Author: keelhauler

We left Paul & Helen’s on Sunday morning to drive only 25 miles to one of our favorite campgrounds. The area is called Silver Lake which has 2 campgrounds with water and electric hookups and one rustic campground for tents. These campgrounds are in a State Forest and they now take reservations. However with the Covid restrictions this year they are only using 50% of the sites so we have lots of room and we are not near anyone. As I mentioned a few weeks ago we had to find different places to camp from our original schedule since Ocean Pond Campground was closed so we added 3 more days here.

Canoeing/Kayaking

Beside this being a beautiful area, the two main reasons we come here is for the canoeing and the biking. We are only 100 yards from launching our canoe into a wide spot on the Withlacoochee River called Silver Lake. The river is slow so you can paddle upstream or downstream from our campsite and then paddle back so no vehicle shuttle is necessary. However if you do want to set up a shuttle you can drive down the road about 10 miles to a wayside park in Nobleton, drop off your vehicle and use the paved bike trail to bike back to the campground. You can also paddle upstream and try the narrow winding Little Withlacoochee if the water level is high enough or continue upstream on the main river past the Crooked River Campground as far as you like and then paddle back to camp.

Biking

You can bike 1-1/4 miles through the campground and reach the 46 mile long paved Withlacoochee State Trail at mile marker 9. From that trail here you have 3 options. Pedal south to Trilby the start of the trail, Pedal north toward Floral City & Inverness or go north about 1 mile to the 10 mile long paved Good Neighbor Trail and go west to the city of Brooksville. The map I posted shows the options, the white dots are one mile markers.

This is a view of the river near Crooked River Campground upstream from Silver Lake

Paul & Helen came over to visit us on Friday with their new Chevy Volt. They were so nice and brought over a prescription that I had mailed to them that was supposed to come before we left our visit to their home in Inverness.
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We had a nice afternoon talking about old trips to Mexico and the past election. It was a nice rest day and gave me time to write this blog.

Here is a picture Helen took a couple of years ago at the very same campsite.

The Withlacoochee River is very pretty and is lined with Cypress trees and it flows through state forest land without any private homes along the way.

We will be here at this same campsite for 8 more nights. We plan to bike & paddle before we move head a little further south to Lithia Springs outside of Tampa.

The temperatures have been below normal since we got to Cypress Glen on Sunday 12/6.

On Wed afternoon 12/9 we took our first 16 mile bike ride on the Withlacoochee bike trail to Lake Townsen Park. We didn’t see many other bikers.

Then on Thursday we paddled our canoe upstream and into the Little Withlacoochee River and with the higher river level (350 cfs) we were able to go a ways upstream. It is a narrow creek often blocked by fallen trees. It was about a 3-1/2 mile paddle and took a little over an hour.

Saturday was a rainy day so we waited until Sunday 12/13 to take another bike ride.

On Monday 12/18  a cold front passed through in the morning which brought an hour of light rain.

By noon it warmed into the high 70’s so we decided to  paddle downstream to Hog Island and back. We took a short lunch break and paddled back upstream, the water level had dropped to 290 cfs and the wind was light so we didn’t get too tired on our 7-1/2 mile, 3 hour paddle. We saw one big alligator, a few turtles and lots of Heron & Ibis. We never saw any other boats or fisherman anywhere.

We left Cypress Glen Campground almost a week ago, on 12/19. We did a 20 mile round trip bike ride on the Van Fleet State Trail that runs from Polk City, FL to a place called Mable on SR-50. It is a 30 mile long paved rail trail and goes through a wilderness area which is the headwaters of the Withlacoochee River. The trail has parking at both ends and two places 10 miles from either end. It has one curve and is flat so it is a little boring although it goes through a beautiful wild area. It is popular for group rides. We had peddled it twice before, once from each end, so this time we started in the middle which allowed us to complete the entire trail, we made good time on the trail and averaged over 13 mph.

We were able to get some Propane in Polk City, did some shopping in Lakeland and spent the night at a Walmart in Valrico. We didn’t want to try to get a campsite on a Saturday afternoon so we got to Lithia Springs County Park at 8 AM on Sunday morning, to make sure we would get a nice campsite when the weekend campers left.

 

There were two empty sites and by the end of the day the place was very empty. Christmas week must not be popular for camping. We took site 36 which has easy access to the river. However the next day we got 2” of rain which brought the water flow up from about 200 CFS to over 1000 CFS, we decided to wait until it had dropped to below 600 CFS before we tried to paddle. We took  4 bike rides on the nice concrete trails that start at the campground and find their way through the big housing complex called Fish Hawk Ranch. It is over 3000 acres and has over 6000 homes, but it has many natural areas and retention ponds.
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Most of the bike trails are very winding and pass through these natural areas where you can see Egrets, Ibis, Sand Hill Cranes, Turtles and Alligators.

