Perry Georgia for the Weekend

We are now in Perry and all about fun with family.  We arrived Friday about mid-day after a relatively short and uneventful drive from Hahira.  We got into a little rain and a little road construction, but neither lasted very long.

Our campground for the weekend is Fair Harbor RV Park.  This is a huge park on the west side of I-75 from the Georgia Fairgrounds where so many RV rallies are held.  The Passport America rate is $22 per night which is about the same as their regular weekly rate.

After a quick lunch we were off to the local grocery to pick up items for dinner.  My brother came over to share that with us and we had a great visit.  Along with catching up on tales of our lives and family gossip, Mike shared an equinox experiment with us that he had seen demonstrated recently.

I’ve heard of standing eggs on end on the vernal equinox.  Something to do with gravity and the spin axis of the Earth supposedly makes it easier to balance any object, not just eggs.  Even though it is still more than a week until the first day of spring, our experiment seemed to prove this theory.  Mike stood the broom out in the floor and it reminded standing without any means of support.  Even with the sway of the motorhome we could move around a little bit without the broom falling over.  It remained standing all on its own for about 30 minutes until we got tired of looking at it.  Too weird or too cool.

This evening, we’re all gathering at Ben and Amber’s home for dinner.  Mike is the chef for tonight.  I volunteered to bring along Jalapeno poppers for our appetizer.  They’re not difficult to make, but are a little time consuming when making enough for a crowd.  They’re pretty popular in our family, so I bought 15 peppers.

When working with jalapenos, it’s best to wear disposable gloves to protect you hands from the oils which can really burn, especially if you have sensitive skin.  Remove the stems and slice each pepper in half lengthwise.  Remove the seeds and cut away that white, fleshy membrane inside.  There are many different stuffings, most with a cream cheese base, but I like to keep it simple.  For a little crunch, I put some toasted slivered almonds in the pepper then fill it with cream cheese, wrap in bacon, and secure with a toothpick.  Bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes.  The toothpick might not be necessary, but I think it keeps the bacon in place while it cooks. I take the toothpicks out before serving; I don’t know why.

All ready to take to Ben's for baking.

We want to welcome a couple new readers.  The latest is Cool Judy and her husband, Luke.  They are very involved with Escapees Birds of a Feather Boomers group.  We ran into Judy and Luke at Denali National Park last summer.  Also tagging along is the author of the blog, Encourage One Another.  I couldn’t find a name associated with that blog, but he/she is doing a great job of encouraging their readers with short inspirational stories.  Keep up that good work.  Welcome, y’all.  We’re glad to have you tagging along.

Posting this early today so we can scoot on over to my nephew’s.  Will probably be posting early tomorrow, as well.

So, that’s it for today.  Thanks for tagging along.

Cain's Creekside RV Park

I’m writing this tonight from Hahira, Georgia, just a few miles north of Valdosta.  We didn’t get in a rush to leave this morning, but took our time doing the last minute preparations and talking to the neighbors and anyone else who happened to walk by our site.  Even when it was time to go, we only drove to the front of the campground before stopping to fill up on propane, settle up our bill in the office, and chat with a few more of the winter regulars.  It was about 10 AM when we finally pulled away.

We’re not opposed to spending a night at Wal-mart between travel days. On our way down to Florida in January, we stayed at a Wal-mart in Valdosta.  However, temperatures were forecasted to be pretty warm this afternoon, so Gene found us a campground with full hook-ups for a Passport America rate of $15.

Us in site number 2.  I think that's the owner's home behind us.

Cain’s Creekside RV Park is almost brand new--it just opened last August.  The owner is so excited about his campground and he dotes on every customer.  He even came out to the motorhome with Gene after he checked in.  And, he was excited to share his big plans for expansion this summer.

We have the view of this pond out our front window.

