Three Rivers State Park

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With our stay in St Augustine coming to an end, we needed to figure out our next stop. We have enjoyed Florida State Parks in the past and decided to try to find one about 200 miles away. Three Rivers State Park is northwest of Tallahassee, near where Florida, Georgia and Alabama intersect. They had a few spots open for a week long stay, so we reserved a sight and headed there Monday morning.

The traffic in Jacksonville was not too bad and we managed to make the rest of the trip along I-10 without problems. The park is in the town of Sneads Florida which is just across the line between eastern and central time zones. Since the park is this close to the line, we found the iPad and phone would sometimes be in one time zone and then switch to the other randomly. We had run into a similar issue this summer in the UP of Michigan but hadn't considered this fact when picking this park. Good thing we really didn't have anything to do that was time critical.

One of the first nights at the campground, I went out onto the dock over the lake and setup to do some night sky photography. Maybe it was just all the signs warning about gators, but sitting there with no moonlight for a couple hours while I waited to finish up my session, I heard all sorts of sounds that I kept attributing to a gator. The deck had fencing the whole way around at water level, so the only approach they would have was up onto land and onto the dock. The mind plays interesting tricks in times like these. The water was so still that I was able to even get reflection of the brighter stars off of it.

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Milky Way Just Barely Visible

Getting Better at Finding North Star for Time Lapse

The park was nice and being up in the panhandle of Florida, the terrain is not flat. It isn't quite Western New York hilly, but we still enjoyed the hiking trails and I even got the mountain bike out for the first time in several weeks.

View of Lake Seminole Near Campgrounds

View Along Lake Trail in Park

Although the park was a bit crowded on the weekend, it was a sparse crowd the rest of the time. This worked out well since we were able to use the nice shower facilities thus saving our holding tanks for laundry. Like most state parks, we have water and electric but no sewer hookups on site.

We learned that the region we are in is called "the wiregrass". Although more of a southeastern Alabama area, it extends into portions of Florida and Georgia. I had to look up what wiregrass is and discovered it's simply a type of native grass common in this area. And every time we went for a hike we would definitely notice it along the trails.

There were not a lot of sightseeing spots in this general area but we did manage to go over to another nearby state park - Florida Caverns State Park just north of the town of Marianna. As the name implies, there are caverns here. We picked a day they offer tours of them and paid our $8 apiece to get the tour. Our ranger did a good job with what he had to work with. It was nice but not as large as the ones we visited a few months ago in Illinois. The development of this park was helped by the CCC. This included work on the paths through the cavern itself. One interesting fact is that without electricity to help light the way, the workers would embed their white plates in the ceiling of the cave and hang their lantern below. The plate worked as a reflector. The plates have been left in place as a reminder of the past.

Almost Looked Like Frosting

Chris Enjoying the Cavern

Lots of Detail

A CCC Dinner Plate as Reflector

Flowing

Another day trip was to Hinson Conservation and Recreation Area just south of Marianna. Here is yet another example of a park we would have never known existed but for geocaching. None of our maps showed the typical green denoting a park of some type was there, but there were a dozen or so geocaches all clustered together. Further investigation resulted in us finding a great park with a 4 mile trail. Some of it was along a river and the rest was through woods and open fields. We nearly had the place to ourselves only seeing a couple cars in the parking area and one other person on the trail.

Along the Chipola River at Hinson

Chipola River Appears Low

One of the Caches had a Dinosaur to Greet Us

We did a bit more driving around the area and discovered that cotton is a big crop in this area. I don't recall seeing so much in any other areas we have traveled. Maybe it is because it is ready to be harvested so it is very pronounced in the fields. It even gets baled up much like hay although the bales seem a bit larger, probably since it's a lighter crop.

Cotton Fields

We came across an old mill that has been converted to a private residence now so we could not get a great look at it. It was a beautiful setting but we both agreed that having the constant sound of a water fall under your house would require more bathroom visits than normal. We also drove past on small town in Georgia that we felt a little bit sorry for if only for the town's name - Little Hope!

Howard's Mill with Flowing Water

Sad Town Name!

We were also reminded about some of the critters native to the region. Fortunately no alligators were spotted but we did experience several spiders that are HUGE with a nearly 2" long body! I later found out they are called golden silk spiders. As geocachers, we often find ourselves following a trail but when getting close to the hide, needing to go off trail and search. Those are the times when you run into these guys. Occasionally literally running into them! But with a careful eye, you can generally avoid them and their webs. Maybe being this big helped us avoid them.

Chris Spots a Spider

Mean Looking Spider

We also came across a couple old trains sitting in parks. Surprisingly one of them was open and permitted exploration.  We also headed to the dam created Lake Seminole which our park is situated next to. All in all it was a nice week and a good area to explore. The only thing we didn't check out was Dothan Alabama's Peanut Festival. Which looked a lot like your typical county fair but just with a theme.

Choo Choo

Chris and Her Caboose