Some of the trails pass over wooden walkways and along residential streets as well. We are always surprised that more of the residents are not on the trails.

Judi and Larry Fordyce our paddling and traveling friends for years, stopped by for two nights and took the campsite next to us. They were not interested in attempting to paddle the 60^oF water since they only had sit-on-top kayaks.

We joined them on a 10 mile bike ride through Fish Hawk, they were surprised how wild most of the area is. If you look at the map you can see our 60 miles of bike rides and only a few of the trails were duplicated.

On Christmas morning when Judi & Larry left, it had cooled to the low 40’s and on Saturday it is supposed to go down to the 30’s. At least we don’t have a 10” snow like they got last night in Cleveland.

After a cool couple of weeks as soon as we went further south to just outside of Fort Myers the temperatures went above normal to the low 80’s.

WP Franklin is run by the US Corps of Engineers and is located at a lock on the Caloosahatchee River.

There are only 30 campsites. They all have Electric & water. And being federal all senior pass holders get in for half price, only $15/night with a 14 day limit. But unless you keep trying exactly 6 months in advance it is nearly impossible to get a site. We lucked out on this site which popped up a few weeks after it was initially booked.

Our first visit was in 2006 and for the for the past 6 seasons we have gotten a campsite here.

This year we were able to get campsite 7 which is one of our favorites.

We can launch our canoe into the Caloosahatchee River and paddle 3/4 mi downstream to Telegraph Creek.

Or we can carry our canoe on our small cart about 10 campsites and launch on the upstream portion of the island. They don’t allow canoes to go through the lock.

We can then paddle upriver about 1-1/2 miles to Hickey Creek.

 

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Telegraph Creek is a narrow creek that you can paddle upstream for about 3 miles into an area called Telegraph Creek Preserve, dodging trees and branches all the way.

It is very wilderness like although it does go through a small housing development in the first 1-1/2 miles. On the first day we paddled we saw lots of birds, ducks and turtles but only 3 gators, but it was cloudy. We saw 10 alligators on the second day, which was cool but sunny, and some were on the large size. Most go into the water when they see you coming.

We see some pretty sunsets from camp

If you are not a fisherman, we are not, or don’t have a boat most people find that there is not much to do here.

Those with bikes seldom leave the campground. But we take several different rides in the area most rides less than 10 miles through the neighborhood streets.

When people get to the end of the campground driveway at North River Rd (SR 78), they see the 55 mph traffic with no bike lanes so they turn around.

But the traffic is very light, so we wait and just make short sprints and go into the nearby housing developments.

On the map you can see all the places we bike along with where Telegraph Creek passes through Telegraph Estates and into the Preserve.

The temperatures have now dropped to a little below normal with cool mornings so we will paddle up the Caloosahatchee river for 1-1/2 miles into Hickey Creek for another pretty 7 mile paddle.

We did get to take a nice paddle with our canoe up the Caloosahatchee River and then up the little Hickey Creek. It is much bigger than Telegraph Creek and gets more wilderness like after the Park 2 miles up river. We didn’t see much wildlife, it was a nice 7-1/2 mi. paddle. This turned to be the only time we have paddled since January 6th..

We did a little more biking through the neighborhood streets and left early on Monday 1/11 to do a big grocery shopping trip in Ft Myers before heading North to Pioneer County Park  in Zolfo Springs on the Peace River.    

We paddled here two years ago but the cool windy weather stopped us from paddling this year. We decided to stay in the very pretty camp sites along the river for two nights. They are spread out but have no electric power. But for two nights it was fine. We took a short bike ride through the little town. This campground is not very well kept. It’s too bad since it is a nice setting except for some reason hundreds of vultures decide to roost here.

This is an important detail you should discuss with your partner if you will be view this link now cheap levitra sharing the mattress on a regular basis. Therefore, more and more people http://nakatsumassagewellness.com/levitra-6287.html cheap levitra prefer to buy online is Meridia. It is the amalgam of Kama(Sex) andAgra (Suffix of tadalafil india online). Some people get in touch with their unconscious minds through long distance running, practicing yoga, listening to music, or any other enjoyable activity can lower cheapest sildenafil 100mg stress levels. We left early Wednesday morning to head to Myakka State Park. We had reservations here of two nights and hoped to paddle to Deep Hole early in the morning to see all the huge gators. But we found out that no canoeing was allowed since they were flying around in helicopters with rifles shooting the wild invasive Boars that are tearing up everything in the park.

