Days 3 & 4: Still on Amelia Island

Fort Clinch State Park is located at the north end of Amelia Island, just across the Cumberland Sound from Georgia.  We'll be here tonight and tomorrow night and then will start heading north again on Friday.

Searching for driftwood on the Atlantic beach at Fort Clinch.

On Tuesday we went down to Jacksonville to do some shopping, primarily looking for some fleece clothing to give us a greater degree of comfort when the weather is a bit cooler than we like it.  That trip was successful, so on the return trip we stopped and visited Fort Caroline National Memorial.

An approximate replica of Fort Caroline.

The recreated fort commemorates efforts by French Huguenots to establish a colony in Florida in the 1560s.  It seems that one hundred years after the printing of the first Gutenberg Bible that a lot of people had started to take issue with how the Catholic Church had been interpreting the bible, leading to a rise in Protestantism, which included the Huguenots.  They, like so many others, looked to the New World as a place where they could freely practice the religion of their choice, thereby escaping persecution in Europe.  For the colonists at Fort Carolina the results were tragic, as most were later slaughtered by the Spanish who were garrisoned at St. Augustine.

Today (Wednesday) we toured the restored Fort Clinch ($2 entry fee), a Third System Fortification (the most advanced design of its time) masonry fort.   It mostly saw action during the Civil War, but was designed as a coastal defense fortification to protect the Cumberland Sound and access to the Amelia and St. Mary's Rivers.  Though Florida had joined the Confederacy, they were the least populated Confederate state.  Thus they lacked the manpower to defend the fort, so it quickly fell into Union hands.  

Our new replacement credit cards showed up today, so that issue has quickly been resolved.  USAA transferred the balance and cash rewards from our old card to our new card, so once the final corrective charges are processed through the old account it will be completely closed out.

I took some time to fashion nylon strap handles for our Dometic refrigerator this afternoon.  We've relied upon using our fingertips placed under a half inch ledge built into the sides of the Dometic to lift it in and out of the galley (it came with carry handles, but with the factory handles installed it is too wide for the galley space where it is stored).  With the added condensation that we've experienced since we first arrived in the Southeast, we've often thought that our old method of lifting it was a disaster waiting to happen.  So with two feet of 2" web strapping, four 6mm bolts and four fender washers I fashioned some new carry handles.  They are comfortable to use, don't interfere with how we store the unit and they make our life just a bit simpler.

Day 2: Fort Clinch State Park, FL

We had a short mileage day planned for day two, so we backtracked a bit and visited Kingsley Plantation on Fort George Island, since we had a lot of time to kill before we wanted to checkout of our campsite.  It is a sea island cotton plantation dating from the 1700s.  The main house was built in 1798 and is the oldest known surviving such structure in Florida.

A peacock strolling through Kingsley Plantation.

The 1798 plantation house and a later addition.  Note the Widow's Walk at the peak of the roof.

The view from the house.

A reconstructed slave house and several ruins.  They are constructed of tabby, a mix of shells, water and sand.

Alea headed out on her bike once we returned to the campsite, traveling 18 miles to Yulee, FL.  From there we drove to Fort Clinch in Fernandina Beach, where we will spend four nights.  

Once here, we got a text from our bank that our credit card information had been stolen, so that account is now closed.  It is fortunate that happened now, as it gives us time to have the new card expedited to us while we are here at the campground.  We also ordered a second, backup credit card, so that if this happens again, we'll have more than just our debit card for making purchases.  I guess recently in Orlando there has been a huge problem with card skimmers at gas stations, so it is likely that we filled up some place where that was happening.  It took less than a half hour from when the first fraudulent charge was made until the account was closed.

Today will be a shopping day in Jacksonville, home of the only REI store in Florida.  Plus there are a few other things that we need that we can find close by.  

When I stopped riding the other day I had noticed that a nipple was just beginning to be rubbed raw, so I Googled for possible solutions.  It seems it is primarily due to high humidity, and mainly a problem for men, as women's sports bras prevent the issue.  It is due to air flow causing loose fitting clothes to flap against the skin.  The top two solutions that I found were 1) to where a tight fitting, wicking compression base layer (with Under Armor HeatGear clothing specifically recommended) or 2) to apply lanolin, which is also the #1 recommendation for nursing mothers with similar issues.  I've decided to go with the first recommendation (my fingers are crossed), as I suspect the latter is more of a solution of dealing with the damage once it has been done.

Day 1: Back on the Road!

