Our last day at the Grand Canyon National Park

 

Date: 4/23/2015

Location: Grand Canyon National Park

 

Our last full day at the Grand Canyon was here and we had one last adventure arranged. Doing some searches of activities to do at the canyon led us to bike tours by Bright Angel Bicycles which has a shop right in the middle of the village. This company gets consistent positive reviews on every web site that reviewed them, with many pointing out the friendly guides that lead the trips.

We selected the Hermit Road Tour, which was an easy 6 mile ride on the road that hugs the rim of the Grand Canyon.  During most of the year this road is closed to the public, so you have a nice quiet bike ride without having to worry about dodging cars. There are a few shuttle buses that pass every once in awhile, but that’s about it for traffic.

Our starting point was Hopi Point, just west of the main Canyon Village area

 

Our guides loaded our bikes onto a van and drove us to Hopi Point, where the ride would begin. This way we would not have to ride up the steep road leading to this area. I’d say about 98% of the ride was on flat roads or downhill. It was really an easy ride!!

The views along the rim road were beautiful.

 

So, we’d ride for about 5 – 10 minutes and then we’d stop for a little talk by our guides. They covered many different topics, from the local wildlife, to the geology of the canyon and much more. At one stop we did see several California Condors, which was one of the things on Julie’s list. Check!!

A family pic at one of the many overlooks along the rim road.

 

There were probably 12 – 15 riders on this group, which our guide said was one of their larger groups for a ride. One guide led the way and another stayed at the back of the pack to pick up any that strayed from the group.

 

Yet another stopping point along the ride. We didn’t wear ourselves out on this ride.

 

At one stop Allison was trying to fall over the edge of the canyon. I guess I had to save her. (ignore the smiles)

 

The Colorado River (small green area)  still carving away at the canyon.

 

 

Our ride ended at the Hermits Rest which is at the end of the rim road. This was a stone building built back in the 1920’s. Here they loaded up our bikes onto the trailer. After about 15 minutes of exploring the Hermits Rest area, they loaded us up in the van for the short ride back to the start.

 

 

 

Here is the GPS track from our ride.

Grand Canyon - Canyon Rim Bike Ride at EveryTrail

 

We did one last drive around the park looking for wildlife and found some!

 

We also did one last walk along the rim of the Grand Canyon. Tomorrow we were heading and and heading to Boulder City and the Hoover Dam.

Taking in one last view of the canyon.

 

And a sunset pic from our last day at the canyon.

 

 

Grand Canyon - Canyon Rim Hike at EveryTrail

Camping at Tomoka State Park

 

Date: 3/20/15 – 3/22/15

Location: Ormond Beach, Florida

Somehow we were able to snag a camping site at Tomoka State Park when just about every state park in Florida are packed full. Someone must have cancelled and Julie just happened to check Reserve America at the right time and jumped on it. As always, we were hoping that Jim and Jo would be able to join us. The site was small and it would be tough getting us and all of our stuff squeezed into this site. It was listed as accommodating only RV’s up to 20 feet. Our is 22 and we’d also had a tent to fit in. It was a bit of a challenge, but we got all set up with room to spare!

                                         Our nice cozy site #87 at Tomoka SP                                                 

 

We all arrived early afternoon on Friday and had time for some activities after setting up and before dinner. From our previous camping trip to this park, I knew of a nice paved trail going through the woods and heading south. So, Jim and I jumped on our bikes and had a nice ride through the park and continuing on through some of the neighborhoods that front the Halifax River (Intercostal Waterway).

 

Our GPS for the Friday afternoon bike ride

 

Tomoka State Park is sandwiched between the Halifax and Tomoka river. When we come this way again we’ll need to bring our kayaks as it looks like a great area to paddle.

