Brooksville Part 3

Map of this blog's locations click this link to open the map

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

Brooksville Part 2

Map of this blog's locations click this link to open the map

Our stay in Brooksville wasn’t simply sitting around our campsite and watching all the birds. We did get out to see some other things. Belle Parc has a fairly active Facebook page where others will post about restaurants they tried or upcoming events in the area. One such post was about a sand sculpting exhibition in Treasure Island (TI). While TI isn’t super close to Brooksville, it sounded like the ~80 mile drive might be worth the effort. We decided to attempt to avoid the possible large weekend crowds and headed there on Friday morning. The traffic in the Tampa/St Petersburg area is never fun but we arrived in TI early enough to have no problems finding a parking spot. We parked very near a geocache hidden about 50 feet from the pirate mascot of town.

Pegleg Guards the Chest at Treasure Island

The Sanding Ovations event is free to the public and as one may expect, right along the beach. There were many dozens of vendors with their tents setup selling a wide range of products from paintings to furniture and of course some food.

Entrance to Sanding Ovations

Lots of Vendors

We skip the vendors to go check out the sculptures before the crowds increased. In my mind, I had envisioned several hundred feet of beach with 50 sand sculptures to greet us. So it was slightly disappointing to find only 13 sculptures in a relatively small area next to the vendor area. But what was lacking in terms of quantity, was more than made up in quality.

Octopus Woman

Mermaid and Frog

Mermaid Closeup

More than half of the sculptures were already complete with each one roped off. There was usually a sign to tell the name of the artist and where they are from. The creativity and detail in each one was astounding. Some were scratched with something like a comb to leave a coarse texture while others were finished so smoothly that it looked more like a sculpture made of concrete.

Looks Dangerous

Pregnant Mermaid

Incredible Detail

Smooth Like Concrete

Tort-a-Potty - Sand Sculpture Humor

In a sense, our timing was perfect. Had we arrived a day earlier, few of the works would have been completed. Arriving a day later, they likely all would have been complete. We spent more time watching the artists working on the 4 sculptures in progress than the other 9 combined.

A Dolphin Emerges

We All Live in a Sand Submarine

Adding Facial Details

While the creativity and craftsmanship was remarkable, as engineers, we were curious about the construction techniques. We don’t have a lot of hands on experience with making sand castles but most kids create them by taking a bucket of sand, adding water, compacting and turning the bucket over hoping it will release smoothly. Then using a plastic cup to do the same thing and adding this to the top of the first shape - it’s an additive process.

From the looks of these pros, we create them all wrong. First off, since there aren’t large holes in the beach next to each sculpture, they must have the sand brought in - probably many yards of it for each sculpture. Next they use plywood or plastic forms to create a shape that is larger than the finished result. They have water spigots right next to their work area so they don’t have to waste time running down to the shore with a bucket for water! Then they fill the forms with sand and water and compact. They work up from the base building as they go. Then they strip off the forms from the top and start the real work. Their technique is a subtractive process. To create that spiral tower, start with 3 large cylinders of sand stacked on top of one another then use a trowel or other tool to start removing sand. Occasionally step back to see how it looks and proceed. It looks rather involved and takes more skill than we have!

Elaborate Castle Underway

Troweling a Spire

Another Sculpture Take Shape

Fish Market

Beached Whale

Whale Passengers

It was starting to get a bit more crowded around the sculptures so we decided to take a walk. Adjacent to the sand sculpture area was a large kite taking advantage of the breeze. There were a few others on the ground so it looks like more will be going up soon.

Big Kite Flying

Still on the Ground

We continue north along the beach with no real destination in mind. There were lots of people out enjoying the weather as well. Some were sunbathing, others playing in the water and several were shell hunting. There were some birds we weren’t familiar with but we rather interesting looking.

Black Skimmer

Royal Tern?