So we had two more days of biking up and down the roads in the park. The roads have light traffic and lots of campers bike here. He biked another 21 mi over the two days.

Our next destination where we have reservations for 8 days is Ortona Lock on the Caloosahatchee River, however we had one day to find a place to spend the night on Friday. We selected the big Walmart in Arcadia and by the way it was my birthday. Somehow I seem to end up in a Walmart parking lot on many birthdays.

You can see our 5 campsites, shown in the order we stayed there on this map of SW Florida. All or our drives were short. In our next blog I will describe Ortona Corps of Engineer campground.

We had 2 cool days at Myakka State Park and stopped to overnight at a Walmart in Arcadia on our way south again to Ortona Lock.

This Corps of Engineer campground is at another lock on the Caloosahatchee River which is part of the Cross FL navigable waterway. We will be here for 8 nights.

The campsites are paved with water and electric but only on the far eastern end of the campground do you have easily accessible canoe access.

The weather the first few days was cool and windy so we just took some bike rides.

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Our campsite was very large and near t0 the river walkways & fishing access. Each site has a covered picnic table but it was a little too far for my propane hose to reach my stove.

They seemed to have camp sites available at this location compared to WP Franklin. Maybe it is because it’s in the middle of nowhere near Labelle, FL

We found a huge development of paved roads nearby. We could bike on empty roads for miles. I don’t know how long ago they developed the land possibly in the 80’s. There is water but no electric and I think all the lots were sold but only one home was ever built.

It is sort of spooky. I’ll bet you could pull your RV down one of the dead end streets and camp for free but there are no utilities.

It is, as we found out, a destination for hang gliders. On windy days they congregate and use their cars to pull them aloft. Since no one uses the roads, it looked like a good place to do it. We saw one stunt where a two person glider went up and then the passenger jumped with a small parachute and ended up right back where we were watching. We biked 12 mi Sunday and 15 mi on Wednesday, and saw the group both times.

See the line pulling him up as the car drives down the road.

The Caloosahatchee River at the Ortona Lock is a narrow canal with high banks and does not look good for paddling our canoe. We like rivers that wind through wilderness areas. This river has nothing intersecting it either except for canal ditches from the nearby Orange Groves and cow pastures.       

So we decided to do some biking in the nearby development, that I talked about in our last blog.

But sometimes we forget things.

So every other day we rode out of our campground and down the highway to this totally empty development with paved streets.

We tried to go on different streets on each of our 4 rides. The map shows where we went and the total length of the ride from our campground.

We found 1 house, 1 RV and one lot with a picnic table and I sure there were at least 2000 tiny lots.

I understand that all these lots were sold by a developer years ago but it is too far from any town where you could shop or go to school. It has no sewers or electric utilities. Anyone that bought here got screwed because now they are paying $300/year in taxes and the lots would be impossible to ever sell, unless you can find another sucker.

   

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Every day the Hang Glider group was there doing their thing, so we stopped to take a our rest break and watch them have fun.

A truck pulls them down the road to launch and on these breezy days they can stay up there a long time.

If you look closely in the picture where the guy is being pulled up into the air you can see two others already up in the air already. Those aren’t birds.

The weather finally got warm and the temperature next week are supposed to go above average. January this year is at least 10^o colder than last year.

We left Sunday morning at 7:15 AM and drove to Tampa Bay. It was very foggy but traffic was light. We got to EG Simmons County Park hear Apollo Beach by 10:15 AM.

We planned to get here early to get a campsite. They do not take reservations and that’s why we try to get there on a Sunday morning when any weekenders may be leaving.

Wow for the first time ever there were 15 sites available, everyone was heading home after the weekend. So we picked site 79 which is a big site with easy bay access from our campsite.

We then drove off to do our grocery shopping for the week. We didn’t want to stop along the way since we wanted to be assured we got a campsite. We will probably stay here for 2 weeks. They changed the rules again, 30 day limit for any site.

The weather has been perfect for our first four days. A few more campers came each day but it has still not filled.

We watched the NFL games on Sunday and decided to catch up on some canoeing the next 3 days. We paddled about 3 miles each day following the marked canoe trail and paddling out in the bay when the wind was light.

The trail is well marked on posts around all the mangrove islands but they don’t even provide a map so that paddlers have some idea how long the trail is and where it actually goes. So I copied our path on a Map Your Ride App on my phone  and created this map. Click map to make it bigger. Feel free to copy.

