However hurricanes the past two years, dropped a few trees and damaged the nice boardwalk that parallels the first half mile of Juniper Run. The damage is not that bad but it’s been closed for two years. Excuses like no money, forest fire danger were ridicules. 
The walk allows visitors to see the beautiful white sand bottom stream and watch the inept paddlers going by.
We decided to do an early paddle on Tuesday morning. They do a shuttle for private paddlers for only $10. I used to do a bike shuttle, about 8 miles on very busy state highways. Years ago unless you had a second car, this was your only option and early morning traffic was very light. But now, we just drive our RV to the put-in, drop Peggy off with the canoe and drive to the take-out parking lot where there is room for my RV, if you get there early. The park service then drives you back to the put-in.
The river was much higher than we have seen it in years, so the 3 mph current was great and there was more room to maneuver around all the fallen and overhanging trees,
However they still tell paddlers the 9-1/2 mile run will take 4 to 5 hours. We saw no one else on the run, due to our early start. We paddled as slow as we could and it took only 2-1/2 hours. However when we watched the rental boats launch and the lack of any paddling knowledge, some of those paddlers may not make it in 5 hours. I guess that is why the put-in closes at noon.
The weather has been great for the past two weeks, High 70’s and sunny every day. On Wednesday morning we decided to do another early morning paddle on Juniper Run. They were predicting 80o temperatures with sunny skies. One good thing about taking our RV to the takeout is that it gets more sun than our campsite so the solar panels charge our batteries better.
We saw about 6 deer standing next to the stream at several places along the way but no alligators and very few birds today. They are predicting rain tomorrow and we will leave in the morning to do some grocery shopping on our way to Silver Lake in the Withlacoochee State Forest. We like this campground since it is on a lake which is a wide spot in the Withlacoochee River, which is a nice scenic paddle. It is also next to the 46 mile paved bike trail that runs from Rainbow Springs to about 10 miles south of Silver Lake.
They finally started to repair the boardwalk on Wednesday but they said it would take another month, they sure are milking this job.
When we got back to Orlando it was sunny and 75oF, leaving the 5oF cold in Cleveland. We headed to Lithia Springs a Hillsborough County Park which is east of Tampa. We had lots of grocery shopping to do and didn’t get to our camp until 4 PM on New Year’s Eve. We were not sure if the camp would be full or not but were pleasantly surprised that they had many campsites available including one of the best ones #41 right on the Alafia River which was low due to lack of any rain.
After 14 days we finally left one of our favorite campgrounds, WP Franklin on the Caloosahatchee River. We like Myakka River State Park but it is impossible to get into without reservations made 11 months in advance. While looking at the FL map I noticed a small FL State Forest west of Port Charlotte near the Myakka River. There isn’t any river or bay access there but it looked like the park had a rustic campground, similar to Piney Mountain in MD that we used to love to camp in. It has 4 RV sites, 4 tent site and a pit toilet scattered in a FL scrub forest. You had to make on-line reservations but I did it early enough that there was no problem getting a site. It has a 3 mile gravel road that also accessed a nearby housing development that had miles of paved roads but only a few houses, along with a crowded community of nice houses along the Myakka River Bay. We took two bike rides in the beautiful warm & sunny but windy weather. There were all kinds of birds here but the only wildlife we saw were a few armadillos.
My niece Pat Foos and her husband Tom flew in to the Tampa airport and were driving to Naples, we told them to stop by and experience some wilderness before hitting the crowds in Naples. Years ago we used to take Pat and her sisters on camping trips but they are not now campers so were not impressed by our campsite that hadn’t a view of any other campers.
We left early Sunday morning for EG Simmons campground on Tampa Bay. They have 100 campsites in two campgrounds with all sites having water access to canoe or kayak the bay. This is a Hillsborough County Park like Lithia Springs but it is more popular so it is harder to get into. They don’t take reservations and have a 14 or 28 day limit depending on which sites you choose. They do have an 8 campsite overflow area that has no electric power. We figured we may need to spend a day or two there but 3 nice sites opened up, so we made camp after sitting in the lot for an 1-1/2 hrs. making sure none of the overflow campers wanted to move,