                                                             The Tomoka River                                                                    

 

One the way into the park, we noticed a sign that said there was live music at the fish camp/store within the park that evening. This would mainly be a woman singing and playing a ukulele. Now that’s not something that you get to hear every day and we were all up for checking it out. So, after dinner we hopped out our bikes and rode down to the store. We purchased an adult beverage and settled in for some entertainment. We didn’t hold out much hope that we’d enjoy this music, but we found that she we was actually very good. She played one mean ukulele and had a great voice. To end the evening she was joined on stage by her husband and they both jammed out and gave us a god show.

Not the best picture, but here is the lady who sang for most of the evening. Here she is playing guitar, but the ukulele was her main instrument of choice.

 

Saturday morning, after a hearty breakfast (we always seem to eat well when we camp), we planned a group bike ride at a nearby park. Bulow Creek State Park is about 10 miles north of Tomoka and has a series of hiking and biking trails. The biking trails are not paved and are a little rough in areas, but we decided we were up for the challenge and went on the ride. We had hoped to ride the entire 7 miles to the Bulow Plantation Ruins Historic State Park, but the trail got too rough for biking and we didn’t make it that far.

                     This park is well know for its’ stand of live oaks                         

 

Usually we don’t take our dog camping with us, but decided to take her along this time. She is generally pretty well behaved on our trips.

                                  The little mutt ready for some off road biking                                           

 

Several areas along the bike route open up to the rivers that wind their way around this area. Several overlooks with benches made for good stopping points.

                    I guess I need to get my picture in the blog every now and again!                 

 

                       There were lots of swamps and wetlands along the route                             

 

                                      Stopping for a break and a few pictures                                               

 

     My brother trying to shimmy up the tree for a better view. He didn’t get too far!!     

 

 

 

                 The GPS track of our bike adventure at Bulow Creek SP                                  

 

After our ride was complete at Bulow Creek, we saw a few bikers at the park with their decked out motorcycles and sidecars. They were a little over the top in their decorations!!

 

                         A little box turtle on the side of the road at Tomoka SP                               

 

On Sunday, after one more bike ride through the park, it was time to pack up and head back home. Another fun and relaxing camping trip in the books!

               One more picture of our spot before packing up and heading home                    

 

Biking the Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge

 

Date: 10/12 2014

Location: Dixie Mainline Trail, Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge

With the cooling Florida fall weather, we decided to get out on Sunday morning and do another bike ride in the Suwannee National Wildlife Area. This is a continuation of the ride we did back in March which covered the more southern section of this bike trail. The blog post of that trip can be found at this link.

The Dixie Mainline trail is a road that was the former route of a small gauge railway that was built back in the early 1920’s to haul lumber out of the area. It has since been converted to a lime rock road that follows the gulf coast. This trail is also open to motorized vehicles, but in the 3+ hours that we road, we only say two trucks. And there were no others that we saw biking this trail today, so we pretty much has this ride to ourselves.

The road is dirt or crushed lime rock and most areas were very smooth which made for some good biking. Being early fall in Florida, the sides of the roads were covered with wildflowers. 

 

The majority of the trail winds its’ way through wetlands and swamps. In many places the road is just a few inches higher than the water level.

The Dixie Mainline trail eventually crosses over County Road 151. So, we took a several mile detour and rode down to the town of Horseshoe Beach on the gulf of Mexico. This was a fairly nice small town right on the Gulf of Mexico. We also found a county park right on the water that has several campsites. We may just come back here someday and bring our camper to stay here for a few days.

 

Here is the GPS track of out 22+ mile ride.

After our ride, we loaded up the bikes on the truck and drover down to Shired Island county park to eat our lunch overlooking the gulf. This county park also has a few campsites, but it doesn’t look like a place we’d camp at. The sites are not well defined and it looks a little rough around the edges,

The park has a short hike from the boat dock area out to an area that had an old Indian shell mound.

 

And here’s the GPS track of the short hike we did at Shired Island County Park.

