Monday: we reach the Peaceful Shore

Today dawned fine and clear and warm. So we packed up and drove south to Connie and Jim’s house, where we will spend our final week of this trip to Florida. It almost seemed like coming home just to drive up their driveway. We have been parked round the back of the pole barn and have electric, water and sewage.
We are preparing to pack up and come home. I have drawn up a Gant Chart of our preparations, so hopefully we will have time to enjoy ourselves as well as clean the Trailer and Van

Sunday: A wedding in the Spring, in the Spring

We should have got a quick getaway from Yellowjacket, it was the first time we had left the car hitched to the trailer also our first one night stop. However the clocks went forward last night, so we were an hour behind ourselves. We are now only four hours behind the U.K. We did have a web cam link to Andy, Marie and Ben, which was very nice. We moved on to Manatee Spring State Park, while we were waiting for our campsite to be made ready we went down to the spring to have our picnic lunch. There we found a group of 16 manatees and a wedding taking place, in the water of the spring. Lots of good allegory there, but quite chilly. My observation was that they bride and groom were up to their waists in water, but the groom was very soon going to be in it up to his neck. Still it was a very pretty site and gave a whole new meaning to ‘A Spring Wedding’.
While having our lunch we got talking to a couple from Bournemouth who had previously bought an RV in Canada and toured the States for a year. We had a pleasant conversation swapping tips and anecdotes.
Once on our site we relaxed in the sunshine, then in the evening we went back to the spring to watch the sun set, it was very beautiful and peaceful.

Saturday: Moving Faster

Our return home is now looming larger. There is almost a feeling that we are just sitting around waiting to go home. This is not true as there are still tings that we want and need to do. Today we are going to travel on to Yellowjacket Campground, near Old Town. We hope to meet up with the friends we made in November. The drive takes a couple of hours, on arrival we find that our friends left on the previous Wednesday, so that was a little disappointing. Still it gave us time to catch up on the washing. The weather is sunny, but cool as soon as you move into the shade. We notice that the Suwannee is about 4 feet above normal, which seems to be the only evidence left by the storm of Friday, which is now moving northward to Canada, causing snow in Atlanta and havoc in the North East States.

Friday: Today we had weather, but not Fried Green Onions

Today started for me at 5.00, lying half awake knowing that there was a storm on the way, but I hadn’t put the awning away. Would it be a wet storm, or a windy storm? Forecast yesterday just said wet, but you never can tell with Florida weather. So I got up to find a forecast on the radio – which is impossible when you don’t know the stations or the time they read out the weather. By 6.40 I had found out that it was indeed going to be wet, not windy, so lay on the sofa to go back to sleep, tricky when the rain is thundering on the roof and there is almost constant lightning and constant thunder claps, though of differing volume from full rumblerama to ground wobbling. It’s a good job that we didn’t have TV or weather.com, because what I thought must be the middle of a storm was in fact only the edge. When I finally got onto the internet it showed that warm air from the Gulf was being sucked northerly on to the cooler south east US, but the centre missed us by about 50 miles. In some places (like Suwannee, where we will be tomorrow night) they have had 10 inches of rain in the last 24 hours. The tornado map showed at least 9 touch downs (no not as in football, think about it), with 4 houses being wrecked about 40 miles north east of us, across to Lake City and south to Ocala. The local stream rose by about 2 feet, but no, we didn’t get any wind, we were very fortunate.
Ocklocknee State Park is hidden behind the Forgotten Coast, just about in the middle of the Forest of Isolation. However, it is just 6 miles south of Heartland City of Nowhere, Sopchoppy. Sopchoppy has a 150 yard Main St, which once had a railroad running down the middle of it. The town has now been completely bypassed by a small curve in the road. It was once the railhead of a mule pulled tram, which ran on wooden boards, between wooden rails, to the mineral spring town of Panacea. Town activity centres on a four way stop junction where there is a general store, a flower and gift shop and what is either an antique Shop, or and Antique shop, because I am not sure if the items on display are for sale or just sittin’ there. It is in places such as this that you very often find absolutely nothing happening. However, Sopchoppy has a hidden jewel, small but perfectly formed, just off the main street. It is called the ‘Backwoods Bistro’. We now state that we discovered it, we may be the only people from out of Florida to have been there. It is not to be missed and is well worth the detour from the main road to eat there. We arrived on a Friday evening at about 6.00 and it was almost empty. It’s origin lies in a small dress shop and café built in 1911, which then became the drug store, chemist, soda fountain and clothes shop. More recently it had been a café. It was shut down and closed up for 10 years until a family took it over. It is a plain, fairly large room, with double fronted store windows. The back of the bistro is dominated by a long and high counter, of which the entire top is a 3D mosaic of an emerald green alligator. The food is cooked and served by a team of three brothers.
We ordered and sat back, we had some excellent chicken wings to start with. The bistro started to fill with people, mostly families. We had to wait quite a time for our main course as by now they were becoming quite busy. People were waiting for take out orders and just wandering round talking to folks, there was a friendly hubbub. We were able to take time to look at a local history book about Wakulla County. The main course was simple, but excellent. I had a small pizza, Sally had chicken alfredo. This we followed with really goo’ey banana and ice cream desert, with a walnut and rum sauce. We left sometime after 7.30 full and happy. This was one of the nicest meals we have had in Florida (Connie’s cooking excepted of course).
If ever you are within 20 miles of Sopchoppy, which is about how far it is from Wakulla Springs, you must visit The Backwoods Bistro. Tell them we sent you.

