Oklawaha Pt 2. And Palatka

From March 14th, Lake Oklawaha

On the Thursday,  we’d hoped that we’d have a quiet day in a very large, but very quiet park in the middle of the Ocala National Forest; 400 sites but only about 100 occupied. However, the grocery situation meant that we didn’t have enough food and would need to head out to find a real grocery store. We scraped together remnants of dinner from the last couple of nights — some left over bread and biscuits, a hard boiled egg and coffee. Oh yeah, we were out of Coffee — down to a couple of packets of instant. Anyone who knows me at all knows that lack of coffee is a disaster.

View out the back window of our trailer.

So, after breakfast and a little tidying up we headed out towards Salt Spring about 20 miles away to find what was supposed to be a good grocery store. This meant running through about 5 miles of very sandy forest road and across a dam and then back 10 miles south on Hwy 19. Salt Spring is a cute little community but rumours of a useful grocery store seem unfounded... There was a little “grocer” that was less appealing than the shopping I’d down at the Marathon Gas Station in Eureka the night before. They advertised fresh meats but I knew instantly when we walked in and Lorraine said “oh, this doesn’t smell good” that we were moving on.  We searched for another grocer before heading back north to Palatka where we had heard there was a Wal-Mart. Much as I hate grocery shopping at Wal-Mart beggars can’t be choosers and they would at least have coffee.

Palatka is 20 miles north of Salt Spring, back past the forest road across the dam — we would have been better to go there in the first place. We found a nice Winn Dixie instead of the Wal-mart and found the fixings for Dinner for Thursday and breakfast in the morning and then headed back to the camp. Smoke from a forest fire off to the South — towards the KOA — had us a little worried but everything was ok when we got back about 3:15.

I had had enough of driving, so I quickly grabbed the dogs to walk on the nature trail.  The girls, Baby and Kitty, were particularly keen. They love the bush at home and are always happy to hunt for anything that moves. In Florida though, this can be a little more dangerous than at home as there are new and different things in the wood here. They are used to bears — and this is black bear country — and other larger predator smells and are always keen to chase deer;  there were lots of deer tracks on and across the nature trail. But this is also snake country — apparently there are 44 different types of snake and Florida and only 6 of them are venomous — 5 of them can be found in the Ocala Forest — and I was walking without a walking to stick to pound the ground and let them know to move.  I wasn’t terribly surprised when about 800 metres down the trail I turned around and spotted a 6 foot long Indigo Racer sitting on the side of the trail. Somehow, all four of us had walked right by it without noticing. I thought of taking a picture but that would draw the dog’s attention to it. The indigo snake isn’t venomous but this one was plenty big enough to give a nasty bite. Baby hates snakes and has killed a couple of garter snakes at our camp in Quebec. After eviscerating them she barks and barks with a special high-pitched threat bark we’ve only heard her use with snakes. I didn’t want her to kill a threatened snake, or vice versa; I left the camera aside and we kept walking.  The trail wound downhill to a little weedy beach on Lake Oklawaha and the girls wanted to swim.  I made sure to check for any movement or logs or sign of alligators in the water before allowing them to walk in just a little — I didn’t want to explain to Lorraine why I was a dog short after our walk or that one of them had become a gator-tot. It was a beautiful day for a walk — very lush and green and 27C with lots of sun frankly I could have used a swim.

Photo Courtesy of Wiki Commons Indigo Snake

The girls on the Nature Trail.

After returning from our walk I enjoyed a beverage and sat in the sun reading for a while — so mission partly accomplished for the day after all.  When the sun became too intense to just sit there I considered moving to the shade but instead turned my attention to the trailer.  It was literally caked in salt and grime from the trip down last Monday; the little rain we had seen since did little clean it.  This was the first time I’ve washed the trailer and it wasn’t a bad job and allowed me to get some nice sun while accomplishing something.  Lorraine alternated laundry and tidying up with sitting in the shade reading with a beer so we’d be set to head to Naples in the morning.

A Clean Trailer.

The sun set over the forest, other campers lit campfires and it was time for dinner.  I had a good one planned; Nice Rib-eye steaks from the Winn-Dixie in Palatka,  Spinach salad with Florida Strawberries and Pecans from Claxton, macaroni and cheese,  with a nice oaky bottle of Argentine Malbec.  I managed to cook the steaks properly on the odd-little BBQ girl that comes with the trailer; getting rare correct while getting the right sear always takes practice on different grills so I was pleased that last year’s experience worked out well.

One last walking of the dogs for the night, then it was time to write the draft of this blog. There was no way I could use Blogger to actually publish but at least I could keep up my streak on 750words.com.  I have been using this site to build the habit of writing everyday. For March I entered their challenge and had done 12 days straight already.  I wrote the first 1100 word draft of this and then found I couldn’t save and had only saved the first 200 words and it was close to midnight.  Not to be defeated that easily I went outside, positioned the picnic table so that my phone could get a 3G signal and then re-wrote the first 800 words of the journal. This time it worked;  Good practice, I keep telling myself that, Good practice.