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

Hitchcock (Iowa) Presents….

I am finally on the road, chasing dreams and rainbows….and whatever else comes my way. I didn’t actually hit the road until just before rush hour on Friday afternoon. Which meant getting out of town was something of a nightmare. Traffic was stop-and-go for the first couple of hours, after that it settled down to just-plain-annoying. Then it started to rain.

But all that fun subsided once I neared Columbia, MO. The traffic thinned and the rain let up, which I’m certain made all those people on motorcycles much happier. All those motorcycles….it seems that all roads lead to Sturgis, SD right now. At least 50 to 60% of the traffic going by me was either someone hauling one or more motorcycles or someone on a motorcycle. And I was only half-way across MO!

I drove until about 11:15 PM, wanting to put some distance between St. Louis and me before stopping for the night. I needed to feel that the trip had actually started, not that I was just no longer parked in my driveway. But my vision started to fog and I knew it really was time for me to get off the road, so I took the next off-ramp and pulled into the first parking lot I saw. I powered up one of my GPS units and did a search for the nearest Cracker Barrel restaurant. Their parking lots make great places to spend the night and come with the up-side of knowing you can get a good breakfast in the morning without having to cook.

The closest one was only about 7.6 miles away, which wasn’t bad. I started to pull back onto the road and what do I see directly in front of me? A Wally-world! Wal-Mart isn’t my first choice of overnight accomodations, their parking lots tend to be too well lit to allow really good sleep and they are generally busy and noisy all night long. But beggars can’t be too picky and I was really whipped, so I pulled up next to an RV that had passed me on the highway about half an hour earlier, and shut down.

The evening was very muggy and a little too warm, but I didn’t feel like running my generator all night so that I could have AC, so I opened all the windows and tried to sleep. After awhile a nice little breeze came up and I managed to fall into a light, fitful sleep. Which meant that morning came all too soon and I was still way too tired when it arrived. But I ate some cereal and hit the road again anyway. It’s not like I was going to get any rest where I was.

I moved into “drive” mode, punched my destination into the GPS and started to roll. I somehow made it thru KC and onto 29 north. After a few hours I saw an inviting rest area in IA, about 30 miles across the border from MO. I crawled into back and onto my bed, got an hours sleep and had lunch when I woke up. Even with the nap, I knew I wasn’t going to get very far that day and my best course of action would be to find some quiet little campground and call it quits for the day early.

I had a pile of Escapees magazines sitting on the dinette seat, so I grabbed the top one and looked up their “days end” column. The column lists inexpensive-to-free places where you can spend some time when you’re ready to stop. There was a listing for a small campground in the Hitchcock Nature Center in a small town not too far off the highway that was inexpensive and sounded peaceful. I took a chance that it wouldn’t be full since it was a few miles off the hightway. It was a good call. I was truly blessed that the top magazine on the pile had the perfect place for what I needed most. And it was less that 30 miles from where I was sitting!

For $15 a night I got a flat site with electricity in a campground so quiet it almost felt like I was the only one there. The camp host told me that the place is almost never full and he considers it Iowa’s best-kept secret. The campground is apparently only about 4 years old, so it’s not on everybody’s radar yet. It even has nice clean showers that are included in the price–no quarters needed to keep the hot water coming! That was double-nice as I’m carrying a bunch of stuff that I’m dropping with a friend in a couple of days and that “stuff” is completely filling my shower!

The Hitchcock Nature Center is located in the Loess Hills of IA. Loess is a type of compacted soil that only exists in two places in the US. The other area of loess is along the Natchez Trace, most of which I drove last spring. The hills are not exceptionally high—no one would ever mistake them for mountains, but they are very, very steep. As well as very lovely.

Topper and I wrapped up our afternoon with a nice walk along one of the nature trails. It was/is summer, so I had to comb him for ticks afterward (I found 4, none had had time to attach). Then I took my shower and checked my clothes for ticks (didn’t find any, they liked the dog better) before putting them in the laundry bag.

The evening was perfect, the temperature at night dropped into the mid to low 60’s and I slept like a rock. When morning came I realized that I was just too comfortable in this spot to leave yet, Sturgis could wait. I’m sure one or two days of that insanity will be more than enough! I paid for another night of peace and took the day to rest and recover from the stress and non-stop work of divesting myself of my worldly goods and cleaning out my house before last Friday’s closing. I’m soooooooo glad that’s all behind me now.

