Brooksville Part 3

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Having spent five months here last season, we have been to most of the parks and preserves but we have enjoyed some of them enough to go back several times either for hiking or biking. Flying Eagle Preserve is one of those that seems to get us to come back. We have done a couple of hikes here but the real draw for us is mountain biking. The preserve is one of many that is part of the Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD). Lands under their control seem to have well maintained gravel roadways that allows workers to easily get to remote sections of the preserve. In the dozen or more times we have explored SWFWMD lands, we have only come across a couple of work vehicles. Some of the preserves have camping facilities so there are occasionally campers on a small portion of the roads near campgrounds. But other than that, the roads tend to be an ideal, secluded place for a nice bike ride.

Good Sunset Colors Over Lake

Flying Eagle Preserve is large and there are several parking areas and entrances. We tend to prefer the northern entrance off of Boy Scout Road just east of Inverness. Besides getting in a bike ride, I had one other mission in mind. Last March, I had tried to find a remote geocache that doesn’t get a lot of action. This is probably because it is on the other side of a stream that crosses the road. I hadn’t found it back then, but I noticed somebody had found it buried in lots of tree debris just a month ago. I knew Chris wouldn’t be willing to wade across the stream but knew she could patiently wait while I made the attempt. We got to the stream and it was moving fairly quickly. I swapped from my cycling shoes to the water sandals I had brought along for the crossing. Using my bike like a walker helped me stay upright in the swift current. The water was just below my knees so no clothing got wet. After I crossed, I just left the sandals on and biked back the quarter mile to the cache location. I had no problems finding the cache this time and headed back to locate Chris. She managed to snap a photo as I came back across. I switch back to my cycling shoes and we enjoyed riding around some of the non-flooded roads. Our ride included a less maintained side road that was along a bit of a canal. We never saw the gator that jumped from the bank into the water, but from the splash, it looked to be a large one. We turned around to avoid becoming lunch!

Stream Crossing

Jack Returns Across Stream

We had plans to take a hike in Fickett Hammock Preserve on the next day but found it was closed. The barricade just had an OSHA warning so we assumed they were doing some heavy trail maintenance or getting ready for a prescribed burn. That forced us to switch gears. We headed north about 5 miles to Annutteliga Hammock Preserve simply because we noticed a geocache was hidden there. AllTrails shows a 3.8 mile loop trail thru the woods. We had never visited this place but that was all the more reason to check it out. The trailhead is a tenth of a mile or so from the main road along a very bumpy dirt road. There were two trucks in the parking lot so we knew we weren’t alone. The sign at the trailhead had hunting dates and we were within one of them. Over the years, we have learned to either avoid hunting areas or wear blaze orange. We’ve also learned to just keep the bag with our orange vests and hats in the Jeep for just such a situation.

Annutteliga Hammock Entrance

With our safety gear on, we head out on the loop in a counterclockwise direction simply because it appeared to be where the cache would be. It was a very pretty hike and mostly wooded. We kept a watchful eye out for hunters since we assume the two trucks likely belonged to hunters not geocachers! With the cache found, we decide to complete the loop. We didn’t see a lot of wildlife. Just the occasional butterfly or bird. At one trail intersection we did spot the backend of a whitetail deer as it tried to get away from us. Near the end of the loop, we spotted the two hunters heading back to their trucks. We caught up with them in the parking lot but they did not have any luck not even a sighting. When I mentioned we saw one deer, they wanted to know if it was a buck. Since I saw the wrong end to determine this, I couldn’t confirm their hopes. This was a very nice walk in the woods that we hadn’t planned on.

Zebra Longwing Butterfly

I’ve mentioned several times about the three paved rail trails that are near Brooksville (Withlacoochee State Trail, Good Neighbor Trail and Suncoast Trail). As we were looking around on the geocaching map, we spotted another likely trail we didn’t know about. There was a long line of close to 100 geocaches which is almost always a dead giveaway for a trail. We investigated and found the Van Fleet Trail. This is a 29 mile paved rail trail from the small town of Mabel in the north to Polk City in the south. There are only 4 trailhead locations - at both ends and the other two at about the 10 and 20 mile points. The northern trailhead is only about a 30 mile drive from camp so it’s reasonably close.

We head to Mabel with the bikes one day and find a nice trail, with parking and bathrooms with flush toilets! We head south the 10 miles to the Bay Lake trailhead where we find another parking area with bathrooms. This trail is nice because it is quite rural, no road crossings and isn’t used by many people. There were at least a dozen gopher tortoises along the sides of the paths - some looking to cross the trail while others were ready to bolt into their holes. The trail is nearly perfectly straight, so you can see a long ways ahead. At one point I saw what I assumed to be a cat sitting in the middle of the trail. As I approached, it went into the brush along the side of the trail. It looked larger than the normal cat and from what I could see of it staring back at us, I suspect it was a bobcat. There are some occasional wet areas on either side of the trail and we also spotted a larger turtle on the trail. It was a fun ride and suspect we will be back.

View Along the Van Fleet Trail

Gopher Tortoise Near About to Cross Trail

Old Pickup Truck

Another Tortoise Ready to Hide

Box Turtle Mostly in Hiding

In early December, Belle Parc was starting to fill up. Some people will wait until after the holidays to arrive but I suspect we are close to 90% full. A lot of the people with waterfront sites across the lake have their Christmas lights up so it made for a good night picture. There is still a lot of bird activity. I find the osprey the most fascinating to watch. It sits up in a tree with a commanding view of the lake and keeps a sharp eye out for fish. Occasionally I will get lucky enough to see it make a fishing plunge. Below is a sequence of shots I got during a failed attempt.