The campground is small with only about 11 sites.  They’re all pull-thrus with full hook-up with 30 and 50 amp electrical posts.  This sites are moderately spacious, with gravel parking pads and grass between sites.  The owner has planted a tree on each site and some shrubs.  There are also privacy fences between each site.  The fences are not tall; they seem to be designed primary to hide the utilities and the trash can.  Each site has a brand new picnic table and a fire ring.  The sites are all in a row facing a small pond.
The land on the other side of the pond is vacant at this time, but the expansion plan is to put another row of sites over there.  Because that area is vacant now, our view across the pond is of a mobile home community.  What we see is not unattractive.  The homes are all doublewides on large lots.  The whole community looks to be well maintained.  It’s not a rundown trailer park.

That's the new office on the other side of our neighbor in site number 1.

The campground is located about a mile out of town, and we are truly out of town.  There is a large horse farm across the street.  There are no street lights and very little traffic.  The only thing to disturb the peace and quiet is the train which rumbles past about once an hour.  Fortunately, we’re not too close to a street crossing so we can barely hear the whistle.

So, we’re back on the road, and that’s our first day.  Thanks for tagging along.

A Winter in Florida

This has been our third winter in Florida; the last two here in Bushnell and the first winter in Ocala.  We’ve decided wintering in central Florida suits us.  There are various reasons, of course--in the scheme of things it’s not so far from Nashville, there are some trails for hiking, we enjoy the Escapee park, and Bushnell is conveniently located to the bigger cities of Tampa, Orlando, and Ocala.

A sampling of our winter in photos.
Longleaf Pine and blue skies.

There are a lot of other places we like better than Florida, but all of those places are cold in the winter.  We want some place warm and Florida has that.  So does Texas, but Texas is several hundred miles farther from Nashville.  That’s important to us because we want to be able to see family about every three months.  On a few of our trips we’ve been away from family for six months or so.  We found we didn’t like that so much.

Withlacoochee River

Since we love to hike, it’s important to us to have trails in the area.  There are a lot of trails around central Florida.  They’re sandy and flat, which is not our favorite, but the area still offers some decent hiking opportunities.  Summerdale, Alabama would be another option for winter, but besides not being quite warm enough, there are almost no trails in the area.

Walks on the Van Fleet and Withlacoochee State Trails

Speaking of Summerdale, Rainbow Plantation Escapee Park there is wonderful.  The campground is nice and they offer almost nonstop activities at the clubhouse.  As nice as Rainbow Plantation is, we like Sumter Oaks here in Bushnell better.  It’s a much smaller campground and we like that.  The selection of activities is much more limited, but we’re off doing our hiking thing anyway.  It’s a quiet, cozy little park and we’re beginning to think of it as our winter home.

Fellowship with friends. This one at Mike and Peggy's place.

Bushnell, as a city, has very little to offer, but an hours drive will get you to Tampa, Orlando, or Ocala.  An hours drive will also get you to the Gulf coast or the Atlantic.

For all these reasons, we’ll likely be back to Florida for several winters to come.

How about all those trail lunches in Withlacoochee State Forest

As far as this year goes, we’ve really enjoyed our stay.  Because of family issues in Nashville, we didn’t get down here as early as we had hoped, but next year we’re thinking about coming down early in December--really spend the winter here.  Our hiking has been good.  We’ve hiked about 80 miles since arriving in the middle of January and didn’t do the same hike twice.  We didn’t do a lot of sightseeing this time like we did the past two winters, but next year we may slip away for a couple weeks to the Everglades.  The best part of this winter has been the time with friends.  We had a great week with Mike and Peggy, and six weeks with Tony and Diana.  We’ve renewed our friendships with several folks who make this their winter home and we’ve made a few new friends as well.  How can it get any better?

Whether Dairy Queen, Twisty Treats, or Plant City
 we could always find something sweet to eat.

We’ve been busy today preparing to move.  Anytime we sit for very many days in a row I have to go through every cabinet to be sure things are secured for travel.  I also got all the laundry done.  Escapee parks usually have the cheapest laundry facilities around.  Gene washed the dust off the motorhome and the car.  They sure look pretty.