This was a day that seems like it has taken a long time to get here, so we are REAL happy to finally be back on the road.  We officially pushed off from Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine around 9 am yesterday, after leaving Oviedo around 6:30 am.

We picked a good day to start, as Oviedo got 3" of rain and plenty of hail, thunder and lightning the night before.  We had some heavy rain come through last night, and off and on rain is forecast during the coming week.  But we managed to avoid most of the rain yesterday while we were out and about.

Alea arrives off of the ferry across the St. Johns River.

Yesterday's ride totaled about 46 miles.  Since we didn't have much chance for training rides last week, we decided to split the day, with me riding first.  I covered about 28 miles, then Alea completed the remaining 18 miles.  Her route took her on a ferry across the St. Johns River, which for a bike cost $1.  For the van and trailer would have been an additional $20, so from where she took over I headed west to the freeway, across the river and then along the river to the ferry terminal on the other side, adding about 25 miles to the day's driving.  I got there about 40 minutes before she did, and from there it was a short ride to the campground.

A salt marsh near our campsite.

We're at Little Talbot Island State Park ($27 with power and water, showers available), just for one night.  It's a bit buggy, but then this is Florida, and it is starting to be that time of year.  Ralph Martin, a fourth cousin, shared this with me recently (this seems to be more commonly attributed to Texas, but I suspect it applies to a good part of the sunbelt):

Bless this house, oh God, we cry.

  Please keep it cool in mid-July.

Bless the walls where termites dine,

  While ants and roaches march in time.

Bless our yard where spiders pass

  Fire ant castles in the grass.

Bless the garage, a home to please

  Carpenter bees, ticks and fleas.

Bless the love bugs, two by two,

  The gnats and mosquitoes that feed on you.

Millions of creatures that fly and crawl,

  In Florida, God, you've put them all.

But this is home, and here we'll stay,

  So thank you God, for insect spray.

FUEL ECONOMY

We've been curious about the sort of mileage that we get in our 2016 Ford Transit Connect cargo van, though we know we had averaged around 23 mpg over the several thousand miles that we drove last year (the van now has a little over 16,000 miles on it).  So we reset the fuel economy calculator to get a better idea.  The winds were very light, so they didn't have much effect on fuel economy.

For the first hour our highway speeds were from 45 to 55 mph.  At first there were lots of stops, then a long uninterrupted stretch.  By the time we reached the freeway, our fuel economy was 28.5 mpg and slowly edging upward.

The second hour was on the freeway traveling at 70 mph.  The mileage steadily declined to 22.9 mpg before holding steady.  Once we got off the freeway and drove to the Castillo on city streets, the mileage improved slightly.

Later, when driving on the freeway at 65 mph, the fuel economy slowly improved from our overall average for the day (up to that time) of 23.1 mpg.

That's pretty consistent with what the folks at Camp Inn had told us - that fuel economy is optimized at 60 mph and declines after that.   It was good to see the fuel economy so good when driving between 45 and 55, as that is typically the sort of speeds we average on the secondary roads that we usually travel on.  Of course that was in Florida, where it is generally flat as a pancake.  With a mix of mountainous roads the 23 mpg average that we experienced last year should be about what we should expect going forward.

Leaving Camp Jean

I've often asked Alea if she had any sort of "bucket list" - things she would like to do or see before she dies.  Aside from wanting to visit Australia and New Zealand at some point, the answer is usually that she has no such goals.  So I was surprised when she recently announced that she had always wanted to go on an air boat ride.  So we crossed that off of her list after a visit to Lone Cabbage Restaurant.  We got a close up view of a few of Florida's 3 million alligators, and saw plenty of cattle and several types of wading birds.  Even with ear protection the boat was incredibly loud.

Alea, Jean, Joe, Steve and George.

So we are leaving Camp Jean for the final time this year.  We are now officially commencing our tag-teaming for 2016, though we will start about a week earlier than we had anticipated when we left Palmetto.  We had thought we'd leave from around the Ormand Beach area, but with spring break it is a huge challenge lining up campsites.  So instead we will return to where we originally met the Atlantic Ocean last November, which is at St. Augustine.  From there we have reservations for one night at Little Talbot Island State Park and four nights at Fort Clinch State Park, which is just a short distance up the road.  After there we will be in Georgia.

Once we leave Fort Clinch we will be a few days ahead of schedule, so we'll likely begin by doing less than our planned average of around 40 miles per day, provided that the spacing of campgrounds allows us to do that.  If not, then we will take a day or two off in the Carolinas in order to get closer to the timing that we originally anticipated, which will allow us to reach Maine around the beginning of the second week in June.