A weekend trip to explore the Dunedin and Clearwater area of Florida

 

Location: Dunedin, Fl

Date: 8/1/2014 – 8/3/2014

 

Julie and I decided that we need to start doing more weekend getaways. With work and all the other activities, time flies and before we know it it’s been months since we’ve done anything out of the ordinary. Being summer in Florida, it’s way too hot for any camping trips, although we do have a week of reservations in the keys for next month at Curry Hammock State Park.  We are really looking forward to getting down there and doing some camping, exploring and kayaking

So, we made a deal. We would take turns planning short getaways and the one doing the planning would get to make all the choices of location and activities and the other would have to just go along (no complaining!!). Also, you don’t have to share any details of the getaway beforehand.

Both of us took Friday off from work and we headed out in the early morning. I had the idea that we were headed to the Sarasota Beach area for the weekend, but that was not the case. Julie decided that we needed a “walk down memory lane”. Julie grew up in Clearwater and I spent my high school years in Dunedin which was a town just north and we met and started dating when we worked at a steak restaurant in Dunedin called Chief Charley’s.

Taking US-19 south, we checked out many areas of interest to us, like the church where we got married, the place where we had our wedding reception as well as the areas where both of our parents lived for many years. In the case of my parents, there were quit a few!!

We eventually made it to the place Julie reserved for us to spend the weekend, called Beso Del Sol. This was a nice “resort” on the intercostal in Dunedin. Below is a picture taken from our balcony showing the pool deck and the boat docks leading out to the water. Way off in the distance is Caladesi Island which is now a Florida State park. The next day we would be doing some kayaking in that area.

And another shot from a park just south of our location during the sunset.

 

On Saturday morning morning we got going fairly early to get some breakfast and then headed to the causeway leading out to Honeymoon Island where we would rent a double kayak for four hours to do some exploring. The Caladesi Island State Park is a short 6/10’s of a mile paddle from the causeway. It was a fairly easy trip over, but being extreme low tide, some of the areas were very shallow around the island.

 

Caladesi Island has a kayak trail which winds through the mangroves surrounding the east side of the island. As you can see below, this was like paddling through a mangrove tunnel. It did get very narrow in parts and we had some people ahead of us there were going verrrrrry slow. But we eventually made it back to open water. We were thinking that we had done the whole trail, but later finding a map on-line we realized that we only did a short section of the trail. I guess we’ll have to make another trip here to do the entire length of the trail.

 

We then started heading back north towards where we started. On the north side of the island there are some nice sand beaches. We got out here and walked around some to stretch our legs. We were getting a little stiff after sitting in the kayak for 2 to 3 hours.

A lot of boaters park there boats in the shallow areas and enjoy the sandy beaches.

Here’s the GPS track of where we paddled.

Later that evening we met up with a friend and his wife whom we hadn’t seen in 32+ years. Julie and I both worked with him at the Chief Charley’s restaurant I had mentioned earlier.  The last time we had seen him was at our wedding. I had found his business e-mail on-line and sent him a message. He got back to us and we made plans for a dinner in downtown Dunedin.

When I was in high school, downtown Dunedin was your typical downtown area which had seen better days. Much of the businesses had moved to the malls, leaving empty storefronts. Well Dunedin has done a great job of revitalizing its downtown area and there is now a great combination of restaurants and other businesses to lure you down that way. We met our long lost friend and his wife at one of theses restaurants and had a great time catching up after all these years. It was kind of interesting to find out that we had a lot in common in our interests, such as camping, our kids sports, etc. 

The next night we walked the half mile to the Dunedin Brewery which is the oldest microbrewery in Florida. We had a flight of beer to get a good idea of what they had to offer and then made our selection from the good list of brews. They also serve food, so we ordered some appetizers as well as some fish tacos. All were great, but the highlight was their chicken wings. They were awesome and went well with the flavorful beer that we ordered.

Sunday morning was check out day, but we wanted to do one last activity before we headed back home and back to “reality”. Pinellas County has a well developed collection of bike trails following many of the old railway tracks that had long been abandoned. The place that we stayed offered free bikes for use, so we took a bike ride on the trail south to downtown Clearwater and then back north along the roads that follow the intercostal waterway.  The Pinellas Trail is very popular and there were many biking, walking and jogging along the way.