Everything is ready so it looks like we’ll be pulling out in the morning heading up to Valdosta, Georgia for the night then on to Perry Friday.  We’re anxious to be on the road again.  But, we’ll be right back here next winter I’ll betchya.

That’s it for today.  Thanks for tagging along.

Thinking Ahead

Boy, what a difference a day makes.  A front passed through early Sunday morning bringing thunderstorms and behind it, much cooler temperatures.  Today dawned bright and sunny, but only 40 degrees at 7 AM.

I think Gene and I both have had our fill of the dry, sandy trails here in Florida for this year.  We’re longing for the mountains.  We wanted to get a little exercise today, but opted for the paved Withlacoochee State Trail.

We saw dogwood in bloom today.  First time this year.

Maybe it’s just a case of hitch itch.  We’ve been here 6 weeks and are looking for a change of scenery.  Besides that, we’re anxious to see family.  Much of our conversation over the past few days has revolved around our plans after leaving here.

We only have one commitment this spring and that is Gene’s summons to jury duty the last week in March.  We don’t have to be back in Nashville until then, and we don’t want to get there much earlier than that to avoid any lingering winter weather.

After Nashville, we want to make a bee line for the Smokies.  Spring wildflowers in the mountains are just gorgeous and I want to be there for the display.  With that in mind, we decided to make our visit in Nashville on the front end of jury duty rather than afterwards.

Also entering into our thoughts has been the drive north on I-75 through Georgia.  First of all, we want to stop in Perry to visit with my brother and his family.  Since everybody there works, weekends are the best time for quality visiting.  We’ve got that all worked out for next weekend.

Not wanting to get to Nashville before the following weekend, we were looking around for some hiking to occupy our time.  North Georgia seems like a perfect spot--colder temperatures and some real mountains to climb.  There might even be a few thru-hikers in the area needing a little trail magic.

We haven’t done much hiking in North Georgia, so have been reading the hiking blogs and looking at the maps to get some ideas.  A 10-mile loop hike Jermm’s Outside posted about a few weeks ago caught our attention.  We put that on the list.  I would also like to hike up Blood Mountain southbound on the AT from Neel’s Gap.  The morning we hiked through there on our Georgia section in 2003 it was so foggy, we didn’t have any views.  I’m sure we’ll come up with something.

So, we have a rough plan on the drawing board.  We’ll revise and refine as the week progresses, but for now we expect to pull out of here Thursday or Friday.

That’s it for today.  Thanks for tagging along.

Rock Springs Run Trail

We were up and out early this morning for the drive over to Rock Springs Run State Reserve.  We had about a 60 mile drive on secondary roads passing through several small towns.  With lower speed limits and lots of traffic lights it took almost two hours to make the trip.

Rock Spring Run State Reserve is part of the Florida State Park system.  I was unfamiliar with the term “run” as it relates to a waterway.  Gene had to enlighten me.  A “run” is what I would call a stream, creek, or river.  Rock Spring Run is an 8-mile long river originating from an artesian spring. It forms a portion of the boundary of Rock Springs Run State Reserve and eventually empties into the Wekiva River.  According to the brochure, Rock Springs Run offers some fine canoeing.

Within the Reserve there are 14 miles of hiking trails as well as bike and horse trails.  We went there, of course, to hike and had selected a 7-mile loop for today.  There is an entry fee of $3 per vehicle.  We parked at parking area number 1--the parking area for hikers.  Parking area number 2 is for bicyclists and parking areas 3 and 4 are for horses.  Parking area number 1 will only accommodate about 5 cars.  There is an information kiosk with park information and trail maps, but there is no restroom or water.

We got started on our hike about 9:30.  We were excited about the trail at the beginning.  After leaving the road and hiking in the counterclockwise direction, we immediately entered an area of pines.  We were mostly in the shade on a wide, well maintained trail.  After about a quarter mile or so we were in a large expanse of saw palmetto.  Not long after that we were on a deeply rutted forest road, probably an old logging road.  We hiked along for about a mile and a half dodging the deepest ruts and in full sun before we decided it just wasn’t any fun.  After a very brief discussion, we decided to turn back.

