Camping at Anastasia State park and attending the TPC Golf Tournament

 

Date: 5/8/15 – 5/10/15

Location: Anastasia State Park

 

For the past several years we’ve bought tickets to the PGA tour stop in Ponte Vedra, Florida. The Players Championship is a fun tournament to attend since it has one of the strongest fields for a golf tournament during the year. It’s not one of the golf’s majors, but they sure are trying to push it in that direction. 

We’ve been combining our trip to the tournament with a camping stop at Anastasia State Park, which is about 20 miles south of the tournament location.  We usually make a reservation for a camping spot about 10 months before the tournament so we are sure to get a site. Anastasia is a very popular campground and fills quickly on most weekends.

We snagged site 111, which turned out to be a great site, very large with a good amount of spacing from the neighbors. This would have been a good site to share with family who often joins us on our trips, but this time around it was just Julie and myself with this huge spot.

Site 111 at Anastasia State Park. Plenty of room to spread out!

 

One Saturday we went to the Tournament Players Championship, getting there at about 10 in the mourning. It was a perfect weather day for a tournament and the crowds were large. We did have tickets to the Michelob Blue Room, so we had a place retreat to for some relaxing, food and drink.

The famous 17th island green at TPC Sawgrass before any players came through.

 

And here is it much later with the crowds watching the leaders play through.

 

Besides attending the PGA tournament, we also did some bike rides and walking on the beach. The weekend went by too quickly, but it’s always great to get away for a weekend of camping.

A little clouds and rain during our evening walk on the beach.

On Sunday morning (Mothers Day) we packed up and headed home. With the weather in Florida warming up for the summer, this may be the last camping trip we make until the fall. We do have a few reservations already set up for later this year and need to make some more plans before things fill up.

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                    

 

Hiking around Watermelon Pond – Goethe State Forest

 

Date: 1/11/2015

Location: Newberry, Fl

 

Did a Sunday morning hike at Watermelon Pond which is part of the Goethe State Forest west of Gainesville.

 

 

 

 

I just started playing around with Google PhotoSphere. Here are a few from today’s hike:

 

Views: Hiking Watermelon Pond by Julie Whitney

 

 

Watermelon Pond Hike #2

 

Views: Watermelon Pond, Florida by Julie Whitney

 

Camping at Kissimmee Prairie State Preserve Park

 

Date: 10/24/2014 – 10/26/2014

Location: Okeechobee, Fl

 

We knew after we had camped at Kissimmee Prairie Preserve back in March of this year, that this park is one we’d want to came back to one day. So, several months ago we figured out a weekend in the fall and nearest a new moon to ensure skies good for star gazing. Being one of the darkest sky locations in the state of Florida, this park is a favorite of the astronomy lovers and they were out in force this weekend.

We made note of the best sites when we were here before and lucked out by getting a large site with a nice view.

 

After we had made our reservations, my brother and sister-in-law decided to join us. Luckily the site right next to us opened up and they were able to grab it. They looked to the east over the prairie.

 

    

 

Kissimmee Prairie is currently around 54,000 acres in size with plans to increase this as they buy up more of the cattle farms to the north. This park is way out in the boonies and the land is flat with expansive views in most directions.

 

We had fantastic weather during the weekends camping trip. Highs during the day in the low 80’s and nice and cool at night in the upper 50’s. This weather was just right to do some hiking and we took one of the trails that started at the visitors center. The trail maps do warn you that since this is an area with a lot of wetlands, some of the trails may be blocked by water. And just like the hike we took back in the spring, we did hit several areas that required us to wade our way through.

Here’s Julie trying to find a dry way around, but she was only got so far before she accepted defeat and ended up taking off her hiking boots and sloshing her way ahead.

 

We eventually made our way around the loop trail and found a picnic table in the shade to relax and have a few snacks.

Here is the GPS track of the hike we took on Saturday morning.

