FLORIDA TRIP - A Peaceful Day at Juniper Springs – Silver River State Park -- Friday, January 21, 2011

After a long day of driving yesterday, we actually needed a good night’s rest. We had quite a thunderstorm last night with a lot of lightning. It even woke me up and that’s saying a lot. I slept through Hurricane Hugo in 1989 so you know the sky was putting on a show last night.

It was damp and cool this morning, so Nancy decided to hunker down in the van and catch up with the pictures and the blog. I went on a hike to find a couple of geocaches. I found them both!! When I got back from geocaching, I wiped off the Van and Tahoe.

Nancy decided it was too cold to go kayaking today, so she packed us a lunch and we headed east on Route 40 to the Juniper Springs Recreation Area in the Ocala National Forest. We paid the $10.60 entrance fee as my National Passport was not accepted there. (I still don’t know why?) We did see a natural spring and walked the nature trail.

Natural Spring Pool

View along the Nature Trail

We inquired about the 7 mile canoe trail they have, but the ranger informed us that blow-ups, like our Sea Eagle, are not permitted.
Canoe Launch Area
Still it looks like a wonderful trip and one we might rent a canoe to do.

As we were leaving, we saw this Pileated Woodpecker on the edge of the parking lot.

When we got back to the campground, I purchased some firewood to have a campfire tonight. It took a little effort to get it burning. The wood was damp from the rain last night and I only had a small amount of kindling. But once we got it burning, we roasted hot dogs and made Smores for dessert.
Not a healthy meal, but every once in a while we do something like this and it tastes GREAT!!

We were checking the map and realized we would have to drive well over 400 miles to get home to Murrells Inlet in one day. After yesterday, I do not want to travel that far. Since the weather is not going to cooperate with us for kayaking, we decided to leave here a day early and drive about half way home. We called and made reservations at Lake Harmony Campground off I-95 in Georgia for Saturday night. It is hard to believe our vacation is coming to an end. But it has been full and fun!!

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