Sailing Beyond Ocean Pond to Atlanta

Still catching up here. Probably always will be at this point. Writing these posts tends to take a back seat to having fun. Funny how that works…
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After I ran away from the ticks in Ocala National Forest, I headed for Osceola National Forest. I had heard good things about Ocean Pond campground there. It wasn’t that long a drive and I arrived in plenty of time to set up the RV before dark. Unfortunately, I was not only following spring, I was also following the tail of spring break. I thought it had ended. Silly me. Since I was now at the top of Florida, near the GA line, I ran into the kids on break from that state. That meant that the (very) few sites in the campground that had electricity were taken. Almost all the sites have water hook-ups in Ocean Pond (except the rustic tent sites), but it was electricity I wanted. I had full water tanks but I still don’t have the solar panels I want.

ocean pond campsite

Over half the sites in the campground are right on the shore of Ocean Pond. So if you have a canoe, kayak or other small water conveyance that can be launched from shore, waterfront is the way to go. I still didn’t have my kayak, but I took waterfront anyway. I hooked up to the water, put out the slides and awning and prepared to chill for a few days. The weather was warm and the scenery pleasant.

Ocean Pond

Ocean Pond is a much, much larger body of water than Clearwater Lake was. So I was wondering why it was called a pond. Turns out that its deepest point is usually about 12 feet. It was at “flood” stage during my visit so it was probably nearer to 13 feet deep. Not exactly deep. It was therefore not too surprising that none of the boats I saw on the lake were all that large. Lots of jet skis, canoes, kayaks and fishing boats instead.

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The next morning I took Topper for his walk and found that someone in the electric loop had decided to leave early. I brought in the awning and slides in record time and moved over to my new site before anyone else noticed the vacancy. Lucky me! I could turn on the microwave without first starting my generator. My generator is large enough to run almost everything in the RV at the same time, so it burns quite a bit of gas. I’m planning to pick up a small, inexpensive generator (about 1000 watts) just for keeping my batteries charged so that I don’t have to run the big one every time the batteries need feeding. At least until I get the solar panels I want….and for those extended rainy periods that are bound to happen sooner or later.

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Anyway, I now had the site I wanted and Topper and I went exploring. We headed off on a path that ran into the woods. After a few minutes I heard a woodpecker doing its thing and looked around to see if I could spot it. It wasn’t hard. There was a big pileated woodpecker on the side of a dead pine. Its head was back-lit by the sun and its bright, red crest was glowing like a flame. I tried to get a picture, but it fled the scene before I could get the shot. Bummer. I did get a couple of nice pics of a butterfly on a thistle flower, just not the bird pic I really wanted.

butterfly on thistle

After a few days, the weather turned again, back to cold and rainy. I was finding Ocean Pond not really to my liking. It was very noisy and the “neighbors” were, for the most part, not exactly a class act. After staying up most of the previous night due to the drunken party across from me, I decided to go elsewhere.

wildflowers

The drive up into GA was beautiful in spite of the rain. Wildflowers covered the roadsides and wisteria vines were cloaking the trees from top to bottom in their beautiful blossoms. The trees were covered with them for miles. It was heavenly, wisteria is one of my favorite flowers.

wisteria in the rain

Once in GA I started looking for a campground in a different national forest that my GPS swore was there. According to the into on that lying device, the campground had electric and water and was handicap accessible. I’m assuming that the info was bogus, because the road that (according to the GPS) led to the campground was dirt, very narrow, went straight up a hill, would have required four-wheel drive to access and looked anything but promising. I found a place to turn around and went back the way I came. I had passed a private campground a few miles earlier that looked pretty and darkness was coming on.

Skeenah Mill

I arrived at the Skeenah Mill campground about 30 minutes before the light totally failed and got hooked up. It was a great relief to get off the steep, winding roads of the area. The rain continued after a brief respite, but Topper, the kitties and I were snug in our new location.

my site

inside old mill

mill sign

The woman who owned the campground had built a dock out over the mill-pond and kept a large can full of fish food for feeding the enormous trout that lived in the pond. I threw a couple of handfuls of food into the water and was rewarded by a frenzy of activity from the fish. There were at least 50 fish leaping out of the water and fighting over the food, many of them the colorful rainbow variety. The owner doesn’t allow fishing in the pond, the fish are too tame there, they are her “pets”. But any fish that go over the dam into the creek below are fair game. Fresh trout sounded good, but I didn’t have any way to catch them. And even if I did, it would have meant my having to clean them, after catching and killing them…..and that’s just too much like work. So I entertained myself with making them fatter and taking their pictures.

rainbow trout

trout feeding frenzy

I only stayed at the campground two days as it was too expensive for my taste (over $40 per night….yikes!) and the rain was refusing to leave. So I left and headed on up to Atlanta.

dam overflow

Skeenah Creek

I made it up to the northern ‘burbs and Allatoona Lake by the early afternoon. There are quite a few Corps of Engineers campgrounds on the lake, but in April only two of them are open. I picked one, got a site and set up with a divine view of the lake.