 

On our two visits to this park, Julie has been on a quest to hike or bike to the Kissimmee River which forms the very west boundary of the park. She spoke with the ranger in the visitor center about biking the Military Trail that makes a relatively straight shot to the river. The ranger encouraged her to take this trail and that we’d surely enjoy it. My brother’s wife had broken her wrist a few weeks ago, so she couldn’t join us on this adventure. Julie, my brother and myself took our bikes on what we thought would be an easy ride through the prairie. It started out on a very nice limestone road, but quickly disintegrated into a road best traveled with a four wheel drive truck or one of the park’s swamp buggies. It was ether soft sand, thick grass or rutted muddy sections. We rode as much as we could, usually trailing Julie by about a quarter mile as we tried our best to get to that darned river. After about 5+ miles we took another look at the GPS and trail maps and realized that we still had several miles to go. As much as we didn’t want to do it, we declared defeat and retreated back to camp. We were a bunch of tired campers when we got back several hours after we started.

 

The views of the prairie were awesome as we rode along, just too bad that they didn’t have a better surface for biking.

 

In some of the wetter areas of the prairie there were many fall wild flowers in bloom.

 

 

Here’s the GPS track of our torturous bike ride

 

We did have some clouds and breeze during the days, which kept things cools and very pleasant. Luckily for the astronomy groups who were camped here, it did clear in the evening which made for some great star gazing.

This shot below shows part of the start filled sky looking north. That streak above the tree line in the picture is actually the International Space Station as it sped its’ way across the sky. We each also saw several shooting stars during the night, although Julie struggled (and whined) at times trying to find one!!

With no visible moon and the clear skies, the milky way was easy to see as it arched its’ way across the heavens from the south-east horizon toward the north-west.

We were also able to find some of the constellations like the big dipper pointing to the north star and a few planets, such as Mars and Jupiter made an appearance.

With this being one of the darkest areas of Florida, it’s still not totally free from man made light. This picture below shows some of the light pollution coming from the cities on the east coast of the state.

 

This state park has a separate camping area for the astronomy buffs who use this as a location for their (expensive!!!) hobby. Here’s a picture of their sites just beyond the visitors center where’s there is room for their rv’s and space for them to set up their large telescopes (the covered objects to the right). It’s quiet during the day, with most them probably sleeping, but comes to life at night. Many of them stay awake all night photographing far off solar systems, star cluster and other hard to comprehend stellar objects.

 

On Sunday, before we had to pack up and head back home, we all made our way to an area with some ponds to watch the birds take flight as the sun rises. It’s also an area with a good collection of gators. It was a cool morning, so they were slow to get going. But as the sun got a little higher and the air warmed, you could start to hear them. At first is sounded like someone snoring out in the weeds. As we were walking back to our bikes, one large male gator really started to bellow and thrash about and just about scared the @#!% out of us. After we got a safe distance away we watched him for awhile and he would bellow and then get quiet. Then from another area another gator would do the same. It was actually very interesting to watch this behavior which none of us had witnessed before.

 

    

 

Kissimmee Prairie is a noted location on the Florida Birding Trail. There is constant bird activity around the area and much can be seen right from our campsite.

Here’s a hawk that was perched high in an oak tree by our site and looking around for its’ breakfast.

 

This Barred Owl cruised through our campsite and landed in a tree not too far from us. It we hadn’t seen it fly by, we would never have seen it as it blends in so well with the tree it landed on.

 

And my last bird picture is of a Crested Caracara which nest in the park and surrounding areas. This guy (or gal) was one of three that landed in a ditch nearby and was looking for something tasty  to eat.

After our morning walk we spent a short time relaxing before packing up and heading back to reality. We had an awesome weekend of camping and truly enjoyed spending it with Jim and Jo. We hope to plan many more camping trips with them in the future. We do have one more on the books as we will be doing another trip with them in early December for a weekend at Fort de Soto in St. Pete.

 

Here’s a link to a short YouTube video from this camping trip.

