St.Sebastion River Preserve

Hoping the temps  are cooler tomorrow during our road time and no heavy rains to drive in.
Worked today on consolidating things in the camper and eliminating some things. Next is to consolidate the storage units to just one.
Leaving here early  in the morning ,off to our next adventure.
Follow along and enjoy our travels with us.
Leave us comments  and let us know you are with us from your couch. We love to hear  from you.

Various shots

Ocala RV Sun Resort June 2011

We love marshmellows, even the huge ones our Granny found for us.

                               Granny is  there any more snacks?

                                                   Bryan  giving me one of his great big smiles.

LOL, Bryan  laying in the floor  doing various poses for me to take his pictures.

 Picture perfect smile  for my Granny.

                                          Bryan learning to float.

 I can dive like a pro.  Watch me Granny.  Gimpy  be sure to get my picture.

 Im cold and tired and ready  to get me a snack.

Yes even Buddy had a hard morning at the pool.  He so hates being left out.

As you can tell from all the shot's of the grands, we have really enjoyed having them over at the camper. Sad, that Mason was sick and not able to be there with the older boys.  Feel better Mason, Granny loves you.

Mason playing with Buddy's water bowl. Poor little bugger was just covered  in a rash.
I just love having all the cute pictures  to go back and look at while we are at our next State Park.
Smooches  to my babies, don't grow up too fast.

Last Week at Big Shoals State Park

Time is coming to a end for our stay at Big Shoals State Park.
We have really enjoyed  the time here, it has been fun and action packed 3 months.

                                               Rd 1 by Little Shoals

This is shots from Little Shoals Side of the park.  Mossy Ravine  trail.

Gil went to open the gates this morning and wild hogs was in Ranger Dylan's yard. No camera with him, but he said there was 2 large ones and about 8 babies.
Gil needed to get the mowing completed prior to our leaving. So he went to get the trailer from Stephen Foster Shop, so he could bring the mower down from Ranger Gary's house.

Dust blowing every where. Poor Gil even wearing a face mask and glasses had trash fly in his eyes.
Long hot shower needed tonight. Thank goodness, we have a great shower in our camper.

Not sure  we can salvage that shirt.  The back looks 10 times worse  than the front. And this is when he was just getting started.  Mower and trailer back to respective places, now to drive the 4 wheeler back to Ranger Gary's.   Gates  closed  and we are settled down for the evening.

Friday  we had a call from Stephen Foster Ranger station. Lost visitors in the park.  Gil took off with cold water, in search of lost visitors. Visitors found and glad of the water and ride back to their car.
Flip Flops on feet, no water and lost in the woods  for approx. 5 hours. They managed to get to a spot where they got a weak signal and googled Stephen Foster for a phone number to call  for help. Thank goodness we was at home packing things up from outside.

                                        Sunsets on CR135 in White Springs, Fl.

  Deer on Godwin Bridge Rd, as we was returning  to camp after shutting the gates at Little Shoals.

Sunday we head out early to Ocala. We will visit with family for 3 days  then we will head farther south to St. Sebastion River Preserve  for our next 3 month stint. Stay tuned for life at the Preserve.

Northeast Florida State Parks

We set out this morning on a run to Hardees  for my much craved Country Ham and Biscuits breakfast.
While enjoying the biscuit  I thought  lets go towards Jacksonville  and check out the state parks over there. Beautiful day, lets enjoy the beaches some.

We decided to stop at all parks and check out  if they needed/used  volunteer host.

Ocean Pond Campground in the Osceola National Forest. We found a volunteer and after Gil talked with him, we decided this was NOT a park we wanted to help in.  So we set off to search out other parks. so back out on HWY 90 we went towards Jacksonville.

Smoke in the air so thick  it was hard to see oncoming traffic  if they didn't have headlights on.

  Ranger  at the gate, informed us  we could not take Buddy in the park. There was no place that he was allowed.  So we turned around and drove down the street to visit the ocean.

I thought it would be fun to find the very end of the road here in Fernandina Beach.  So we left this beach and drove north  on the only road  we could go north on. HA!!  it was a dead end  with water all around us. A private yard so couldn't get a picture of the point created here.

Back down the road to another public beach with a boardwalk that allowed pets.

Nice beach, boardwalk handicap accessible. Life guard on duty.


Off to find Amelia Island State Park.

 This is a park to keep in mind for a horse ride on the beach. Or fishing on the other side of the bridge.

Next park to check out will be the Talbot Island parks.

We drove down to Talbot Island. Ranger had a hard time getting up to come to the door. We asked about driving through and checking the park out with Buddy. He also stated, Buddy wasn't allowed in his park.  We could go back to Nassau County  and take him to the public beach. Sad, I wanted  to check out the campground for future reference. Guess, we wont be back.

So far on this journey  we have not found a park  that  we would make this drive to return to. This saddens me, I  had hoped all Florida Parks  would be clean and inviting as the ones over in White Springs area.  I used the restroom in 2 of the above parks. Dirty stalls  and no soap or towels.  

 We found one more park.
This is a City park. Boondock camping on the beach.

 Largest horseshoe crab I have ever saw. The shell was over a foot across.

Honestly, this park is the only one today that excited me.  Plenty of place's to tent camp or put a small camper  on the rise above the beach. Air was cool, even with 102 temp.  Intriqued by the Navy vessels and the Helicopters circling and escorting a big vessel in  port.

 We managed to get stopped at a train crossing. And this odd looking tubes ran beside the track overhead. There  was a power plant  to our right, so probably they used these tube to move coal off ships.

I-10

Getting late in the day, we need to head back to camp.  Decided it would be best to take I-10 back to Lake City . Had to do a little back tracking in Jacksonville to get on I-95  so we could get over to I-10.   AS you can see, 6 hours later  we still encountered  heavy smoke on our way home.  I believe the smoke was over a 30 mile section of I-10, then it more or less disappeared.

Home and neither of us real hungry. Sandwiches for us tonight, then off to shut the parks 4 gates.  Mr. Paggent stopped us  and gave us some fresh cucumbers.  This is another local that knows this area history.
I took camera hoping to get a shot of the deer jumping in front of us. Nope..... these animals must have ESP. They tend to only jump out at us when I do not have the camera with me. One day  I will get my shot.