Thursday: Where Tarzan has dared to tread.(water)

It had to happen eventually. Seeing so many beautiful places that look like tropical jungle (well if you are a film director), we must eventually arrive where the film makers have been before. I am not quite sure where to start in describing the today’s trip. There are three major things about it. Our destination is one of the largest natural springs in the world. It puts out at least 250 million gallons of water a day and has been known to increase that to 1 billion gallons (ok so they are US gallons an smaller than ours, but that is still a lot of water). It is the location where Tarzan films were shot, its biggest film was ‘The Creature from the Black Lagoon’, a good old fashioned horror film from the fifties. It is also an amazing wild life area of outstanding beauty Before I get into this I had better say that our destination was Wakulla Springs, about 30 miles south of Tallahassee.
We arrived and wandered through the azaleas and camellias, which are in full bloom at the moment, to get to the Wakulla Sprngs, which is a lake about 200 feet wide, surrounded by cypress groves and wetland (swamp to you and me). Numerous birds were to be seen in the trees and various ducks and water birds swum in the water, we spotted a manatee and 2 calves. The weather today was perfect clear blue sky and not too hot. The lake empties into the river, where one can take a boat ride, which we thought was wonderful. We motored downstream seeing alligator, heron, ibis and varieties of duck, including the amazing American Wood Duck (no I don’t know why it is called that), which is very brightly coloured. Every turn of the river seemed to bring new vistas of beauty, which I could not hope to describe. As we returned on the far side of the river we threaded in between reed beds, islands and cypress trees in the river. Ranger Bob, our guide, as he pointed out various animals, like a couple of snakes just a few feet from the boat, showed us the very spots where Johnny Weismuller dived into the water in his Tarzan films. Also where the Creature from the Black Lagoon appeared from under the water. He showed us where they filmed Airport 77, the underwater sequence. Why did they make these films here? Well, yes they wanted the jungle effect, but also the water is so clear that filming underwater sequences can be done easily.
Here comes the mind boggling bit: as we cruised back round into the lake, we passed over the opening in the bottom of the lake where the water comes in. The spring lake is 120 feet deep, the cavern that the water comes through is large enough to fit an airplane in. When first investigated by divers (who could see at 120 feet using daylight, because it was so clear) fossil animal bones were found on the bottom, mastodon, sabre tooth tiger, etc. They have a mastodon fibula on display, it is about 5 feet long and about a foot thick.
The cavern then goes to the west and down to 250 feet, divers need to use decompression techniques to dive there. The cave system has been explored, though not completely. Last year they met up with known caves to the north. This now makes it one of the largest cave systems known in the world, 28 miles of continuous underground caves. They have still not explored all of it.
This was an amazing day out, we have been overwhelmed by the beauty of Wakulla Springs. We recommend that you visit it as son as you can.

