Map of this blog's locations click this link to open the map
With winter coming to an end here in Florida, we spent some time in February trying to figure out what our travel plans would be for the spring, summer and fall months. We did have a few stops on the calendar - two with firm dates and one open ended. In early April we have a service appointment to get our annual maintenance taken care of in Gaffney South Carolina. In mid April we have a wedding to attend in Columbus Ohio. Sometime this spring, our new furniture for the rig should be coming into the Elkhart Indiana area, but beyond that, we had no real ideas. I was thinking about exploring Minnesota but Chris did some investigation and we decided the mountains in western North Carolina might be a good spot to sit for a bit. There would be plenty of hiking opportunities being near the Smoky Mountains and the summer temps may be tolerable.
We thought it would still be nice to have a slow pace, so we looked for spots where we could settle down for a month or two. After a bunch of searching for some sort of ownership park like we had in Show Low Arizona last summer, we managed to find two good looking places. To the west of Asheville near the Maggie Valley is a place called Chill Hill. A woman has a half acre lot next to her cabin and has set it up to accommodate 2 RVs. When we called to ask about availability, we found she was going to limit it just one RV this season and we could get the spot for the months of June and July. It looks ideal for us since we really don’t use the amenities provided at an RV resort and it will be close to both the hiking in the mountains as well as Asheville.
As we continued our search, we found another more conventional campground that has long term availability for August and September. Down by the River Campground in Pineola NC is a little remote but is only about 25 miles southwest of Boone NC. After booking these spots for June thru September, we made a few more shorter reservations to cover the wedding in Columbus and Memorial Day but have only scoped out other options and a possible route to maintain flexibility to head to Elkhart when our furniture arrives. If that gets delayed past the springtime, we have left October open and would just come back to Indiana from North Carolina then.
The place we are currently at in Brooksville Florida, Belle Parc Resort, had their reservation period open up in February. We figured since we would be on the east side of the country, we would just reserve a site for next winter. We opted to not reserve the same site but picked out three other options and after they did all their scheduling, we managed to get our first choice of sites. Here’s a map of our firm (green pins) and tentative (black pins) plans for the season.
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| Possible 2021 Route |
As Chris’ ankle started to feel better, we started to find some other hiking areas not far from camp. Flying Eagle Preserve is north of us not far from Inverness. There were a fair number of geocaches hidden there so we found ourselves going back several times to explore. There are two entrances - a southern and northern. Our first visit was a hike from the southern trailhead. There was a sign at the entrance stating the area would be closed for a couple days for a feral pig hunt. Fortunately it was a few days off.
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| Southern Entrance to Flying Eagle Preserve |
All the trails are actually roads but with them being gated, we only had a few ranger or work vehicles to avoid during our 7 mile hike. The general area here has lots of ponds, lakes and wetlands. As we crossed a bridge over one waterway, there was a strange ramp that came out of the water on either side of the bridge. At first I thought it was simply a kayak launch or portage for kayakers, but it also has bumpers on either side of the ramps. I eventually saw the sign that tells air boat drivers to cross at their own risk. We didn’t get a chance to see an airboat go up and over the road even though we could hear them out on the nearby ponds.
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| Airboat Crossing |
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Airboat Ramp
As we came back to the car, we spotted a sign we had missed on the way out. “GUT PIT” isn’t a sign we have seen in the past but it would explain the large pile of animal bones we spotted in the area as we headed for a geocache when we first got there. I suspect after the upcoming pig hunt, that gut pit will be a spot to avoid! After the hike, we realized a more efficient way to explore here would be on bikes. The roads were in great shape so biking could be easily done.
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| Well Maintained Roads at Flying Eagle |
For our bike rides, we tried starting at the northern trailhead. The road conditions from here were similar but some of the geocaches were hidden along a much more minor “road” that was severely torn up by the pigs making for a challenging ride for a mile or so of our 9 mile ride. We enjoyed the ride so much we came back a second time a couple weeks later to hit another area of the preserve. This time there was a sign warning of another hunt to take place in a few days. In this case, there was going to be a “youth hunt”. I sure hope they mean the youth are going to be the hunters rather than the hunted! During this second ride, we came upon a water crossing on the road. With a few geocaches on the opposite side of the crossing, I was reluctant to just turn back. The water looked too deep to just pedal across without your feet getting wet as your pedals rotated. I debated whether I could build up enough speed to coast across without needing to pedal, but Chris stated she wasn’t willing to try so we turned back. A couple weeks later, I come back solo with my boots and easily make the crossing. One of the geocaches I found hadn’t been logged in over 6 years!
