February 15 Central Florida

On January 26 we moved our camper to Lake Louisa State Park near Clermont, slightly west of Orlando. It is the area known as the Florida Ridge and is hillier than it has been in other parts of Florida. This part of Florida is also full of lakes, many of which are interconnected and the the state park has several including Lake Hammond, Lake Dixie, Bear Lake, Smokehouse Lake and its namesake Lake Louisa!  Mark kayaked on the Crooked River which goes between Lake Louisa and Lake Susan. We took some nice hikes at the park and Mark enjoyed picking and eating wild tangerines. One morning we took a Segway tour at the park. Neither of us had been on a Segway before and we enjoyed our tour. It only takes a little bit to get the hang of riding them and then it is quite intuitive.

The Orlando area is a huge, sprawling metro area with construction going on everywhere. There are new subdivisions going up all over the place. We had a wide range of temperatures while we were in the area from 32 degrees and frost warnings to 80 degrees. 32 was the coldest it has been here in 4 years !

We visited some friends in the area: Michael and Lea, Mark’s cousin and his wife were in the area to golf and we spent several hours visiting with them. We also got together with Deborah and Tom. Deborah went to library school with me and was also one of my bridesmaids. We had lunch together and then went to a free tour and wine tasting at Lakeridge Winery and Vineyards. Yes they do grow grapes in Florida : Muscadine grapes varieties which are sweeter than most, but make some fine wine. It was a lot of fun. 

While at Lake Louisa we visited Harry P. Leu Gardens. They are a beautiful tropical botanical garden. It was very lush and jungly with lots of palms and cycads. They also had a huge display of camellias! 

One afternoon we went to the Nature Conservancy’s Disney Preserve south of Kissimmee. It is an 11,000 acre preserve (8,000 acres of which was donated by Disney). It is a very nice area . We took a 3 mile hike and saw lots of song birds.

We spent a day at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. I particularly liked the African, Asia and Pandora the world of Avatar areas. The animals in Africa and Asia were amazing. We took the Kilamanjaro Safari ride twice and saw lots of animals in their habitats. We saw a baby white rhino and its mother. Even the tram driver was surprised at that. I think we saw all the shows and rode all the rides. We stayed for the lighting of the “tree of life “ when the park was closing. It was a long day and we were exhausted, but we had a great time.

On February 4, we moved north a little ways to Alexander Springs  Campground in Ocala National Forest. That day the temperature got up to 81 degrees and we went swimming in the spring. It is a constant 72 degrees and incredibly clear and beautiful. We had lots of fish swimming around our feet. The next day the temperature dropped down to a high of 61 degrees. We drove a ways north to visit Salt  Springs recreation area. Another beautiful spring.  We took hikes on the Bear Swamp Trail and the Salt Spring Nature Trail Loop, both beautiful walks.

Alexander Springs

Salt Spring

Salt Spring Trail

The next day we visited Blue Spring State Park. It is another 72 degree spring and manatees come here for the warm water. The manatee count that Sunday was 235. There is a really nice board walk along the spring run and the water is so clear that you could see lots of manatee and fish also. We also took a 2 hour boat tour on the St Johns River. We had a great guide. She has been doing this for 23 years and could really spot the wildlife! We saw alligators, manatees. American bittern, limpkin, black crowned night heron, sandhill cranes on their nest and lots more. On the way back to our campground, we stopped at DeLeon  Spring State Park. We are discovering how different all these springs are. 

Blue Spring

Limpkin

Sandhill Crane on nest

Black Crowned Night Heron

Monday and Tuesday were rather dreary and rainy. We did manage to hike for about 2 hours between rain showers on the Florida trail as it passes near our campground. The trail stretches 1500 miles from the Everglades to Pensacola. We found it to be a very nice trail and well marked. Mark found 5 geocaches along the way.

On February 9, we moved south again to Wekiwa Spring State Park on the northern end of the Orlando metro area. It is a very nice state park and we biked, hiked, swam in the spring and Mark kayaked. 

Wekiwa Spring

We also made a day trip to the city of Winter Park. Winter Park is a beautiful city on four lakes which are connected by canals. We took an hour long boat tour which went on 3 of the lakes and 2 canals. The majority of the homes on the lakes, and throughout the city are huge beautiful homes. We also walked the main shopping street, and the Kraft Azalea Garden. We also visited the Albin Polasek Museum and Sculpture Garden that displayed his works. Our final stop was a walk through the campus of Rollins College. It is a very nice campus situated on Lake Osceola.