Our first Year in USA

I note that it is exactly one year since we first flew into Florida on March 5th 2007, to start our adventures which we optimistically entitled ‘Let Hopes And Dreams Take Flight’. In that year we have been in Florida for exactly six months, over three visits. We have bought a Chevy Truck, a Travel Trailer and an electric wheelchair. We have travelled more than 10,000 miles. We have been as far south as you can get, Key West. We have been to West Palm Beach which is the most eastern point of Florida, when we visited friends there. North East to St Augustine and seen the oldest town. As far north as you can go, when we drove over the 31st parallel just north of Sneads. Almost as far west as you can go in Florida, by going to Pensacola. We have seen Everglades, mangroves, cypress and live oak hammocks, coral reef, Florida scrub, barrier ecosystems, karst (limestone) scenery, first magnitude springs, a shuttle launch, a civil war re-enactment, OK so we also went to the Magic Kingdom, lots of alligators, turtles, manatees, dolphin, racoons, bald eagle and osprey. We have swum in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. We have followed the River Suwannee and the Apalachicola. We have been to four bluegrass festivals, four bluegrass weekends (including a hog roast), performed on stage in a bluegrass band and been to the Florida Folk Festival. So far we have been in 35 Florida State Parks. We have written more than 50,000 words on our three blogs and taken more than 8,500 photo’s. I can safely say that we have had a wonderful time, which has more than lived up to our expectations. We have met a lot of really wonderful people, who have made our time here even more enjoyable. We are now looking forward to travelling to other states on our next trip.

Tuesday: The Forgotten Coast

In the afternoon the weather improved and we ventured out to the town of Apalachicola, which is at the mouth of the Apalachicola River. This is the same river that is fed by the Seminole Lake Reservoir, where we camped at Three Rivers Campground. We also visited Torreya SP, which is on the bank of the Apalachicola. This was a very important town in the 19 century. It was the start point for all the trade up river (remember 200 river boats). It was and still is also the home base for the huge seafood industry of the vast Apalachicola Estuary and Bay area. By seafood I mean loads of fish, but also scallops, oysters, crab and shrimp (prawn to us). It is still one of the prime producers of oysters (provides 10% of US oysters). The industry is largely unchanged in a hundred years, the oysters are grown in sort of iron baskets, the oystermen go out everyday in small boats to harvest them. They are brought back and small factories ‘shuck’ the oysters, where they are packed and sent off to be eaten. The town of Apalachicola also appears to be almost unchanged, a bit more touristy than it was, but structurally the same. The wide main street with its art deco style shop fronts was very reminiscent of The Walton’s meets the sea. There is still a traditional Soda Fountain shop and behind the stores you can see the masts of the larger fishing boats. You can almost smell the mothballs. Either side of Apalachicola is the only coastline of Florida that is still undeveloped (i.e. no access to the coast and large numbers of condominiums and large shops which service them). The map of the coast is a long gentle headland and it is called ‘The Big Bend’ area. Its other title, which is slightly more poignant is ‘The Forgotten Coast’, because is has not been developed, yet. That of course brings catch 22. Because it is undeveloped, the house prices (of reasonable houses) is huge, so a lot of local people cannot afford to live there. The Nearest Wal-mart is Tallahassee, 50 miles as the crow flies, but 87 miles by road. Many people want to keep it that way, though I suspect that many others would like an easier life than one based on bringing in the harvest of the bay. Still it is very pretty, we looked round John Gorrie’s House State Park(don’t tell me you don’t know who John Gorrie was), the famous (if you live in Apalachicola) inventor of the Ice Machine. Unfortunately because it was Tuesday it was closed, so we could only go round the outside. We also went round Ormond House State Park, which was also closed, but is another example of an AntiBellum House (built before the Civil War, come on keep up with the programme). We had a very nice cup of coffee in a little internet café and we enjoyed our afternoon there.