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| Water Crossing |
We found another set of caches along a trail in the Homosassa Tract of the Withlacoochee State Forest. This one is northwest of us near the town of Homosassa. The last mile or so to the trailhead on Burnt Bridge Road was a little rough but since it was dry, it wasn’t too bad. Coming here after a rain might be a different issue. We were surprised there were actually a few other cars back here but we only ran into a couple mountain bikers during our hike. This is a much smaller area than The Croom or Citrus Tracts so our several mile hike covered most of the area.
Fickett Hammock Preserve is only about 10 miles northwest of camp. There was a new geocache placed here a week ago and we figured since it hadn’t been found yet, we could try for the “First to Find” honor. It was a challenge cache that required us to have found 5 of the oldest caches in Hernando County Florida. Surprisingly we had nearly found them all during our two stays in this area. After getting one by a church not far from the preserve, we headed out on the trail.
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| Fickett Hammock Entrance |
There were no other cars in the parking lot, so we had the place to ourselves - or so we thought. A short distance along the trail, we were greeted by the strangest noise coming from the canopy of the trees surrounding us. I swore it sounded like monkeys and quite a few of them. We looked all around the tree tops but only spotted a large bird, possibly an owl and it wasn’t making any noises. In a later discussion with friends, they suggested it might have been barred owls. I knew these owls make the distinctive “who cooks for you?” call and what we heard definitely wasn’t that. However, further investigation, it turns out another call barred owls make sounds remarkably like monkeys. The 2.5 mile trail through Fickett Hammock is sort of a figure eight and we managed to get to the cache early in the loops. I was disappointed to find that some other cacher had found it earlier that same morning! Oh well, we still enjoyed the walk and learning a new noise to listen for in the woods.
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| A Quiet Owl |
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| White Rain Lily |
The Richloam Tract of the Withlacoochee National Forest is about a 30 minute drive east of camp. This is the largest of the tracts within this forest being a bit larger than the Citrus Tract. It’s too bad we waited until near the end of our stay to check it out since the hike we did was quite nice. For this hike, we parked along the rough but desolate Clay Sink Road.
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| Clay Sink Road in Richloam Tract |
We used a 6 stage multi cache as our tour guide for what turned out to be a 5.5 mile loop with a few unplanned detours along the way. The intermediate stages of this cache were clear plastic “preforms” with the next stage’s coords inside. They were generally easy to find but at one stage we questioned whether it would still be there. At this point we were following a forest service road and one side of the road had been burned. From the smell, and lack of pine needles on the ground, I estimate the area was burned within the past 2 weeks. My GPS had the hiding spot on the burned side of the road and sure enough it was still there. The plastic was a bit distorted from the heat of the fire but the numbers were still readable. I suspect it survived by being right along the side of the road so it didn’t get totally surrounded by flames. We eventually found all the stages and the final ammo can along with a nice place to get out in the woods.
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| White-Topped Sedge |
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| Recently Burned Section of Woods |
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| Unusual Orange Flower |
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| Which Way Do We Go? |
Another place not too far away near Inverness is Fort Cooper State Park. The Withlacoochee State Trail goes right by the park so we have biked by the place but waited until late in our stay to actually check it out. We didn't bring the bikes since it wasn't clear how the trails were to bicycle on plus it isn't a very big park so hiking should work out just fine. This park was the site of a fort back in the 1830's or so. Nothing is really left of the fort since it was just a wooden picket wall. However, they do have a short wall replica in place to help when they do a reenactment of the Seminole War.
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| Replica of Fort Cooper's Wall |
There were a handful of geocaches to lead us around the park. There is a small lake in the center of the park. The Sandhill Loop Trail is the longest one in the park at just over 2 miles. We were able to spend a couple hours exploring. The most predominant things we found during our hike were the thousands of caterpillars all over the park - on the trees, fences and even dangling from the trees by their silk. Apparently, spring is their time to come out in Florida. They were difficult to spot when they were hanging down at our level and many times we had them crawling on us. The bulk of them are very strange looking tussock moth caterpillars. We discovered they liked crawling on the benches so we avoided sitting on them. It was a nice park to spend a couple hours and for the most part we had the trails to ourselves (and the caterpillars).