Alea recently suggested that having a touch screen Chromebook might make it easier for her to navigate the online route maps that I created for us earlier this year.  Anything that might reduce the amount of stress and frustration that we experience on the road is a worthwhile investment, so on Thursday we received our new Lenovo Chromebook, which is so equipped.  It is soooo much simpler to set up than my laptop, but then the laptop is a much better option for writing novel-length books.

We've spent most of our remaining time here at Camp Jean getting prepared for the coming months on the road.  We've lubed the water and propane quick-connects to make them easier to use, sanitized our freshwater and graywater tanks, learned how to access the music on our car stereo's USB drive (it takes a mere seven steps to do so), set up our proof of insurance card on my cell phone, reset the trip odometer and average gas mileage calculation, and so on.

We stopped and filled up on gas for $1.99 per gallon (it was $1.57 a couple of weeks ago), since it looks as though gas may continue to creep up in price in the near future, and we'll stop at the local Aldi store on the way out of town in order to get fully stocked for the next several days of traveling.  


Spending the past week with Alea's siblings and nieces has been great.  It has given us a chance to break out of our routines for a while and to enjoy their company while doing some things we probably wouldn't have done otherwise.  But we are happy to once again be heading back on the road.  We've got our fingers crossed that we don't run into too many April showers next month, and if we do, that they are warm showers!

Alea's Birthday

This week included Alea's birthday, so she and her siblings gathered together in Oviedo to celebrate (which means that her brother Joe flew in from Grand Forks, ND, since Ann and Jean live here).  So the first half of our last week of snowbirding for the year revolved around various events that were planned for their week spent together.

On Monday Joe, Alea, Jean and Ann did some reminiscing, visiting places where they had lived, the campground that their father managed back in the 70s, and various other places in Orlando of significance to them as they grew up.

A pit stop on Memory Lane: Jean, Alea and Joe.

On Tuesday, Jean, Alea, Joe, George, Katie and Meghan drove to Tampa to see a spring training game between the Yankees and the Mets.  It is amazing that the cost of mid-range seats to a spring training game is $30 each, plus another $10 for parking and the cost of overpriced concessions and souvenirs.  Still, by all accounts it was a fun outing, though it meant spending hours on the freeway getting there and back.

Alea, Megan, Katie and George watch the Mets vs. the Yankees in spring training.

I spent the day doing chores.  After about seven weeks,  our Toshiba laptop has finally been repaired.  That amount of time is almost exactly half of the time that we've owned it.  Of course that meant several hours of reinstalling software and reconfiguring things to meet our needs.  Just upgrading to Windows 10 would have eaten up 60% of our normal monthly Mi-Fi data allotment, so we were grateful to be able to be able to use Jean's broadband for that purpose, so that we could save our data for when we are back on the road.

A big problem for us with the laptop is the automatic software updates.  If we automatically connect to the internet we have little control over the updates getting downloaded, which sometimes can take a big chunk out of our Mi-Fi data allotment.  So we've configured the laptop so that we have to manually connect it.  We mainly purchased it as a writing tool, and that rarely requires that I be tethered to the internet.  And its secondary use is to play our selection of exercise videos - ones that emphasize strengthening parts of our bodies that aren't helped by our hours in the saddle.  Again, not something that requires us to be online.

On Wednesday, we went to Wekiwa Island to go canoeing for a few hours.  We had checked ahead of time to make sure it was okay to take the dog with us in the canoe, which it was.  But just upstream from where we put in was the boundary of Wekiwa Springs State Park, where we were greeted with a "No Pets" sign.  We went in anyway.

The temperature was pretty much perfect - in the mid 70s with plenty of shade in places.  The notable event took place floating downstream after getting to Wekiva Springs.  Alea had noticed two deer on the shore of the river, which ran upstream behind our canoe and that of Joe and Jean, then they splashed into the river in front of George, Katie and Megan and swam to the other shore.  Our only thought was that the deer must be very used to the heavy boat traffic in the area.

In the evening, Joe treated us to the big birthday celebration at Colorado Fondue.  That's always a fun way to celebrate with a big group because you just pick a package that includes a variety of appetizers, entrees and deserts, and folks can always find something that they like.  It lessens the possibility of a complex order getting messed up by the wait staff, and helps to maximize the time spent conversing and reminiscing.  Of course no visit there is complete without a photo under the moose head.

Megan, George, Katie, Alea, Steve, Joe and Jean with the moose.