On our last full day at Wekiwa Springs Mark was reading his Facebook page and found an entry in a bird watching site about Lake Apopka North Shore Wildlife Drive, so off we went. It was amazing!  The 11 mile drive is managed by the St. Johns River Water Management District. They are trying to rejuvenate it from years of farming fertilizer and pesticide contamination. We saw thousands and thousands of birds, mostly water fowl and anhingas and lots of alligators. We saw herons and limpkins on nests. In one place we saw tons of whistling ducks. It was quite the excursion.

Black Bellied Whistling Ducks

Now we are at Silver Springs State Park near Ocala, but more about that next time…

 January 29,  Sarasota and Sebring

Two weeks sure goes by fast. We spent 8 nights at Oscar Scherer State Park, south of Sarasota and north of Venice. We really liked the park and the area. We hadn’t spent a lot of time in this area before and we enjoyed the park with hiking, geocaching and biking. There is a 21 mile bike trail that goes through the park and runs from Sarasota to Venice. We rode 10.7 miles on it from the park to Venice and back. Unlike many Oregon bike trails, it was totally flat except when it went over roads. Mark went kayaking on South Creek in the park and sailed his RC sailboat on the lake. One morning we went on a birding walk with a naturalist and saw the endangered Florida Scrub Jays, a pair of bald eagles and their babies on their nest.

On two different days, we drove over to Myakka State Park about 1/2 hour east. We stayed there in the past and really liked all the wildlife so we took a tram ride through remote sections of the park and took a pontoon boat tour on Myakka Lake. The rather large lake’s depth fluctuates from season to season depending on rainfall, but right now its deepest point is two and a half feet. We saw lots of alligators and birds including roseate spoonbills. We saw a huge alligator surrounded by vultures. It seems that alligators have a hard time digesting bird feathers so they pretty much leave them alone! We went to the birding boardwalk, the canopy walkway (25 feet up in the air) and the nature trail. It is a really nice park.

We also went to Selby Gardens both at their downtown Sarasota site and their Historic Spanish Point site. The downtown gardens are magnificent. We roamed all over seeing greenhouses  full of amazing orchids. The Spanish Point site is more wild, but equally nice. There were also some historic homes from early settlers in the area. Another interesting indoor display was of a thousand+ year old Indian midden. The display noted what was going on all over other parts of the world when the native people lived there.

We found out that the RIngling Museum of Art has free admission on Mondays so we decided to go. What an amazing place!  Ringling (of circus fame) decided to collect art and then build what looks like a Italian palazzo to house them in. The 21 galleries are full of amazing art, mostly early European, including five huge paintings by Ruben. When wealthy NY homes were going to be demolished in the thirties for skyscapers, he bought 2 fabulous rooms, had them dismantled, moved and reconstructed in the museum. The outside courtyard and formal gardens were equally beautiful we also saw the Ringling home Ca D Zan. It was a very enjoyable visit.

Another day we went to Caspersen Beach near Venice. This beach is famous for fossilized sharks teeth. There were hundreds of people on the beach looking for them - what you do is get sand and gravel in a sifter or screen box and then go through it when it is out of the water. We were not too well prepared (we had a spaghetti colander) but we managed to find a few. Afterwards we went to the Venice City beach. We had lunch at a restaurant overlooking the beach and later walked out on the Venice Fishing Pier.

Our next camping stop was at Highlands Hammock State Park two hours east of the coast and four miles from the town of Sebring. The park was built by the CCC back in the 30’s and we visited the CCC museum that was housed in the old activities buildings they built.  We also took a tram tour to  get the lay of the land. Our guide was very good and pointed out lots of birds, turtles and alligators and he pointed out interesting plants like Bladder Wort which eats mosquito larvae, and crimson and cardinal bromeliads which  bloom only once in their lifetime. The park has lots of trails which go through different habitats. Our favorite was the Cypress Swamp Trail. It was a boardwalk originally built by the CCC and is really cool. I think that we hiked all but one of the trails. They had a cool paved loop road that all the trails came off and it was really great for bike riding also. There was also a fire road that circled the park for bike riding that we rode many times and one day we found seven geocaches along it. 

One day we took an excursion to Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales. It is a beautiful garden and we walked all around it and enjoyed the beautiful gardens. At 1pm we enjoyed a very nice carillon concert from the  beautiful Bok Tower. After a nice lunch on the patio of the garden restaurant, we went to a few places in the garden that we missed. At one place, there was a bird feeder and we were surprised and amazed to see about a half dozen painted buntings. Mark was so thrilled!

Now we have moved on to Lake Louisa State Park near Clermont Florida and west of Orlando.

The weather forecast is for the coldest weather this area has seen in 4 years and it is all over the news. We will have to wait and see what happens. More later!