because of construction on the Wilson bridge south of the city. We had been wondering when we’d see our first clearly-Daytona-bound fellow travelers and it turned out to be the ‘meat-grinder’ area on I-95 just south of DC. We started seeing pickups and vans pulling trailers with two or four custom Harleys and choppers and started noticing enclosed trailers with motorcycle gear stickers.

Tuesday, 28 February-
We finally were able to meet with our accountant to square away taxes for the year today. The rest of the day we finished up our preparation for the trip. That evening we drove up to Wildwood Nature Sanctuary for the fourth presentation of Dauphin County’s winter lecture series. This one was about the bald eagle restoration program in Pennsylvania. We learned that Pennsylvania had only two (known) bald eagle nests in the early Seventies and that number has now grown to 97-plus nests. State officials had relocated eagle pairs from Saskatchewan and that was part of the story. But it was also projects associated with the Clean Air/Clean Water and the Endangered Species Acts which share the credit for this great success. We also learned that state officials are looking for volunteers to monitor eagle nests and also want the public to report locations of nests. With eagles actively building nests now, it’s the best time to spot new ones.

Monday, 27 February-
Today we continued trip prep and prep for our meeting tomorrow with a tax accountant. I did manage to get an hour-and-a-half walk at Pinchot.