Tomoka State Park (Again)

In my last post I forgot to mention an interesting occurrence at Hillsborough State Park.  On our last day there, we were going for our morning hike along the Hillsborough River when Alea stopped and asked "What's that?"  Just over midway across the river there was a small lizard walking quickly over the top of the water, feverishly trying to reach the other side.  We watched for a few minutes, but when he was less than ten feet from the other shore five or six tiny fish simultaneously jumped out of the water on both sides of him.  In an instant the lizard was gone, either the victim of a fish or a turtle.  We hardly saw a ripple on the water to attest to this, aside from that caused by the tiny fish.

A MyPod by Little Guy: a full sized bed with TV, AC and a small amount of storage, and only 500 lbs!

We dropped in on Marty Malone again, camping in her driveway overnight.  She has two cats, Max and Marley, and Marley has made it abundantly clear that Lana is not welcome in his house: Max hasn't been so quick to pass judgment.  Fortunately, Marty has a screened patio and pool, so we could keep the dog and cats apart, though it didn't stop the drama between them, which was played out in front of the sliding glass door.  Marty has decided to retire this summer, giving us the prospect of being able to get together with her later this year at some point along our route.

Deb Walters and Chris Percival dropped in to see us one last time before heading back home to Maine.  They were on their way to a campground up north and we coordinated getting together for a picnic as they passed near us.  

We've developed a habit of watching the skies above our campsite just after sundown.  In many places we'll see tiny bats flying around, feasting on whatever flying insects they might find.  We didn't see them here, but what we did see were hundreds of dragonflies, most flying well above the treetops, flitting across the sky and then turning instantly when they find their prey.  It was quite amusing, and had us wishing we could get up high enough for a closer look.


There are signs piling up that it is time to get rolling again.  First it was an attack of Red Bug while at Hillsborough State Park (they didn't seem to care for Alea - it was just me getting bit), and on Wednesday I found a baby tick that had clamped down on me behind my left knee, and Alea found one on her hip as well.  Of course the high on Wednesday was over 90 degrees, so it is no surprise that the bug population is beginning to stir after a winter slumber.  The ants have also started being a lot more active.

Lana seeks some shade to try to beat the heat.

We both managed to ride a total of about 80 miles or so over three of the five days that we were at Tomoka.  The first day's ride was hot and humid, leaving little doubt of the poor shape we were in after over four months of loafing around in Florida.

Views of the Intra Coastal Waterway, from two of the small parks along our main training loop.

We met Alan Dobson while at the park, who was doing a short self-supported bicycle tour as a shake down cruise for a long trip along the Lewis and Clark trail later in the spring.  It was nice to once again see a true touring bike, a brand new Surly Trucker.  While there are some definite advantages to a well designed touring bike, it's hard to say whether it would be worth the extra fifteen pound difference in weight compared with my road bike.

We had rain our last evening at Tomoka, so we opted to go out once again to Greektown Taverna in Ormand Beach for dinner, our third visit there.  The food has always been great, and this time they had restocked their supply of retsina wine (the main reason that we eat Greek).  We decided to have Greek coffee for desert, causing us to be pretty wired when we got home.  So we sat ourselves in front of a three hour fire log, and spent nearly the whole time talking about our pasts.  It was a good way to spend our last night alone together until we start heading north again in a little more than a week's time.

Hillsborough River State Park, FL

We spent four nights at Hillsborough River State Park, located just northeast of Tampa.  It's an awesome park, with lots of hiking trails along the scenic Hillsborough River.

The "Stationary Bridge" over the Hillsborough River.

The river just below a small rapids.

While hiking one afternoon we saw the roiling waters created by an alligator as it attacked its prey.  It was over in an instant - a quick trashing sound, then silence.  All we saw was a mass of white air bubbles rising out of the black waters, in a pattern of turbulence that suggested the gator first folded in half to one side to grab its prey and then instantly snapped back to the other side.  Who its victim was is anyone's guess - a fish most likely, but perhaps a river otter?

The river, like most rivers in Florida, has a gentle current, since there isn't much of an elevation difference between here and Tampa Bay.  There is a canoe concession here at the park, and we have a life vest for Lana, so we thought we'd rent a canoe for a couple of hours and explore the river.  But they won't allow dogs in the canoes, and we expect our earlier experience is the reason.  When we would take our previous dog (Nala) kayaking with us she would often hang well over the edge of the boat, straining to catch a scent in the wind.  It's easy to imagine a wiley gator seeing her outline against the sky and coming a couple of feet above the water to easily snatch a tasty gator-sized snack...