Camping at Curry Hammock State Park in the Florida Keys

 

Location: Curry Hammock State Park, Little Crawl Key

Dates: 8/30/2014 – 9/5/2014

A late summer camping trip to the Florida keys had us questioning our sanity. Really, who chooses to camp in Florida during the hottest time of the year. We should be heading north to the mountains where it is cooler, instead of heading south where the heat and bugs could be a problem and make things uncomfortable. But getting a reservation for a Florida State park in the Florida keys during the cooler time of the year can be next to impossible. People actually plan and schedule their Keys camping trips a year in advance and scoop up all the sites as soon as they become available. So, we decided to take the chance and grabbed at spot at Curry Hammock State Park, making our reservations about 9 months ago.

Also, Curry Hammock doesn’t get the notoriety of the more well known parks such as John Pennekamp and Bahia Honda which have been around for a lot longer. The key that Curry Hammock is on, Little Crawl Key, was slated to be developed and parts had already been cleared for building. Luckily the state of Florida was able to purchase the land back in the early 1990’s  and the campground was not built until much later, opening in November 2004. Curry Hammock Campground is also a lot smaller than the other campgrounds in the Keys, with only 28 sites. The history of this campground with some interesting pictures can be found at this link.

Our site was # 17 which was a good sized back in site. Most of the sites are good size, but none of them were huge. But they did a good job of planting trees and shrubs between the sites, so the privacy was great and we didn’t see any of our neighboring campers.

 

Our site was ocean front and we were probably only 30 feet from the beach. This allowed us to get a constant nice breeze off of the ocean, helping to keep us cool and keeping any bugs at bay. The only time we noticed any bug problem was early in the morning or late at night when the breeze died down. Then we had a few no-see-ums, but not many. We were kind of surprised at the lack of bugs in the middle of the summer in Florida.

 

All of the sites had a layer of small limestone pebbles, which did a great job of draining any rain we had and keeping the sites from becoming muddy. We had rain about every night during our stay, but never had any water problems. 

 

The campground consists of one paved loop with all sites being angled back in for easy access.

 

 

There is a beach in front of the campground and also a separate beach area with parking for day use. Kayak rentals are available.

    

 

We brought our kayaks with us and several times did the kayak trail that starts from the boat ramp at the park and circles the key. A section of the trails leads through the mangroves. Below is a picture of Julie bumping her way through all the mangrove roots and hoping to find some open water.

Our GPS track of this paddle trip can be found at this link.

And a short you-tube video can be found here.

 

We think our site (#17) was one of the best in the campground. The only problem is there was a small sand dune between us and the beach. So, sitting and watching the water was difficult. In true red-neck fashion we either put our chairs up on the picnic table or the back of our truck to allow us to see the water. We got a few odd stares from passing campers, but they were probably just jealous of our quick thinking.

 

Curry Hammock also has a nature walk across US-1 on the Gulf of Mexico side. We did the walk one evening and was able to view a nice sunset.

The GPS track of this trail can be found here.

  

 

Earlier in the week the moon wasn’t too bright, so the star gazing was good, even getting to see a few shooting stars. Here’s a few (not so good !) pictures of the stars over the campground and the milky way over the palm trees.

      

 

We didn’t have much rain during the day, but one passing storm produced a nice colorful rainbow.

 

While investigating some kayaking possibilities several weeks before the trip, I found some write-ups about Indian Key State Park. This is an island about 1/2 mile off shore from US-1 and is an easy kayak paddle to get there and hike around the old village that used to be located there back in the early to mid 1800’s. So, one day trip we took was to drive up towards Islamorada and launch our kayaks from the shallow areas next to the road. We paddled out to the state park, did some walking around and some snorkeling in the shallows.

 

The far side of the island where we did some snorkeling. It wasn’t the best for snorkeling, but we saw a few fish, sponges, etc.

The GPS track of this paddle can be found at this link.

And the GPS track our our hike around the state park can be found here.

 

The beach area at our campground is nice, but they don’t rake the seaweed and there’s only a few sandy areas for swimming. Plus during the weekends (at least when we were there) it was kite boarding heaven, with a large number speeding back and forth near the beach. They were supposed to stay at least 100 yds off shore, but many didn’t follow this rule.