Tuesday: We get weather

Today we were hit by a storm, we could track its progress along the coast by using the radio. Fortunately by the time it hit us it was almost blown out, but it was fun going down to the beach and watching the waves crashing on the shore. So far in our travels we have not really got into spotting seabirds and waders, apart from heron and egret. These islands, however, are stopping places for migrating birds, so we have seen a couple of species blown in by the gale. In particular we spotted Willets, in their winter plumage, Foster’s Terns and Ruddy Turnstone.

Monday: The Seaside Desert

We have moved down the coast to St Andrew’s. I have mentioned before that USA seems surrounded by and barriers and spits, but as we have travelled along Forida’s Northern Gulf Coast this has made mre and more of an impression. We have travelled 150 miles along a coast road (98), which is entirely built on sand barrier or islands, with some fairly long bridges in between. These coastal barriers may be up to a mile wide, but are often only a few hundred yards and in many places less than a hundred yards wide. It is difficult to imagine these barriers almost enclosing many hundreds of square miles of salt water bays. St George is an island which is probably 16 miles long, but only a few hundred yards wide. (St Joe’s round ‘The Big Bend’ as it is called, is probably nearer 30 miles long) There is a complete town on the island, serviced by a single bridge, 5 miles long. It is literally just sand dunes which are is some places covered by slash pine trees and other low cover, but a lot of it is just dune grass (spartina) and nowhere is more than 50 feet high. Almost all the houses are built on stilts, many perilously close to the sea, when we had the storm on Tuesday the waves were crashing on the shore only feet away from some of them, with no barrier apart from the sand! The sand beaches are stunningly beautiful white sand.
Although these barrier islands are surrounded by water they do not have much fresh water as any rain just soaks deep into the dunes and disappears, there is also a high salt content. This situation was brought home to me when the Park Ranger was describing the campground. The State Park is at the other end of the island to the bridge. On passing through the entrance and registering he told us that the campground was just another 4 miles down the road. He told us to watch out for the one large alligator which is ‘still hanging in there’ and lives in the 2 fresh water pools, one either side of the road, just at the gate of the campground – these are the only permanent fresh water pools on the island. When this worked its way through my tiny brain it means that the lone alligator is about 7 miles from the next bit of fresh water, and unlikely to ever leave that little bit of island, even worse, it is even more unlikely that any other alligator will join it. So eventually alligator will die out on the island. It is then that I realised that these barrier islands are seaside deserts.

Sunday

We have spent couple of nights at St Andrew’s State Park. The Campground is fabulous, it gives a lot of sites right on the Bayou, unfortunately ours was not and it was very small, I only managed to get our trailer on because of my excellent driving. The weather has perked up, today was nice and warm. We have doen a bit of recovery as Sally’s body said it was time to stop and recharge. So I have done a bit of bird spotting, it’s a bit early yet for bikinis, but I do my best. On Friday while sitting outside our trailer I heard a rustle in the undergrowth and eventually managed to photograph a male Towhee bird, the female and a juvenile, very interesting as they are appeared to be quite a secretive little bird. I also photographed a Carolina Chickadee (yes all you fans of W.C.Fields, it really is the name of a bird, it’s about 4 inches long is grey and has a little black cap). While out strolling round the camp Sally noticed a bird popping in and out of a hole in a dead pine tree, we identified it as a Brown Headed Nuthatch. We also saw Brown Pelican, Great Blue Heron, Mallard, and Grebe. This afternoon we ventured out to a local mall and ended up at Scampy’s Seafood and Steak Restaurant. Sally had shrimp in a garlic sauce and I had a rib-eye steak. It was simple but very nice. Tomorrow we move on round the coast to St George’s State Park.