The warm weather has the lilies blooming everywhere.

We haven't had the greatest campsite here.  It is mostly paved and located at a point where ALL of the traffic in the campground passes by.  To minimize Lana's tendency to want to scare off every big dog that passes by, we basically "circled the wagons" to create a defensive perimeter.  With the van and camper blocking the view of the road on one side and our shade structure blocking the view on the other, most dogs don't see her, so there is no "stinky eye" staring contest that quickly escalates to threats and challenges.

Last night was the first Friday in quite a while where we've stayed in a park campground.  Whereas Sunday through Thursday the campground is mainly full of snow birders, on Friday and Saturday the locals tend to reclaim their parks.  The result for us was that a lot more people stopped by last night asking about our camper.

A small turtle, perhaps a cooter.

But we are glad to be moving on from here.  While the park is awesome, the cycling opportunities here are less than ideal.  There's a two mile paved park loop and several mountain bike trails, some of which extend beyond the park.  And the main road to the park, US Hwy 301, has paved shoulders, but way too much traffic for us to want to use it as a training ride route.

We did bicycle some of the mountain bike trails, though it wasn't long before most of the longer ones transformed into a series of mud holes that forced us to turn around.

A trail in Dead River Wilderness.

Today we head for Camp Marty for one night, then we'll cross the state for another stay at Tomoka State Park that will last through St. Patrick's Day.  We have about two more weeks before we start tag-teaming our way north!

Lake Kissimmee State Park, FL

We spent last weekend at Camp Jean in Oviedo, getting caught up on laundry, shopping and other chores.  Several weeks back my new Toshiba laptop's hard drive died.  It has been a long, slow process to get that repaired.  First I had to spend $40 for recovery media.  When that didn't work I spent 45 minutes with tech support before they decided that it had to be a defective hard drive.  So I ordered a shipping box from FedEx for another $30, and it arrived yesterday, nine days after it was ordered.  So it is now on its way back to Toshiba, who say it will 7-10 days for them to turn it around, then they will ship it back.  We are more than a bit concerned that it may not get returned before we start heading north.  But that's just part of the challenge of living on the road.  If this happens again I'll know better than to try to replace anything under warranty...

On our way from Oviedo to Lake Kissimmee things started to look very familiar, because for several miles we retraced part of Adventure Cycling's Florida Connector bicycle route.  The narrow, shoulderless roads reminded us of why we'll resume this year's travels at St. Augustine.  Many of the roads south of St. Augustine are not roads we would want to ride on again, now that we know what they are like.

We've had awesome weather the past week and a half, with sunny skies, highs in the 70s and 80s, and virtually no rain.  The same pattern should hold through the rest of this week, at which point the temperatures remain the same, but the chance of rain increases.  Though being Florida, that usually means a line of storms will come through at some point during the day, not that it will rain all day long.

We have a great campsite at Lake Kissimmee State Park that is orders of magnitude better than where we were last week at Highlands Hollow.  We are nestled among pine trees, live oak and palmettos, with no view of our neighbors and a limited view of the road.  The latter is great, as Lana is not constantly on guard like she had been all of last week, feeling the need to scare off every dog that walked by.  Though in the evening she has had her guard up, as the armadillos go crashing through the underbrush in search of food.  She is nearly beside herself because they'll come to just shy of the end of her leash.  The fact that she is crying and yapping at them doesn't faze them in the least.

Campsite 29.

Today we are headed to Hillsborough River State Park (NE of Tampa), where we will spend four nights. 

Highlands Hammock State Park, FL

We spent five days this week at Highlands Hammock State Park near Sebring, FL, and were unimpressed when we arrived.  It was Sunday afternoon before all of the weekenders had left, while at the same time some of the new tenants (like us) were arriving early.  

The camping area is mostly wide open and rather oddly laid out, though the restrooms were conveniently located.  Our site shared an electrical panel and water source with our neighbor, meaning that the hookups were located on the correct side for him, but not for us.  As a result, even for our tiny camper, it was a struggle to get close enough to the power and water to get setup, but we eventually made it work.

No privacy at Highlands Hollow Campground.

But aside from the inauspicious start, things have gone well.  One of our fellow campers noticed our blog address on our van.  After reading a bit of the blog they came and introduced themselves: Dr. Deb Walters and Chris Percival.  Deb had recently kayaked from Maine to Guatemala in an 18-foot kayak to raise money for a charity, Safe Passage.  And Chris had bicycled across the U.S. on the Trans Am trail in 1997. 