But, Julie and I discovered a great place to swim and hang out. There were several large sand bars about 1/3 mile offshore, one being just east of the campground and another larger one off shore from Crawl Key which was the next keys east of us. Both of these sandbars were an easy kayak paddle from the campground.

We made many trips out to the sandbar, packing our cooler with some “beverages” and would enjoy happy-hour while floating in the clear, warm water.

 

Julie also did a lot of snorkeling around the sandbar area. There were some creatures to be found, like the star fish and sea urchin pictured below. She also said she saw “Dory” from the movie Finding Nemo. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get any pictures of Dory!

        

Here’s our GPS track for the kayak paddle to the little sandbar and the larger sandbar further east.

 

We also brought our bikes along on this trip, so on Tuesday we decided to bike the National Wildlife area of Big Torch Key. This key, as well as many of the surrounding keys, are well know for their population of Key Deer.

We were lucky to spot several of these deer on our bike ride, getting a few pictures and a short video of them.

 

   

 

The GPS track of our bike ride through the Wildlife Area of Torch Key can be found at this link.

We did this bike ride in the late morning and it got pretty darn warm near the end of the ride. So, on a suggestion from someone we spoke to earlier in the day, we located the “No Name Pub” on No Name Key for lunch and a picture of beer to quench our thirst. This place is very quirky and has actually been featured on Diners, Drive-in and Dives on the Food Channel.

The entire interior of the restaurant and bar area are completely covered with dollar bills. The walls have so many layers of bills that it is like a thick spongy blanket. Each bill is signed by whomever left it there and there are some very comical ones to read as you are sitting there waiting for your food.

Here is Julie reading a few or maybe pocketing a few bills….I’m not sure which!!

 

We had a good time eating lunch here and our waitress was very nice. She had just returned from a trip to Alaska, so we spent a lot of time talking about our trip to Alaska last year. She even came over and sat with us for awhile and brought her photo album from her trip for us to view. Sometimes you meet some of the nicest people in some of the oddest places!!

Yes, we had to add to the dollar bill collection at the No Name Pub. They bring a collection of markers and a staple gun and let you have at it. We decorated a bill with all of our names (kids, dogs, etc) and Julie stapled it to the ceiling. Julie’s pink glow in the picture below is from the neon beer sign on the wall near our table. Yep a true classy place!!

We did take note of where se stapled the bill so we can try to locate it if we ever get back this way,

 

On the way back to our campground we decided to stop at Bahia Honda State Park. We wanted to see if this was a place we would want to camp in the future.

We did a little swimming at their beach, walked the nature trail and up onto the old Keys Highway and also biked all the roads in the park. 

The Florida Keys also has many sections of the old railroad bridges and roadway still standing and now used as walking or biking paths. One morning we decided to drink our morning coffee while walking a section of the old historic bridge near Pigeon Key. The walk started off nice and sunny, but clouds built as we walked. Shortly we saw some rain moving in and we decided to turn around before he made it to Pigeon Key. But the rain caught up to us before we made it back to the truck and we got drenched. At least it wasn’t cold and we didn’t melt.

Here is our GPS track of our walk on the old bridge towards Pigeon Key.

 

That afternoon we made another happy hour run out to the sandbar to watch the sun set.

 

Our last adventure before we headed home was to ride a section of the Overseas Heritage Bike Trail. This 22 mile ride took us from our campsite at Curry Hammock back up US-1 to Long Key State Park. Most of the way is paved bike trails, many on the old bridge sections or wide shoulders on the sides of the road. Only a few times did we feel like we were going to get smushed by speeding traffic. Most of the way was a pleasant ride with nice views of the Atlantic or the Gulf.

 

Well, there you have the “short” post about our camping trip to the keys. We found that camping in the keys during the summer months is doable and actually enjoyable. We were rarely dying from the heat and insect/bugs were mostly non-existent. It’s been about 30 years since Julie and I have been to the keys and we may actually plan some other trips down that way before the next 30 years pass!