Yellow butterwort

Apparently, Rock Spring Run can be accessed from the hiking trails, but we weren’t in the area for that.  We did pass a “lake”, but the trail didn’t get close enough for us to actually see water.  Since it’s been so dry in Florida, I’m wondering if this small lake was dry.

Even though we aborted our hike, it still was a fine outing.  I especially enjoyed the change of scenery from what we’ve been seeing in the Withlacoochee State Forest.  Twenty-five miles east of here we started seeing short, rolling hills and small ponds and lakes.  The vegetation was much greener there than here, also.  We passed a tree farm and several nurseries and citrus groves.

We stopped in Tavares for a quick lunch and were home by 2 PM.  It’s just as well we cut our hike short, because the wind had worked itself up into some pretty strong gusts.  We were able to get our awning stowed away before it got damaged.
We’ll put Rock Spring Run Reserve on our list for next year, but on a cooler day.  We were so hot this morning, we really didn’t give the park a fair chance.  And, I’d like to see Rock Spring Run.  We were so focused on getting in the air conditioned car and getting some lunch, we didn’t take time to search out the river.  Gotta do that.

That was our day.  Thanks for tagging along.

Gear Maintenance and Trail News

With temperatures in the mid-80s in central Florida, I haven’t wanted to hike.  I’ve closed the curtains, cranked up the AC, and hibernated inside for two days.  Gene did a hike yesterday--suffered through ten miles and was just glad to get out of the heat and humidity.

Since I’d gotten most of the chores done earlier in the week, I used the extra time catching up on my blog reading.  Got kinda behind when Tony and Diana were here.  A couple of things caught my attention from the hiking blogs.

One is the new bear canister regulations put in place by the US Forest Service in northern Georgia.  Bear canisters are required in several places out west, but unheard of in the east--until now.  A bear canister is a container made of hard plastic which is almost impossible for a bear to break into.  Backpackers use these canisters to store food, toiletries, and anything that has an odor that a bear (or any wild animal) might associate with food.  This is a temporary requirement (March 1 thru Jun 1) in a short 5-mile section in north Georgia between Jarrad Gap and Neel’s Gap in the Blood Mountain Wilderness Area.  Since it is just a 5-mile section, I suspect most backpackers will opt to hike on through and not spend the night in the designated area.

The second news tid-bit was about the upcoming US Postal Service closings.  Apparently, some of the small trail town post offices are on the list for possible closure.  I didn’t investigate that (only reporting what I read on another blog), but it certainly doesn’t surprise me.  This news is important for thru-hikers because some use the USPS for mail drops and bump boxes.

A mail drop is a box packed by the hiker, friend, or family member which contains items the hiker will need in the future and mailed to a post office in a trail town.  Gene and I used mail drops when we did our 400 mile section from Hot Springs, NC to Roanoke, VA.  Our boxes contained stuff like water treatment chemicals, ziploc storage bags, first aid supplies, vitamins, prescription meds, and the maps and guidebooks for the next section.  A bump box is used by hikers to “bump” unused supplies up the trail to be used later.  It’s essentially the same thing as a mail drop, but in this case the hiker mails the box him/herself as he/she progresses up the trail.

In recent years, hikers have tended toward mailing boxes to hotels and hostels rather than the post office.  This eliminates the need to be in particular place during hours when the post office is open.  So, even though some of these small town post offices may close, it may not impact the trail community all that much.

Now for the gear maintenance part of this story.  Gene noticed after his hike yesterday that a seam has come apart on his hiking boot.  He has a tendency to turn his ankle, so, unlike the popular trend of wearing low cut hiking shoes, he still wears heavy, high-top boots.  These boots are expensive, so he tries to make every pair last as long as possible.  Today, in an effort to hold that seam together for a few more hikes, he applied plumbers goop.  The boots have about a thousand miles on them anyway, so they’re about worn out and Gene ain’t gonna win no fashion award out there on the trail, so plumbers goop it is.  At least it’s waterproof.  That may become important in a week or two.

