2016-2017 Trip – Page 4 – Keel-Hauler's RV Travel Stories

Juniper Springs

When we left Silver Lake we drove about 25 miles to Inverness, the home of our friends Helen & Paul Tempesta. Helen insists she loves to cook and made us a wonderful roast beef dinner, my favorite. It was nice to see them again and we camped in their yard.

On Sunday we left for our favorite campground Juniper Springs. I looked up when we had been here before. We camped and canoed here with the kids. in 1969, 1973 & 1975. The spring does not look that different from 48 years ago.

1969 View 2017 View

A lot more people paddle the river now. The park rents canoes & kayaks and can provide a shuttle for private boaters. One way that works out well for us is they can do a reverse shuttle for only $10. You drop your boat off at the put-in and then drive to the small parking lot at the take-out, where they will bring your driver back to the launch. The parking lot is small and has only a few parking places that we could fit our RV into, so I did the early 8:30 AM shuttle and got a parking spot. By restricting this enzyme, it allows the male genitalia on sexual arousal, thus leading to firm erection.http://www.learningworksca.org/a-golden-opportunity/ order generic cialis is the most competitive on online medical shops. In general, erectile dysfunction can have an extremely negative effect on the development of male impotence as it causes damage cialis without prescription click content and impairs the function of arteries that are necessary to the function of an erection. It is essential that women should be very supportive. http://www.learningworksca.org/contact/ viagra without rx Be sure to wait a few days, and continue with the prescribed pain medications before misinterpreting a “normal” pain! Fact #8: You may come across various commercial or generic cialis buy advertising products that claim to cure erectile dysfunction and enhance your sexual performance. Years ago, I used to do my own bike shuttle, but the narrow bike lane on the busy state highways is too scary for me now.

The temperature was barely 50^oF but warmed to the mid 80’s when we took out.

I thought Monday would not be that busy for this 7 mile beautiful paddle down the shallow winding river. A canoe & two kayaks launched before we did but there had to be at least two dozen boats getting ready to launch. We saw nobody all day until about 2 miles before the end when we caught up to the three boats scouting the big rapid on the run. There is a big rock in the middle of a narrow chute but we didn’t make our run look too good. We paddled a little too left of the rock and clipped a small tree branch which turned us around. Maybe next time we will go a little slower and try not to show off.

This by far was the prettiest run of all our paddling in FL this year. I guess this is why we keep coming back, even though there is no power, water, TV or cell reception in the park. Ocala National Forest is large and has many wilderness campsites in the back country. But we love Juniper Springs for the beautiful spring and river. They take reservations here but they are only needed on the weekend.

Here is our planned route North to Ocean Pond and then to Stephen Foster Sate Park in the Okefenokee in Georgia.

After we paddle there if the weather looks OK in Cleveland, we plan to head up through GA to Columbia, SC and follow I-77 home.

Last Campground – Ocean Pond

We had a nice no traffic drive on back roads from Juniper Springs up to Ocean Pond campground in the Osceola National Forest. We had hoped to get a campsite with electricity but all were full.

It seems like la lot of campers like to take extended stays here since the cost is only $12/night for seniors. The only available sites had water hookups and were only $6/night.

We hoped with nice sunny skies my solar arrays could keep the batteries charged. However we had rain one morning and too much shade in our campsite to keep fully charged. We had to run the generator a few times to top off the batteries and to run our microwave, waffle iron & toaster. Our TV runs fine from the power inverter and doesn’t take that much battery power.

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We took a short ride each day past some of the rustic campgrounds in the forest. The first day was in the 80’s but after the rain & cold front came in it barely hit 70^o each day.

We were going to go up to the Okefenokee swamp and canoe when we left here on Sunday but we decided based on the weather in Cleveland and missing our families, maybe on Monday morning we should just start our drive heading home.

I think we will start on some back roads and stay off the interstate highways, at least until we reach I-77 in Columbia, SC.

Back Home a Little Early–March 7th

Here are a few pictures from this year’s trip.

We got home a little earlier than planned. We both were getting a little homesick but the biggest factor was the weather. Near the end of our trip we like to head back to northern Florida and watch the weather forecasts closely. We look for at least two good weather days to drive and some warm weather to unpack. This usually occurs around mid-March.

Even though Cleveland’s weather was warm in February all the long term forecasts were pointing to a very cold March. When we were unpacking this Wednesday it was sunny and 60^oF. The next 60^o day is not forecast to occur until April and the weather will be below freezing until around the 19th of March.

Another great decision I made was to stay off the interstate highways until we got to Columbia, SC. See the map in our last blog. We basically took US-301 which passes through lots of little towns and has speed limits of about 60 mph. Comparing it to our drive last year was like night and day. The miles were the same but we actually made it 20 minutes faster and there was virtually no traffic. We had good scenery and the drive was very relaxing. I-95/I-26 has hundreds of trucks along with cars trying to pass everybody at 75 mph. It is bumper to bumper white knuckle driving for a motorhome that only wants to go 65 mph.

It was around 1 PM when we got to I-77 so we kept on going past Columbia, and Charlotte and stopped near Statesville for the night at 3 PM. It was a good time to go through these cities with all the road construction and traffic tie-ups.

It was still a dry drive until we reached the WV Turnpike. It was not heavy or windy and the rain stopped when we left the pike. We got home at 3:30 PM and decided to wait until Wednesday to unpack in the nice warm weather. I did have to winterize the RV after I saw that a real cold spell was coming.

Our Trip by the Numbers

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We drove 3200 miles, averaging about 9 mpg.
Our average camp cost was about $18/night.
We paid as high as $46/night at Fort Desoto County Park in St. Petersburg.
We paid as low as $6/night at Ocean Pond National Forest Campground with no electric hookup.
We canoed on 11 different rivers for a total of about 120 miles.
We biked a total of over 250 miles, mostly on bike trails.

Most of all we both stayed healthy and didn’t even get a cold this winter.

I posted 30 blogs this season. This is our last Blog until next fall.

If this is the first time that you are visiting our 2016-17 Florida Blog you may want to click this to read about our trip in Chronological Order rather than going backwards (As all Blogs do) from today to the start of the trip.