In a little over a mile we ran into a channel (Johns Pass). We would need to get to the main road and take the bridge across if we wanted to continue further. We decide to simply head back. It was then we noticed a boat that had a 20 foot wide screen of some sort displaying adds. It was going along the coast and had turned into Johns Pass. The ads showed up remarkably well given how sunny of day we were having. On the way back, I noticed a sandcastle. It was better than most we usually see on a beach but not quite ready for the exhibition.

Bridge Over Johns Pass

Modern Advertising - Florida Style

Wanna-be Sand Sculpture

By the time we got back to the sculpture area, it was very crowded. There was a guy that was making some soap bubbles bigger than we have ever seen. We take a last look at one of the sculptures under construction and discovered they had made some good progress while we were gone. We did a quick look at some of the vendors but didn’t come across anything we really needed.

Big Bubbles

Progress Continues

We took a more leisurely drive back to Brooksville, about a mile north of TI is a place pointed out by a geocache. Madeira Beach’s Church by the Sea has a more unique moniker than most houses of worship - the “Chicken Church”. Since we were so close, we figured a quick stop couldn’t hurt. From straight on, the church’s steeple isn’t all that special, but simply viewing it from a 45 degree angle makes all the difference. Here are two pictures of the steeple and you can decide if the name fits.

Church Steeple ...

... Turns into Chicken

I’ve mentioned the Withlacoochee State Trail several times. It’s a 46 mile paved trail that starts in the north near Dunnellon and comes to an end near Trilby in Pasco county. Last season we had biked on all but the the southernmost end of the trail. We headed to the Ridge Manor trailhead and headed south. This 7 mile portion of the trail is even more rural than the rest of the WST. After crossing the bridge over US-98, we had about 4.5 miles where we didn’t cross any other roads. There is a large Walmart distribution center visible from the trail. It was impressively large. I used my GPS and estimated that the building is just under half a mile long! Plus there were hundreds of trailers in the adjacent parking lot. Since the truck traffic doesn’t come close to the trail, the building’s presence doesn’t really impact the ride. At the far southern end is another parking area. I tried to determine if the old railroad bed was visible across the busy road but couldn’t tell. A closer look on Google Earth makes it look like there are still RR tracks continuing south.

When we first arrived at the resort and neighbors found out we are fulltimers, they would often ask “Where you going after you leave here in April?”. We didn’t have a good answer for them since we hadn’t really given it much thought. We had enjoyed our stay in the mountains of North Carolina this past year and thought doing something similar but in Colorado would be fun. We have only spent 11 nights in that state at 3 different locations since going fulltime so we knew there was a lot more to explore.

We put a fair amount of effort into the planning for something like this. A lot of the initial prep work is to put together a Google Map with potential destinations within Colorado, for instance: Rocky Mountain National Park, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park and Colorado National Monument to name a few. Then we will add some possible camping options. This would include State Park campgrounds, Elks Lodges, or even a few private campgrounds that have monthly rates. Then we will try to find YouTube videos for different areas to get a sense for what the area might have to offer to determine whether a place warrants a few nights, a week or a month.

Colorado Options

Next we will use a website we really like to help determine what the average weather conditions are like for an area throughout the year. Weatherspark.com has a wealth of historical weather data from temperature, cloudiness, wind and precipitation. We joke that we try to chase 70 degree weather, but we also try to avoid freezing overnight temperatures as well. This site will help us to determine how early we could arrive in the Denver area and have reasonably pleasant weather. And when it would likely to be safe to head up into the Rockies.

WeatherSpark Temp Graph for Denver

Denver Temps in Heat Map Form

We enjoyed the slower pace we had in 2021 in North Carolina by staying at two campgrounds for 2 months each. We cannot do the same thing for Colorado because we have more areas we want to see plus the camping season isn’t quite as long at these much higher elevations. Most private campgrounds in Colorado don’t even offer a monthly rate - they are strictly daily or sometimes weekly. We find campgrounds with monthly rates in different areas in the Rockies and book these first for the months of July and August.

