Tuesday, our travel day, didn’t work out quite like we expected. Sitting next to the camper Marv had noticed that one of the trailer tires had a bulge so he put on the spare. We found there was a Discount Tire place in nearby Gainesville, which we were traveling through anyway. Our plan was to go back to the Spring Diner and have their breakfast special, stop off in Gainesville to replace the tire and fill a propane tank, and be on our way to the Ocala area. The breakfast was great but when we got to Discount Tire they didn’t have the tire in stock. But he said he could call the distributor and, if the truck hadn’t left, he’d order one and it would be there by the afternoon. Luckily the distributor had one and he got it ordered by just 10 minutes to spare. So we had three or more hours to fill. We got the tank filled nearby and went back to Paynes Prairie, where we had a good chance to talk to the ranger about the area and watch the video we passed on the other day. It was so interesting to learn how the prairie filled with water in the late-1880s when the sink that drained the creek that ran through it got stopped up like a bathtub. For several years there was enough water that steamships ferried goods across the “lake”. In 1895 the plug just as suddenly let go and the entire area drained in just 5 days, leaving fish high and dry on the bed. Since then it has remained mostly marshy prairie lands with a creek running through it and several ponds in the center. Now they are in the middle of a two year (at least) drought and there is no water at all out there. They have had to take some of their many alligators to lakes and the prairie is brown and dry. That hasn’t bothered the bison, cracker cattle and wild horses who graze the large area. She encouraged us to bike the Cone Dike Trail, which we did for about 5 miles. We saw two wild horses but that was about all. Since we hadn’t heard from the tire guys we bought groceries on our way back to Discount Tire and then found out that they had called our home number (not my cell, which we had given them) to tell us when the tire was done. Doh! We were on our way to Ocala by about 5:00 and passed by the spot on I75 where the terrible accident had taken place Sunday morning. Chilling. We got to Juniper Springs Campground at 6:00, as the sun was going down. But we picked out a site and got set-up without a hitch and then enjoyed the chili I had made the day before.
Wednesday we puttered for much of the morning and then drove to Alexander Springs, in the southeast corner of the National Forest, to check it out. We had been told it would be a good place to kayak and, after looking around, we decided to do it on Thursday, after getting other things out of the way in the back of the truck. We ate our picnic at the tropical looking spring and then hiked just over two miles on an interpretive trail. It passes through 4 distinct ecosystems: Cyprus swamp, aquatic, sand scrub pine, and oak hammock. Signs explained how the Timucuan native people used the flora and fauna here as many as 10,000 years ago. Along Alexander Spring Creek we enjoyed watching river otters and herons. On our way out we checked out a possible put-in spot for the kayak but decided it would be better to go from the spring and paddle back up stream to the same spot. We drove back to 19, the main north/south route through the Forest, and drove two sandy off-trail roads to hike a little over a mile and a third on “The Yearling” trail. The sand scrub pine area typical of Cracker farms was the setting Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings used to write “The Yearling” and “South Moon Down”. I don’t remember reading either one, but now I’m interested in finding them. While hiking we came across a large sink hole. It was deep enough that we looked down on the many full sized trees growing at its bottom. When we got back to our campsite we were disconcerted to hear jet fighters overhead and the sound of bombs exploding. No problem though as there is a Navy bombing range is just a couple of miles south of us. Marv greased the truck, I took a shower, and we enjoyed spaghetti for dinner and a quiet evening.
Thursday, after a hearty breakfast of egg and bacon wraps, we took our coffee for a walk around the Tropical Loop and saw where we would have been placed if we hadn’t chosen our own site (ours is much nicer). It had been a cloudy night with temperatures only down to the high fifties and the clouds were already breaking up and the temperatures rising. After a bit more fussing around we packed a lunch and went back to Alexander Springs to kayak. It was a wonderful trip with something to see wherever we looked. In the crystal clear waters we could see many types of fish and turtles swimming, including an alligator turtle. On the water we saw more turtles, anhinga, river otters, and an alligator gliding silently along. In the shallows along the banks we saw otters, more turtles, herons, and two more alligators sunning themselves. And in the trees along the creek we saw anhinga drying their wings, heard hawks screeching, and even saw a juvenile bald eagle glide in and perch in a high tree. We went downstream until we got to the bridge where we understand the creek narrows and becomes more challenging so we turned to go back by paddling against the current, which was very easy. The only things that spoiled the trip were glimpses of McDonald’s cups and beer cans glinting up through the water and a couple of spates of Naval bombing in the distance. Back at the spring we enjoyed our picnic before packing the kayak back up and returning to the campground, stopping along the way to wash the truck. We relaxed a bit and then rode our bikes over to Juniper Spring, We hiked the trail there, bringing our walking for the day to just over 2 miles, and then took a refreshing dip in the 72° spring. Marv built a small fire at the campsite so we could cook our hotdogs. We were grumbling a bit about our new next-door neighbors who were 1) running a generator and 2) playing a radio loud enough for us to hear. I said I didn’t know why they were running the generator since he was gathering up a huge armful of the firewood he had been chopping all afternoon to add to an enormous pile, so they must be planning on a campfire. Imagine my chagrin when he walked the armful over to us and invited us to help ourselves to as much more as we wanted. Blush!! They soon turned off the generator and built their own roaring campfire. We added to ours and set-up the Ipod nearby playing “Peter, Paul, & Mary Sing Around the Campfire” so we couldn’t hear their music. We finished our evening by walking by the bright light of the ¾ moon to a clearing at the top of our loop and using my Google Night Sky app to identify some of the many stars and planets we could see in the clear heavens. It had been another lovely visit to Ocala National Forest.
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