If you follow the numbers in order from 1 to 20, it is a 2 mile paddle. At that point you can actually pick up your boat and carry it across the road back to the start. Or you could just paddle directly back which only adds another mile, for a 3 mile trip.

We did get to see a small Manatee in Manatee Bay, it surfaced right next to us and scared us while exhaling.

At high tide you can paddle right over the sandbar at the entrance to Manatee Bay.

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We got campsite 79 in the East campground which has bigger campsites than the West campground and is closer to better wind protected paddling around all the mangrove islands.

 

There are miles of paved roads in the park so it is easy to take a 6 mile bike ride without leaving the park. When the weather cools in a few days we plan to do some long bike rides around the towns of Ruskin and Apollo Beach.

On Friday things cooled off again so we decided to do a nice bike ride in the area.

We went out of the campground but the gate to Dickman Island Private Drive was closed so we biked around the block past Julie’s Fish House.

They serve all kinds of fried fish & shrimp outdoors on picnic tables. We may eat here on another day but today we we headed to Shell Point & Bahia Beach. We then found our way back into the private drive that we initially tried to enter. It’s easy to avoid the back gate on this hard packed sandy road.

At the Dickman Point I took a picture of Peggy looking at the St Petersburg skyline.

The zoom on my cell phone works pretty good, on this nice clear day. We biked back to the main gate and waited until a car came by to sneak out the gate and back into E.G. Simmons Park. This shortcut actually saves 5 miles of biking. After a ride around the park we biked back to our campsite. Overall it was a nice 15 mile ride in the cool 60^o weather.

The campground almost filled up this nice warm weekend. We paid for another week up to Super Bowl Sunday, we will probably stay beyond that.

They are now forecasting some cool weather for the first week in February, so on Sunday we decided to take a bike ride over to Apollo Beach where you can go to see the Manatees at the Viewing Area near the power station. Here is a 16 minute video produced by the power company that describes the area and the Manatees.
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We found out that because of Covid the area was closed so we went over to the Apollo Beach Nature Preserve instead. It was a 17 mile round trip bike ride mostly on neighborhood roads with good bike lanes. When we were along the busy US41 we had a nice sidewalk to ride on.

This is Apollo Beach and the view of the power plant, but you can’t get anywhere near the manatees.

There is a beach access from the parking area and a large tower, you can see in Peggy’s picture below, that must provide some area views but we did not want to go up the crowded stairs.

It was a windy ride but the temperature was perfect for a long bike ride.

The storm arrived last night, 3/4” rain and Monday is cool and windy, a good day to do a Blog.

 

Some of my blog readers were wondering where all these camp spots were in South West FL I made this map of where we have been since early December.

1. Silver Lake – Brooksville

2. Lithia Springs – SE Tampa

3. WP Franklin – Ft Myers

4. Pioneer Park – Zolfo Springs

5. Myakka SP – SE Sarasota

6. Ortona – La Belle

7. EG Simmons – Tampa Bay

8. Lithia Springs – SE Tampa

9. Silver Lake – Brooksville

This Covid year has been much different with respect to camping. We found some parks completely closed, some only using 50% of their sites and some parks, that in the past were always full. This winter, they were not totally full even on weekends.

We took another short canoe paddle around the mangrove islands on Friday. We wanted to try to avoid the wind but even though we did not go out into the bay it was no fun paddling in the strong winds.

On Friday night three US Bombers came by 3 different times practicing for their Super Bowl flyby. They need to fly over the stadium exactly at the end of the Star Spangled Banner at 6:15 on Sunday. They came from 3 different airbases hundreds of miles away and were making sure that they could coordinate their arrival time.

The weather like most years was unpredictable. December was warmer than normal, January was colder, so we were glad we headed south a little sooner than previous years. February, so far,  has been above normal temperature. We probably have had less than 1” rain and almost all of  it has  fallen at night.

So we were surprised on Saturday when we took a 18 mi bike ride over to the Apollo Beach area. We were almost back when a light rain started to fall, so by the time we got back to camp we were pretty wet. It was warm but getting more humid. An hour later it was sunny again.

On Super Bowl Sunday morning we were awakened by another thunderstorm that lasted all of 15 minutes. The rest of the day we had beautiful sunny skies  and low humidity.

The Tampa Chamber of Commerce must has made a deal with the devil, to end up with such beautiful weather for the Super Bowl.

We decided to stay on Tampa Bay at EG Simmons County Park for the Super Bowl Weekend and then next Tue or Wed try to get a campsite back at Lithia Springs after another grocery shopping trip.