Next we concentrate on May and June. There are several state parks in Colorado that actually have full hookup sites - that’s quite unusual. Of course these campgrounds are VERY popular and fill up fast. Their reservation system uses a 6 month rolling window so the dates we want will open up in November and December. We pick ones near Denver and Colorado Springs and we make sure we get things reserved 6 months before we want to be there. For one of the most popular state parks (Cheyenne Mountain SP), I was checking the reservation system a couple weeks before we could reserve in order to get a feel for how quickly the sites are reserved. I determined that they go quickly so we actually set our alarm for 2 AM our time in order to reserve the specific site for the dates we wanted at midnight Colorado time. You gotta do what you gotta do! We still have some stops we want to book for September in western Colorado but we need to wait until March to reserve them.

There was also the issue of what route we would take from Florida to Colorado. We really didn’t want to come across Texas or Kansas - been there, done that. This left us with Oklahoma or Nebraska. We decided to do the more northerly route and come across I-80. We figured we had about 5 to 6 weeks to spend on the repositioning from east to west. We picked a few spots along the way that deserved more than just an overnight stay but only have possible Elks Lodges or campgrounds identified but not reserved. This will give us some flexibility to deal with actual weather during the bulk of the 2200 miles before we get to Colorado.

Initial Route Planning Map

As Thanksgiving arrived, we headed over to friends for dinner. We had been invited last year, but with COVID, we weren’t feeling comfortable with an indoor setting with a dozen people. This year with our vaccination status, we decided to have some great food with family and friends. Yum!

Just about 4 miles north of Belle Parc is Chinsegut Conservation Center. We had hiked some of the trails last season but the actual building was closed due to COVID. It was open again so we thought we would go up to check it out and repeat some of the Pines to Prairie Loop. We arrived at the center and headed in. Turns out the building really isn’t much of a visitor center but simply a meeting room. A worker was setting up the chairs in the room for an upcoming discussion. The few displays in the room seemed to be geared more towards children but she told us that adults are welcome to presentations given here.

We had a beautiful day for a walk so, we headed back out to enjoy. Right around the center is a small nature trail with bird feeders and a few interpretive displays. There were several pretty black and pale yellow butterflies feeding on the flowering bushes near the building. Turns out these are called Zebra Longwings and are the state butterfly of Florida - you learn something new everyday.

Zebra Longwings

As we walked the paths thru the nature trail, we spotted a large bird in the shrubs. At first we couldn’t tell what it was but then realized it was a turkey. I was surprised it allowed us to get so close. We were probably only 20 feet away before it realized we were approaching and it high tailed it out of there. There is one section with a boardwalk thru a flooded area. Also along the trail is a photographer’s blind, but there was very limited bird activity on the pond. If we want to watch birds we just go back home. We came upon one tree along the trail that has sharp thorns sticking out of large cone shaped protuberances. From what I can tell, it’s called a silk floss tree. I doubt there are any people willing to be “tree huggers” with this guy!

Unaware Turkey

Blue Sky and Pines

Boardwalk

Photographer's Blind

Not Many Birds

OUCH!

There seems to be a constant supply of birds near our campsite. One morning, I noticed a roseate spoonbill in a tree just in front of the motorhome. I went out to get some pictures since they haven’t tended to come this close to our site. While taking pictures, I hear the sound of an osprey calling quite loudly and incessantly. I located it on another branch of the same tree the spoonbill was in. Just as I shot my first picture of the osprey, it took off over the lake. Right behind it was another bird. I assumed it was the osprey’s mate and they were simply playing chase. They were performing aerial acrobatics and I was having a very difficult time tracking them with my 500 mm lens. I took a dozen or more pictures before they disappeared. When I came back in to import the photos into my computer, I started to look at the pictures to realize it was not two ospreys playing chase, but an osprey and a bald eagle. Fortunately a couple of the shot had the birds in frame and in focus.

Basking Gator

Two Cormorants

Spoonbill on One Leg

Osprey and Bald Eagle in Flight

Bald Eagle Soars Past