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| Fort Cooper Lake |
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| Tussock Moth Caterpillar |
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| Salamander Poses |
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| Heading Up Sandy Trail on Sandhill Loop |
A couple other areas that aren't that big but worth a short visit if you're in the region. Johnson Pond and Oxbow Trailheads are only about a quarter mile apart from each other near Citrus Springs. Johnson Pond Trail is an easy ~3 mile walk with a nice wooden deck to look over the pond. The Oxbow Trail is only about one mile but does go along some of the Withlacoochee River and has a side trail up a small peninsula created by a horseshoe bend in the river. Another place only about 5 miles from camp is Perry Oldenburg Wildlife Area. A 1.6 mile loop trail wanders thru the forest. On the south side of the loop, the woods had been very recently burned. The smell was still in the air and very little new needles or leaves littered the forest floor. It has been interesting to see over these 5 months how these prescribed burns in the forest land nearby are actively used to manage the forest. During my first rides thru a recently burned area in Croom, I was saddened to see how charred everything looked but a couple months later it looked quite different.
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| Entrance to Johnson Pond |
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| Nice View of Withlacoochee River at Oxbow |
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| Perry Oldenburg |
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| Recent Prescribed Burn |
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| Croom on January 2, One Week After Burn |
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| Same Spot on March 20, 12 Weeks After Burn |
Not all of our geocaching is out in remote parks. We recently were going to reach our 14,000 cache milestone. Normally we like to find an interesting or historical cache for a milestone but there weren't any real caches nearby that fit our criteria. We ended up picking out one in downtown Brooksville that took us on some of the murals painted on various buildings around town. It wasn't quite as monumental as finding Geocaching Headquarters for our 10,000 find milestone but some of the murals were interesting and well done. We also had a virtual cache we did in the Florida National Cemetery. This is a very large military cemetery that apparently is quite large and is rather busy. Like most of these places, the grounds are meticulously cared for and a very scenic spot.
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| Brooksville Livery Stable Mural |
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| Brooksville Fire Department Mural |
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| Florida National Cemetery |
During our five month stop here in Brooksville, we made good use of our time to get some work accomplished in the rig. With new captains chairs and furniture on order, we selected the same fabric in a coordinating color and upholstered our chairs and window treatments. Admittedly we had reupholstered them when we were in Florida 2 winters ago but wasn’t fond of the vinyl fabric we had selected. Having done this work before made us confident we could tackle this project again. And if I do say so myself, the chairs came out much nicer. The place we ordered the fabric from had actually sent us over half a yard more than we paid for, so we managed to also reupholster the headboard of our bed. We seemed to have dozens of much smaller things to tackle both in the rig and the Jeep, but we had the time to deal with them so I slowly worked thru the list.
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| Left: New Fabric; Right: 2 Year Old |
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| Original Headboard |
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| Newly Upholstered Headboard Installed |
We stayed socially isolated for the most part but did get in some small, outdoor get togethers in. A couple (Gina and Chris) we had met thru RVillage in August 2019 back in Grand Tetons NP, and then again in Las Vegas, and Palm Springs before COVID hit, happened to come thru Brooksville. They were having a gathering on a friends farm just south of town. We headed there to meet them and had a chance to meet a bunch of other RVers. We also got to catch up with our friends, Wardene and Dick, in an RV park about 40 minutes from us. We had worked with them back in July 2017 on a Habitat for Humanity build north of Seattle Washington. They have a park model so they have a bit more room when they head south for the snowbird season.
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| Cows Next to the RVillage Get Gathering |
During normal times, we move every one to four weeks, so we tend to not have too many items removed from their normal storage spot. But after the four months in Show Low Arizona and the five months here in Brooksville, I find it rather astounding how much of our stuff come out. Plus we took advantage of our extended stays to order things we "needed". We spent a few days before we were to leave just to make sure everything still fits in the rig! It will be nice to get back on the road again.