Allatoona camp site

I chose Allatoona because it is near my friend Judy’s house and it was a good excuse to spend some time with someone I like, who makes me laugh and could also do my taxes! What’s not to like? Atlanta was also covered in wisteria, so riding around on my little motorcycle was fun, once the rain stopped and the weather warmed up at least a little.
I spent about a week enjoying the scenery and the company (at least until it got too close to April 15th and Judy had to work too many hours…) and wandering around the lake. Once again I was really unhappy that I still hadn’t been able to get the kayak I wanted. The good news on that front was that the West Marine store in Atlanta put me in touch with the manager of the West Marine in the St. Louis suburb of St. Charles. He was able to order the kayak I had been looking for and would have it waiting for me when I hit St. Louis. Joy! The kayak I had my heart set on was a new one out of Sweden that comes apart for transport. Two halves, each weighing less than 30 pounds and slightly over four-and-one-half feet long. No problem getting half on the bumper with the bike and half inside when I travel. Looking forward to seeing it. And trying it out on the water.

more sunset

sunset on lake

A Lock With No Key

By now I am several posts behind. I’m afraid that I’m enjoying myself a little too much! In the spirit of catching up a little, here’s where I was a month or so ago:

Ortona Lock and Dam campground is outside the little town of Labelle, FL. It’s a site built (and run) by the Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps of Engineers maintains campgrounds all over the country, although they are less common in the western US. There are a lot (plethora, abundance, bunches, etc.) of canals in Florida. Most of these canals eventually reach the ocean. Thus, there are many boats traveling on these canals. Therefore lock systems are needed to assist the boats in getting around the dams on the canals, which is where the Corps of Engineers comes into the picture. They built the dam, they provide the way to get past the dam.

dam at Ortona

anhingas

canal

Every now and then the Corps puts a campground near one of the locks. Ortona is one of those places. (The state also has campgrounds near many of the boat launch sites on the canals, but they usually are pretty basic.) The Corps of Engineers campgrounds usually have electric hook-ups and a dump site and may also have water at each camp site. The state-run campgrounds might have a porta potty and some picnic tables and a trash can or five. They are also usually free, where the Corps campgrounds have a small fee (small if you have a national parks pass, anyway.)

I pulled into Ortona without a reservation and was lucky enough to get the last walk-up site available. While most sites can be reserved ahead of time, a small percentage of the sites are kept open for people who don’t want to plan that far ahead (like me!) Once you have a walk-up site you can stay for up to two weeks. So while there are walk-up sites available in theory, if everyone who has one wants to stay the full two weeks, they reality can be much different. But I got one, so life was good.

I site I got was on the canal side of the road, so the water was pretty much right outside my door. Sweet. There is also another water course that comes into the canal around the middle of the campground. There are a couple of families of river otters that live on that river. They were a delight to watch. I’m not sure who was more curious about whom. When the otters would see me walking Topper along the bank, they would rise up out of the water to watch, their sleek bodies moving to watch our progress. I wish I could have gotten a better picture of them. But it seemed like every time I saw them, the light was glinting off the water so brightly that it washed the details out. Oh well, at least I got to see them.

It was a lovely and peaceful place. Well maintained. And while I enjoy campgrounds like that, I also enjoy the more natural ones where you have to bring everything you need with you and the whole place isn’t covered with asphalt or concrete and manicured lawns and plantings.

green heron

I ended up spending five lovely days there before heading farther south. I spent most of my time wandering along the canal, watching boats going through the lock, looking for the otters and bird-watching. The last day I was there, I took my scooter for a spin through the countryside and wound up at a little Cuban barbecue place on some back road in the middle of pretty much nowhere. It smelled so good that I had to stop and have lunch. I was so glad that I did.

The food wasn’t fancy, but it sure was good. The ribs came in two styles American and Cuban. Neither had any kind of sauce on them. Instead they were rubbed with spices and slow-roasted. I found that I preferred the Cuban spice mixture to the “American” one. But it would have been nice to have a nice sweet/sticky/smokey sauce for the American style. Of course that would have made it hard to compare the spice mixtures. Whatever. It was a good meal and I didn’t need to cook dinner that night as I was still too full from lunch. I rode back out that winding little road and rolled back into camp one happy camper.

That evening turned quite cool, cold by Florida standards. While walking back to my site I found a little frog hunkered down on the gravel, too cold to move. He (she?) was a cute little thing, so I took its picture then carried it down to the canal. At that point the water was warmer than the air, so I set it in shallow water and left it to its own devices, allowing it to decide where it wanted to spend the night.

The next morning was clear and cool. Perfect for driving so off I went, heading for the Everglades.