Here’s out GPS trail of our bike ride throughout the Dunedin and Clearwater areas.

 

Biking the Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge

 

Date: 3/23/2014

Location: Suwannee, Fl

Julie and I decided to do something outdoors today since the weather has been so nice. She had a brochure covering the Suwannee River area and noticed a bike ride on the Dixie Mainline trail which is in the Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge. So, we decided to load up our bikes and take the 45 minute drive to check it out. Along with the bike ride we are also on the lookout for potential kayaking areas and campgrounds.

The Dixie Mainline was constructed in the 1920's as a tram road (narrow gauge railroad) to transport timber out of the swamps and forests. After logging ended around 1940, the road was not maintained until the 1960's, when another timber company refurbished the road and wooden bridges. These bridges later deteriorated and the road again became impassable. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service purchased the land in 1979 to establish Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge. In 1998 the bridges were replaced and the road was opened to the public.

The road/trail is a one lane dirt road, but it is hard packed and very easy to ride. There’s no loose sand areas to worry about. It is open to car traffic, but we probably only had about 10 cars and truck pass us the entire ride and everyone was very courteous, with some pulling over as we passed or at least slowed down,

We started from the south end of the trail with begins at County Road 349 just north of Suwannee, Florida. We had our doubts about this ride when we got on the trail as the first several miles are not very scenic and the road is bordered by a high fence surrounding land which is not part of the preserve. But then the road enters a wetland, swampy area and the the views improve. We drove past the area that was fenced and found a parking area where we unloaded the bikes and began our ride. The trail crosses several bridges where the tidal creeks make their way to the Gulf of Mexico. 

After about 4 miles on the Dixie Trail crosses County Road 357 and we took this road to check out a park and campground at Shired Island. This campground is at a county park maintained by Dixie county. The campground is in a beautiful location overlooking the gulf, but probably one that we won’t camp it. The campground was kind of a random selection or parking areas and looks like some long term tenants. Not the kind of place that we like to visit.

The first place we stopped at was an overlook at the Salt Creek. It was a nice quiet area,  but the no-see-ums were swarming. This is something that we noticed during the day whenever we got near  the tidal marshes.

 

There are several canoe trails mentioned in the brochure of the Suwannee Wildlife Refuge. Here is one that we found as we crossed one of the many bridges on the Dixie Trail. We’re thinking that we may come back here sometime in the future and do some paddling.

 

During today’s ride we passed a lot of tidal areas. This one was another kayaking trail starting point.

 

This is what the Dixie Mainline trail looked like for most of the ride. It’s a one lane road with very few hills, so the pedaling was easy!!!

 

 

it took us awhile to notice this little gator hanging out near the water. With so much water around I’m surprised we didn’t see more. But we did see plenty of birds and an otter ran across the road in front of our truck as we were leaving the area.

 

We road for a total of about 22 miles today, but my GPS batteries died early on in the trip. But here’s the track showing the early part of our ride.

Biking the Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge at EveryTrail

 

A weekend camping trip to Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park

 

Date: 2/28/14 – 3/2/14

Location: Okeechobee, Florida

 

It had been a few months since Julie and I have had a chance to do any camping. Luckily we had made reservations a few months ago for Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park which us just north of Lake Okeechobee is south Florida. We were not quite sure about this park as it was very much out in the boondocks and has not been a part of the State Park system for very long (about 10 years), but we were excited about my brother and sister-in-law joining us for the weekend camping trip.

We found this in front of the Kissimmee Prairie visitors center. This is a promising sign that this park is special and we’d enjoy our time here.

 

There’s two camping loops, one being the equestrian area just west of the visitors center and the main camping area (with about 20 sites) about a 1/4 mile away.  The sites don’t have a lot of vegetation between them, but they are fairly well spaced. Most are shaded which makes it nice in the heat of the day. Below are a few pictures of our site and the my brother’s next door. It was a great set-up for us and we had plenty of room.