Dr. Deb Walters' "street cred" photo.

They were intrigued by our approach to traveling and staying fit, since they are acutely aware of the increased need for recovery time after exercise, which we all experience by the time we are in our mid-fifties.   So they liked the concept and were excited that something similar might be right for them.  We, in turn, have since been pondering trips (likely years in the future) that might add kayaking into our tagteam bicycle travels.  In particular, we could do parts of Adventure Cycling's Atlantic Coast, Great Rivers South and Lewis and Clark Trails for significant distances, giving us the option to avoid congested legs of those routes by paddling downstream on the adjacent bodies of water.  And the thought of at times being on the water in the dog days of summer sounds far more appealing that slogging along in the heat by bicycle.  So they have greatly expanded our future possibilities for fun, inexpensive travel!

For Deb's kayak trip, Chris provided support, helping her launch and providing any needed supplies.  And there were a lot of other similarities with our travel experiences:

• Often the support vehicle would have to travel significantly farther than the self propelled traveler.  
• Often there would be a level of anxiety when the GPS tracking device wouldn't show any movement for a while (Oh no!  Has the kayak sunk?).  
• At times we both covered small distances in the reverse direction of travel, when finding a campsite had meant driving ahead along the route.  
• And so on.

Tree pollen is turning out camper yellow.

They were also kind enough to teach us a new card game, Manipulation (or Manipulation Rummy).  The rules are very similar to an Italian card game, Machiavelli.  It was a simple enough game in concept, but much more interesting, since it requires an abstraction of thought that isn't immediately apparent when first attempting to learn to play.  So we are also grateful that they have expanded our repertoire of card games.

We got together with Deb and Chris a couple of times during the week to swap stories of where we'd lived, interesting experiences that we've had and sharing tips for living on the road.  This campground seems like an odd place to have met another pair of well seasoned travelers, but we are very glad that our paths have crossed. 

Interestingly, Chris had been wondering if they needed to find a more spacious camper than their A-Liner Expedition (a hard-sided pop-up camper).  But after meeting us, they are now wondering if it might be possible instead for them to downsize to a teardrop.  Despite our camper being smaller and lighter than theirs, they could see that it didn't lack any important amenities, plus it is a simpler, lighter and more efficient design that better addresses some perceived shortcomings of their camper.  And like us, they are also interested in a tiny house of some sort for their next home, so the thought of a smaller camper was all the more appealing.  

We took a long drive to Big Cypress Swamp and The Everglades on our second day here, which is the farthest south that we have been on this trip.  It was a chance for Alea to reminisce a bit about when she and her family had come through the area in the 1970s.

The main road through the park and preserve is the Tamiami Trail, which was constructed by blasting a canal out of the limestone bedrock and then using the crushed limestone rubble as the base for an adjacent road.  The canal has become a highway for alligators, so there was no shortage of opportunities to stop and see them up close (though Lana was not allowed anywhere near where there were gators).  And we also managed to see a manatee and a sea otter, but weren't close enough to get decent pictures of those critters.

Three gators soaking up some sun...

...which is a common pastime.

We chose the right day to be away from the campground, as when we returned to the campground it was clear there had been a prescribed burn adjacent to it earlier in the day.  And that night the wind picked up and shifted toward us, filling the campsites with dense smoke.  We resorted to closing up the camper and relying up on the air conditioner to filter out some of the smoke, which only helped slightly.  By morning it was a bit better, but the smoke at times returned when the wind blew in the right direction.

'Wildlife' outside of the CCC Museum.

We explored most of the trails at the campground, many of which Lana was not allowed on, since there are gators here as well.  And we visited the CCC Museum in the park, which was definitely worth a visit.  Of all of FDRs New Deal programs, the CCC and Social Security are probably perceived as having been the most successful (unless you are in the Tea Party, though I suspect they would squeal pretty loudly if Social Security were ever to go away).  In addition to the legacy of important public buildings left by the CCC, it also served to improve the health, fitness, discipline and skills of thousands of young men.  So when World War II broke out, there was a ready supply of ideal young soldiers, which was likely a big part of our success in that war.

Alea walks along a catwalk on the Cypress Swamp Trail.

The remnants of an oak tree that is 30 feet in circumference.  The crown was lost during a storm in 2010.

Now we are once again back at Camp Jean for the weekend, providing us with a chance to wash clothes, get a haircut, wash vehicles, drink brewed (not instant) coffee and take advantage of some free wi-fi.