Category: 2015-2016 Trip

It’s not unexpected that even Southern Florida has cold spells. Well last week was one of them. Mornings were cold in the 40’s and daytime highs barely reached the 60’s. But what was worse was the wind, at times reaching 40 mph. On those days we stayed inside but finally the wind stopped, and we got out paddle again.

On Wednesday we got out in our canoe and paddled even further up Hickey’s Creek. The creek is much narrower and wilder beyond the little park that we got to last week. There are many low hanging branches and tight bends but has more wildlife. We paddled for 3-1/2 hours and even though it was only 60^oF, it was sunny and I didn’t need a sweatshirt.

We saw a Alligator, a Limpkin, many Ibis and Egrets.

A few weeks ago they got 12” of rain in the counties around Fort Myers, but the rain had stopped by the time we got here. However, as we drove due south on the small local roads from Lithia Springs, all the farm fields were underwater. All this water is entering the Caloosahatchee River and has also filled Lake Okeechobee for the first time in a few years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The local TV news people are going crazy; “It’s been terrible, all this brown water coming out of the river is ruining our beaches at Sanibel and Fort Myers. It’s all that dirty polluted water from that big bad lake”. Nothing could be further from the truth. First of all the lake is now full and whatever comes in must flow out. I guess the locals here just want the Lake to flood until the dam bursts. Don’t they realize this? Second, they are only releasing 5000 CFS from the dam into the river but here downstream at our campground there is 10,000 CFS passing through the lock. This means half the water is runoff from the record setting rainfall and of course with pine trees there is a brown color to the water along with the dirt and fertilizer runoff from the farms. Here at camp the water is brown colored but clear and the fishing is good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

But they are still complaining on TV every day. They want this freshwater stopped, the salt water fish don’t like it and some die.

I noticed that NBC was videoing in our campground so I walked over to talk to the cute reporter. I found myself on the 6 O’Clock News that day. I videoed this using my cellphone from our TV, take a look.

For us to paddle the river upstream of the lock it’s easy to paddle across the river and portage through the Corps. picnic ground and lock viewing area. Yesterday we decided to stop and view the boats going through the lock and visit the Corp. visitor center. The photos above are a view of boats passing through the lock.

They say that Manatees also pass through the lock everyday and wait around until the lock opens each morning. The lock is only in operation from 7AM to 5PM. So boats wanting to traverse FL from Fort Myers to Stuart on the waterway must wait overnight here, if they get here too late in the day.

Today is our last day at Franklin Locks. We leave Saturday morning to travel along the river to the East Coast and the city of Lake Worth. We will stay for a week at John Prince Memorial Park. on Lake Osborn.

This large park is just part of the Palm Beach County Park System. It is located in Lake Worth, FL. This is the Link to the park & campground.

The camp has over 300 small campsites, jammed in between a private airport and the lake. However it seems to be very popular and most of the sites are occupied for the entire winter season. 68 sites are limited to 14 day stays and they are all along the shore of Lake Osborne.

Prices are similar to Florida’s State Parks but they only take reservations 90 days in advance, so it is much easier planning and getting a campsite here.

We got here last Saturday morning and will stay for a week. We were welcomed by this Muscovy Duck who looked like we was ready to come into our camper. It was a good thing we had our screen door closed. These ducks seem to roam all around the campground looking for handouts.

The weather has been back to normal temperatures, 60-75^oF for this time of year, except on Tuesday morning. We awoke to a severe thunderstorm which had tornado warnings for our location. In fact, 3 tornadoes touched down south of here. The storm was gone in an hour and we had an 80^oF day.

What we like best are the paved bike trails, shown on the map above. It is about a 9 to 10 mile ride around the park and lake. The weather has still been windy and since we could see the entire lake from the bike ride, we saw no reason to try canoeing around the lake.

There are birds everywhere who seem to have lost all fear of anyone on the trails. We saw large flocks of Ibis, many kinds of ducks, including the 3 Wood Storks above. Lots of Herons, Anhingas and Egrets. There are supermarkets not far off the trail where we can do a little shopping.

Our vacation plans after this are a little loose. We had figured by now we would want to go north  to Ocala National Forest where it would be cooler. But we really have not had any really warm weather yet, and Peggy didn’t want to go very far North already. We agreed we both liked Lithia Springs, south of Tampa and Silver Lake, north of Tampa and wouldn’t mind spending a week or so back in that area before going north to Ocala.

