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.