O'Leno State Park Outing

As I mentioned in the last blog, I will be giving reports on our adventures in 2008. Although we elected to not spend another 4 – 5 months on the road this year, we are trying to get out more for shorter trips.

One such trip was to O’Leno State Park. O’Leno State Park is located just off Interstate 75, about half way between Gainesville and Lake City, Florida.

Descriptive quote from Florida State Parks Web-Site: O’Leno State Park: Located along the banks of the scenic Santa Fe River, a tributary of the Suwannee River, the park features sinkholes, hardwood hammocks, river swamps, and sandhills. As the river courses through the park, it disappears underground and reemerges over three miles away in the River Rise State Preserve. One of Florida's first state parks, O'Leno was first developed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the 1930s. The suspension bridge built by the CCC still spans the river. Visitors can picnic at one of the pavilions or fish in the river for their dinner. Canoes and bicycles are available for rent. While hiking the nature trails, visitors can look for wildlife and enjoy the beauty of native plants. The shady, full-facility campground is the perfect place for a relaxing overnight stay.

Our choice of travel date was to coincide with the annual Isle of Eight Flags Shrimp Festival – May 3rd and 4th. Not that we don’t like the Shrimp Festival, but after you’ve seen it several times, you get tired of the crowds and disruption to the normal pace of life. So we decided it would be a good time to get out of Dodge!

O’Leno State Park is roughly 115 miles from home and less than a 2 ½ hour drive. We took the “back” roads down but decided to take all Interstate coming back. Although the motor-home is not hard to drive on 2-lane roads, sometimes it’s just easier on big roads.

We did have two bits of “excitement” on this, our first outing since January. The first was when I pulled the fuse from the Saturn (to allow towing) and dropped it into the engine compartment. You’d think it would fall straight through, but no, it had to lodge in an unreachable spot. Since it had to be “out” anyway, I gave up trying to retrieve it and drove on to the state park. None of my spare fuses would fit (too small!), so I borrowed a fuse from a different circuit and drove to the auto parts store to get a replacement. Yes, I did buy a couple of spares.

Then while checking in to the campground, I noticed the tailpipe on the motor-home was flopping around badly. Inspection found the tailpipe hangar strap fastener bolt had rusted through. I bought a new hangar strap at the auto parts store (while there for fuses) but there was no where to fasten it. So I borrowed a page from a friend of yore – a friend we camped with back in the mid-70’s while working at Hughes. He worked for the phone company and always had a pocket-full of cable ties which he used to fix everything. So I bought some of these at the auto parts store and jury-rigged six cable ties into three different loops which I then wrapped around anything I could find. It looked funny, but we got home without it falling off. (I had a more permanent solution performed while having the rig serviced at the Cummins / Onan shop last week.)

Today’s photos are from the O’Leno State Park. The first and most memorable was the Don’t Feed the Alligator sign posted beside the swimming hole! The river is the Santa Fe River mentioned in the Florida State Park web-site. It does go underground close to the park and re-emerges under a motel / lodge just outside High Springs, FL. (I’m not exaggerating – the motel is built right on the bank above the river’s “cave”.)

In my next blog, I’ll write about some of the other things we saw (things beside doing repairs).

It's 2008! Time to start blogging!

It would be fun to start with something like, “By overwhelming popular demand, I am restarting our BLOG.” But that would be stretching the truth. In fact a few folks have wondered when we would start the again. Not that ours is a boring life, but writing a daily blog of life on Amelia Island would make for a dull read!

Now that it is nearly the end of May 2008, I thought it would be good to start again. At least so folks will know that we’re posting – at least occasionally – and let everyone know what’s been happening and our plans for the rest of the year. Scary, isn’t it, to have plans for the next 6 months!

The photo is of the courthouse in Forsyth, GA. Those of you with good memories will recall a similar photo of the courthouse taken last year (almost a year to date!).

In mid January, we took the RV to Forsyth, GA for 4 nights. It was a chance to play golf with my old golfing buddy, Rick. Needless to say, I played as usual – poorly! Because Forsyth is north of Macon, we were relatively close to Atlanta. We took the opportunity and went for the day, starting with a visit to IKEA where we picked up a desk for Margaret. Then off to Trader Joe’s and serious wine shopping!

Although there are six Trader Joe’s (as of mid-January) in Atlanta, there are none closer in the southeast. We asked a clerk if he knew of any plans to “invade” Florida – like Orlando or Tampa. But he had not heard of any such plans. So we stocked up – fortunately the Saturn VUE has a roomy storage area (with the back seats down). We put in eight cases of Two-Buck Chuck (six Cabs and two Chardonnay). After the staff helped load it, I realized there was room for three or four more, but I decided to stick with what I had.

An amusing footnote to this wine story. The next night we had dinner with friends in Macon. The server announced their liquor license renewal hadn’t been renewed. For once I had not only a bottle of wine – I had eight cases! At first they didn’t want to let me bring it in, but after we made motions to leave, the manager relented. I offered him a bottle for his trouble, but he refused.

In mid February, we drove to D.C. via Wilmington, NC. The purpose was for Margaret to meet with various Red Cross folks regarding her on-going project. We elected not to take the RV because we wanted to stay downtown in relative proximity to the Red Cross headquarters. While there we had an opportunity to have dinner with some old friends from our California days.

I will be posting for a few days, trying to catch up on what we've been doing and where we've been. Particularly, I want to devote a separate post to our most recent RV outing to O'Leno State Park in Florida.

Regards to all our "loyal" readers. As the guv would say: "We're Baacckkkk."

Wayne