The other thing he tried to fix was my raincoat.  I have a Helly Hansen, three quarter length raincoat that I’ve had for years.  Although my mother gave it to me to use on the trail, I don’t.  It’s far to heavy for that.  I just use it as my raincoat and I love it.  However, it has lost it’s waterproofing.  Gene took things under his wing today.  There are spray-on products to waterproof fabric, but he used a wash-in product.  After the raincoat dried, we did the “water” test.  When we sprinkled water on the coat, the drops beaded up pretty good.  A heavy rain will be the real test.

That’s about all I know for today.  Thanks for tagging along.

March, The Start of Spring Hiking Season

As hikers living in middle Tennessee, we were always anxious for March to arrive.  Warmer temperatures bring on the lure of the trail.  It also brings out an array of spring wildflowers and blooming shrubs and trees which turns the trail into a masterpiece.  In our minds it was the beginning of spring hiking season.

Appalachian Trail Marker in sidewalk in Hot Springs, NC

March is also the beginning of Appalachian Trail thru-hiker season.  Of course, there are always a few hikers who are willing to brave the freezing temperatures and snow who start on their thru-hike early, but most wait for “spring” on Springer Mountain.  March and April will see hundreds of hopeful hikers head north from Springer in Georgia on their quest to reach Mt Katahdin in Maine before the snow flies.

Bloodroot

Many of these hikers post journals of their trip and each year I select a few to follow.  It’s not a random selection; I have my guidelines.  I have found I enjoy the narratives of hikers closer to my age rather than the younger ones.  I also like to select hikers who take the time to post about their preparations for the hike.  I have noticed that those hikers who are excited about preparations and want to share that excitement on their journals will be the ones who will post often during their hike.  I have selected six hikers to follow.  These are the three that I’m most excited about.

Star Chickweed

First is Bluevist.  She is one of those brave souls who started Jan 1st.  She is already through Georgia and the Smokies and is well into North Carolina now.  She is hiking alone, which is relatively unusual on the trail, however, women are more and more going on their own.  This is the 10th anniversary of her first thru-hike which she completed in 2002. She has gone out for winter hikes (what she calls walks in the woods) for the past several years.  She hikes as far as she wants and then gets off the trail.  She doesn’t actually say she’s attempting a thru-hike this year, but she seems to be sticking with it even through the snow in the Smokies.  She knows what the Trail is all about and the difficulties of a long distance hike.  I wish her a safe and enjoyable hike whether or not it turns into a thru-hike.

Crested Dwarf Iris

Next is Richard Lindsey.  Richard’s journal caught my eye because he’s hiking with his son, Alex, who recently graduated from high school.  They are from Washington state and are leaving early in March for a drive across the country to begin their hike about the middle of March.

Last are Headnout and Tagnalong.  These are unusual trail names and when I saw them on the 2012 journal list, I immediately clicked to see who they were.  Sure enough, they had done a thru-hike in 2006.  I recognized the names of the older couple we had dinner with at Zealand Hut in the White Mountains.  The hut system in the Whites is a blog in itself, but for the purposes of this story, I’ll just say that the AT passes most of the huts in the White mountains.  Many thru-hikers work for their stay at the huts as they pass through the Whites.  Gene and I were among the 36 guests at Zealand Hut the same night Headnout and Tagnalong were there working for their stay.  We had a great conversation with them that evening.

Trillium

So, back to their trail journal--After that hike in 2006, Headnout went on to hike the Pacific Crest Trail in 2010.  They have decided to thru-hike the AT again this year in celebration of (are you ready for this)--their 49th wedding anniversary.  Isn’t that great! They’ll be starting March 8th, on their anniversary.  They are accomplished long distance hikers and will make it to Mt Katahdin barring injury or other health issues.

These are my favorite picks for journal reads from this years group of Appalachian Trail thru-hikers.  I wish all the hikers a safe journey and I’m anxious to follow along through their Trail Journals.

That’s it for today.  By the way, all of today's photos were taken in previous springs.  Thanks for tagging along.