Xmas Lights Across Lake at Belle Parc

Osprey Showing Off Its Foot

The Launch

Aerodynamic Form During Dive

Talons Extended

Come Up Empty

We needed to make a trip to Tampa to drop my sister and brother-in-law off at the airport. It’s a pretty easy drive down the tollway and the airport itself isn’t bad to navigate around. Since we were this far south, we headed to one of our favorite restaurants - Skyline Chili. It’s a Cincinnati thing and we got the chance to eat at them many times over the spring when we were in the southwestern Ohio area. But there are also a few of them on the Gulf Coast of Florida - the one in Clearwater being close to Tampa. While we were eating, Chris checked out what else there was to do in the area and found something that looked interesting. Just south of Clearwater in the town of Largo is the Florida Botanical Gardens and Heritage Village. The two places share the same parking area but don’t have the same hours so we check out Heritage Village first since it has shorter visiting hours.

Walsingham House

Pretty Chevy Pickup

Thunderbird from the 1950's

It didn’t take long to determine what Heritage Village is - a place to explore the history of Pinellas county. There were all sorts of different building that have been moved or rebuilt here that tell part of the story. We happened to arrive just after a large tour bus dropped off 40 people for their own tour. We found it easier to just jump ahead of them to avoid the large crowd. There are many displays that we found interesting but we knew we had limited time so we couldn’t spend too long at any given location.

Gator Replica?

Old Fire Engine Inside

Large Cabin

The building that highlights the railway system on the area was neat with lots of displays of old equipment and even a caboose although it looked like it could use a refurbishing. There were also many old cars and trucks scattered around the buildings. We probably could have spent more than the hour we had available but still got to see most of the village.

Old Lanterns

"It's for You"

Caboose

Old Ford Pickup

A Beauty

Next we head to the opposite side of the parking lot to check out the Florida Botanical Gardens. Even here we had to watch our time. The gardens were decorated with lots of Christmas lights for an evening display. They clear out the gardens and then reopen after sunset with a separate paid admission. Not that we didn’t want to see the lights, but we still had a long drive home so we opted to check out the bulk of the 150 acres before sunset. There were lots of really interesting plants and flowers. These types of gardens where they have nearly all of the plants labeled help us learn some of the ones that are native to an area. We enjoyed the gardens and even found a geocache hidden on the grounds.

Walkway in Botanical Gardens

Christmas Doggie Display

Fountain

Fig Tree

The next day I went for a solo hike to another place we haven’t visited before about 20 minutes north of Brooksville. Oak Park North trail is just under a 4 mile loop and, being Florida, doesn’t have much change in elevation. There were no other vehicles in the parking lot but at the trailhead sign, I discovered this part of the Withlacoochee State Forest allows hunting and this was hunting season. Back to the car for my blaze orange and off I went. The first half of the trail was a sandy fire road that wasn’t too difficult since no vehicles had been thru in some time and the sand was reasonably firm. It was a pretty hike and I never came across a hunter or anybody else. The send half of the trail was more of a single track thru the woods. It was pleasant but a but overgrown in spots and long pants might have been a better option. After seeing the one huge Golden Silk Orbweaver along the trail, I paid close attention to avoid running into one.

Oak Park North Entrance

Path at Oak Park North

Big Spider

One other thing I finally got to was installation of our new water purification system in the motorhome. Our rig came with a whole house water filter. I typically use a 0.5 micron filter in the canister to do a good job of removing particles. I have learned that if that’s the only filter I use, it tends to clog up quickly depending one where we are in the country. So I also add the ubiquitous Camco inline water filter to the hose before water enters the rig. This less expensive filter is good to 5 microns and extends the life of the whole house filter. For the past year, I have added the Clear2O sediment pre filter that is good to 20 microns. It simply goes inline at the Camco filter. This has gotten the water coming into the rig to a good purity level but we still used a Brita water filter to fill our drinking water bottles.

For the past couple years, we have watched YouTube videos about a UV water purification system that many RVers are adding to their setup. The Acuva system uses UV light to eliminate 99.9999% of the bacteria and viruses found in drinking water. This might not be much of a concern when we are connected to a large town’s municipal water system, but there are times we are in some questionable areas. Plus if we need to draw water from our onboard fresh water tank, who knows what might be growing in that water. After Thanksgiving, the company had a Black Friday sale going one and we decided to order one.

The system comes with it’s own inline prefilter, the main UV filter and a separate faucet. The nice thing about the unit is it only turns one when there is a request for purified water. I decide to plumb it in such a way so that the purified water goes to our refrigerator ice maker and in the door water dispenser as well as the separate faucet. The only difficulties in doing the install was drilling a 3/4 inch hole thru the Corian countertop and simply crawling underneath the kitchen sink to mount and plumb all the components. It only required one trip to the hardware store to buy the drill bit and and the extra fittings to plumb the refrigerator. The system works nicely. The flow rate is reduced a little bit in order to make sure the water is in the path of the UV light long enough to properly purify the water. They do make larger (more expensive) systems that provide for a higher flow rate but we find ours is fine.

Kitchen Faucet and Acuva Smart Faucet on Right

Acuva System Under Sink