We spent 10 days here (#5 on map) in early December December’s Blog and all three of their campgrounds were nearly empty.

We got here at 10 AM on Friday morning. If it wasn’t going to be a cool weekend I think the two Class A campgrounds would have been full.

We drove to the second campground which is still on the lake but further from the I-75 traffic noise. There were a few empty sites and we picked one with easy access to the lake, which is just a wide spot on the Withlacoochee River.Our plan is to stay here for four nights and then, on Tuesday, go visit Helen & Paul who live just a few miles away in Inverness. We were going to visit them in December but it didn’t work out. We met them in Mexico where they camped at Xpu-Ha with us in 2013-14.

What we like about this complex is the big campsites with hookups for only $15/night, nice hiking trails, easy river access, and it is only 1 mile off the 46 mile long Withlacoochee State Trail, one of the longest paved trails in FL. Because this is a State Forest and doesn’t take reservations and limits camping to 14 days, travelers can usually get a campsite.

So even if it is cool there is still a lot to do. We took a short 10 mile bike ride on Friday and hike on Saturday. Sunday we plan to do some canoeing.

On Sunday morning we leave Juniper Springs. If the weather is good our plan is to drive to Silver Springs State Park and paddle the 5 mile long Silver River from a small marina up to the source of the spring where all the glass bottom boats are.

Over the years we have always enjoyed this run, especially with our kids when there were wild monkeys along the way. There is lots of wildlife since it is now in a protected State Park.

Later in the day we hope to make it up to Ocean Pond Campground in Osceola National Forest. We camped here on the way south over Thanksgiving and it was very full. We hope that on a Sunday, we will be able to get a campsite with electric power.

We will then start watching the weather up North and plan to take three days to make it home from here. We will start on I-10 to I-95 and I-26 which will bring us to I-77 our route home. See the map on the left.

We made it to the marina to launch our canoe for our paddle up the Silver River to the source of the Springs by 8:30 AM Sunday morning.

We were on our way upstream by 9 AM. It is a 5 mile paddle  against a strong current and it took us 2 hours. About 1-1/2 miles up from the put-in we saw a big group of monkeys along the river that were introduced when they were making a movie here 50 years ago. Despite attempts to remove them they still seem to be surviving just fine.

There was still all sorts of birds, turtles and a few alligators and the concession still looked the same but there were very few glass bottoms boats and no jungle cruise.

What we did notice was that there were all sorts of rental kayaks near the head of the spring.

The biggest change was there was no more nice white sandy bottom and there was all sorts of sea grass in the water and lots of algae. It is not nearly as pretty as it used to be.

It took us a little over an hour to paddle back downstream and we were on our way by 12:30 and got to Ocean Pond by 3:30, only to find out that we just missed the last site with electric hook ups and there was only a couple of other sites available.

However on Monday morning several electric sites became available. Now we just have to decide when we will head for home.

It has been pointed out to me that I never finished my blog for this year’s winter trip.

First, the drive home went as planned. We always watch the weather carefully and decided to come home a little early to take advantage of the beautiful warm, 80^oF weather for the rain free drive home.

We overnighted at Wal-Mart’s in Columbia, SC and S. Parkersburg, WV, and were home by 10:30 AM on Friday. We had warm weather to unpack when we got home. We were totally unpacked by Friday night.

Peggy and John Somewhere on the Trail

As you can see, we clean up well.

It was great trip, we stayed in beautiful campgrounds with lots to see and do.
It was much different than our Mexico trips and I’m sure it was less expense.

Now, being an engineer, here is:

Our Trip by the Numbers

The total trip duration was 121 days but we were home for the holidays for 17 days.
We drove 3700 miles, spending $725 for gas, averaging about 9.2 mpg.
Considering the days at home, friend days and Wal-Mart nights as zero camp cost our average camp cost was only $15/night.
We paid as high as $39/night at the only private campground on Jekyll Island.
We paid as low as $8/night at Ocean Pond Campground with no electric hookups.
We canoed on 8 different rivers for a total of about 140 miles.
We biked a total of over 250 miles.

This is my last Blog for the season.

If this is the first time that you are visiting our Florida Blog you may want to click this to read about our trip in Chronological Order rather than going backwards from the present day to trip start.