I had a restful day and took a nice long afternoon walk with Topper. We found a lovely boardwalk and took a nice stroll down that. On the way back to the campground I saw another side trail that said it was a “moderate” hike and led back to the campground in less than half a mile. Maybe as the crow flies….and “moderate”? Hmmmm, if it were a ski run there were several parts that would have rated a black diamond. We certainly got our exercise, but the wildflowers were really beautiful.

By the time we got back to the RV I was ready for another nap…..after I finally stopped sweating. I think I’m a bit out of shape. I doubt that we walked more than a couple of miles. True, a lot of it was pretty much straight up and down, so maybe that played a small part in my exhaustion.

I know I still have a lot of adjusting to do before I’m truly settled into my new life. Knowing that the life I lived for the past 30 years is now completely gone is still a bit of a shock to the system. It’s not that I have any regrets about the break. I always knew I would leave St. Louis someday. I think it’s just sill a little hard for me to believe that “someday” is finally here.

Where Have I Been?

I have been wandering around southern Mississippi and Louisiana, kind of here-and-there and nowhere in particular. But one of the places I wandered to was the Mississippi Sandhill Crane Preserve. I didn’t get to see any cranes, however. It’s mating season, so the do-not-disturb sign is out while they’re raising their young. Something about only a little over 100 of the birds left, they need every one possible to survive and all that jazz. I mean, there’s over 100, so what’s the big deal? Just kidding!

I did get to take a nice stroll on their nature trail. It’s a little early for most of the flowers to be out. Few are in bloom yet and many plants haven’t emerged from their short winter sleep. But there were still plenty of plants around that don’t disappear during the winter and a few early bloomers had made the scene.

One of the most interesting plants I saw was the Spoonleaf Sundew. This is a tiny little plant. I didn’t see a single one that was over two inches across. They are carnivorous little critters. Think Venus Flytrap. They have sticky hairs on their leaves that trap small insects that they then digest. They’re quite pretty little things. I also saw some yellow butterwarts. Apparently they are just starting to bloom and have only come out in the past couple of days.

yellow butterwort

spoonleaf sundew

I also saw several pitcher-plant blossom buds. I’ve seen many pictures of pitcher plants, but I didn’t realize that they had a flower before the pitcher formed. So in amongst the dried pitchers from last years plants there were several buds on long, slender stems, a couple of which were large enough that they probably opened the next day….after I was gone. Sigh. But it was nice to see spring so well sprung down here. I know that won’t be the case once I’m back in St. Louis. I’ll also miss seeing all the azaleas. Down here there are huge. Often more than six feet tall and ten feet across. And completely covered in blossoms. Azalea hedges forming living fences across entire yards. Sure, St. Louis has azaleas. And they will be pretty when they bloom, but I’ve never seen any that reach the size of the ones down here.

just a view from the trail

After Mississippi, I moved on across Louisiana. I didn’t spend much time there unfortunately. I did spend a couple of days in Broussard at Maxie’s Campground. Since I am an Escapees member, full hook-up was only $15 per night. It’s right on the highway, but I thought that it might quiet down in the evening, that maybe traffic would slack off at night. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case. It was a nice enough place and located near several interesting places to see, but, like I said, pretty noisy at night. Still, if you don’t mind the traffic noise, it’s a good place to spend a few days. (Full price is $24 if you aren’t a member of something that gives you a discount–there are several.) I had a fibro/chronic fatigue flare-up and ended up sleeping for two days, so I never saw anything but my pillow. Bummer.

After I left there, I headed up toward Shreveport but stopped to gas up in Alexandria, LA and decided to cut across to Natchez, MS and drive north on the Natchez trace. I had driven part of it three years ago and vowed that if I was ever back down this way I would drive the whole thing. Well, I was too close to pass it up. So I left Alexandria, temperature 87 degrees, and drove toward Natchez, less than two hours away. There were some crazy looking clouds on the horizon than got darker as I got closer to them. The exception was a hole in the middle of them that was like a window on some bright white clouds that were obviously higher up than the dark ones. It created a lovely picture. The cars coming towards me all had their lights on, so I figured there might be some rain in my future. Plus the temperature was dropping fast.

I was right. Turned out to be heavy rain, high winds too. I heard that there were also tornado warnings, as well as some hail. Fortunately I didn’t see anything serious. I did, however, see a WalMart parking lot just as the rain got really, really heavy and the wind gusts were really starting to rock the RV. I took the opportunity to call it quits for the night. By then the temperature had already dropped to 67 and was still on the way down. Why push it? The drive to this point had been really, really pretty. No sense in spoiling a nice day. I wasn’t far from Natchez. No problem hitting the trace tomorrow.