 

 

The park is very large with about 54,000 acres and over 100 miles of hiking/biking trails. The first morning we were there we took our bikes and headed west on some of the trails. We (or at least one person in our group!) really wanted to make our way to the Kissimmee River which makes up the west boundary of the park. Most of the trails are very bike friendly, but there are some areas which are sandy and the biking gets difficult.

 

Here’s a good pic of Jim and Jo on our bike ride with the vast expanse of the prairie in the background.

 

After a few miles of pedaling we got to a part of the trail that was covered with water which forced us to turn around. We through we must be close to the Kissimmee River, but later found out that we were nowhere near where we thought (or hoped) we were. The river was actually a few more miles west and we would never get to see it during this weekends trip. Maybe next time!!

 

This is our GPS track for the morning bike ride.

Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park Biking the trails at EveryTrail

On weekends and some holidays the park offers a ranger led Swamp Buggy ride into the prairie which they charge $17 per person. I had called several weeks ago to make reservations for this trip since I thought it would be something fun and interesting to do.

Here’s a picture of the buggy that we would use for this tour.

 

Along with the  ranger (Jenn) we were joined by a couple from Canada and a few of the interns working at the state park. This is a picture of most of us in front of the buggy.

And here is the track that the Swamp Buggy took on this outing.

Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park Swamp Buggy Ride at EveryTrail

 

There was an amazing amount of wildlife viewing available for anyone visiting this park. We saw a wide variety of birds and other critters in just the very short time that we were there.

 

Another interesting thing about this park is that it is a designated dark skies location and is one of the darkest areas within the state of Florida. It’s right in the middle of the state and most of the population resides on the coasts. So, the light pollution is much less than most other parts of the state. For this reason many astronomers enjoy coming here to view and photograph the night sky. We were lucky enough to visit on a weekend were the moon was new and the weather was  cooperating (no clouds) for checking out the stars. The park was also offering an evening astronomy (or astrology…inside joke)program where we had the opportunity to view some stars and planets through some “large” telescopes.  A great experience!! There was also another group that specialized on photographing different objects in the sky. The equipment and expertise that these guys have is amazing. One of the gentlemen there whom we spent some time with is Dave Holko. If you want to see some of his work and be totally blown away, then check out his website. This looks like a fun hobby, but probably one that is way too expensive for most of us to get into.

 

I did get out late on Saturday night and attempted to get a few pictures with my Nikon DSLR. I would really like to get into night sky photography, but I think I have a long way to go and a lot to learn. I took a bunch of pictures and a few actually came out ok. 

 

 

  

 

On Sunday before we packed up to head back home, we took one last bike ride heading east and found a few of the hiking trails leading into the prairie. One spot had a small wetland area where we found some gators warming in the sun. Most splashed back into the water as we got near, but this guy didn’t want to get off the warm culvert and just kept a watchful eye on us as we observed and photographed him and the other gators. 

 

Jen, the park ranger we had met the day before, mentioned that there was a nesting burrowing owl just north of the main road leading into the park. We rode our bikes in this area and we were lucky enough to spot this owl and the hole where he lives. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the correct lens on my camera for getting close up shots, but was able to get a few of this amazing bird. He stayed in one place long enough for me to get a few half way decent photos.

  

 

And of course being a prairie, there’s bound to be lots of water. Nearing the end our our ride we came across another section of trail covered. It would have been too long of a ride to retrace our steps, so we all took off our shoes and waded through. Luckily there were no snakes or gators around (or at least not that we saw!).

Here’s the GPS track from our Sunday morning ride.

 

Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park Biking the trails at EveryTrail

On our way home, about a four hour drive, Julie and I talked about our weekend camping trip and this state park. We both felt that it was one of the best parks that we had been to in the state. I think Julie has ranked this #1 on her list. It’s very remote, quiet and gives you a good taste of what Florida was like many years ago. It’s about the exact opposite of the tourist traps like Disney and others that have taken over much of Florida. I think this is a park that we will want to visit again sometime soon. Just not in the summer as I sure the heat would be brutal.

 

And a link to all the pictures I took this weekend.