So I looked to Reserve America (who handles all the Florida State Park reservations online). Wow, Johnathan Dickenson was wide open on Mothers Day weekend (the ONLY weekend in May we had free). So I posted in the GMC and Vintage FL camping FB groups, along with my own page. Well all the serious hits came from my personal page. I managed to rope in one other GMC owner and one of our tent camping friends (we are only recent graduates from that and still do it sometimes). We booked 3 site consecutive sites on the River Loop, as we wanted to bring our kayaks, plus anything to do, you can walk to from the River Loop vs. Pine Grove.
As we found out on arrival was that Pine Grove had two advantages this time of year as it's on higher ground: more breeze and less no see ums. The little guys were out and biting! It only lasted for about an hour around sunset, but a little annoying. Also the campfire helps keep them at bay.
Our other friends, Aaron and Gaby, conscripted a co-worker to come along and soon, we were cooking dinner and roasting meat on the fire. About 5 years or so ago we stayed on the same loop with them and my surf buddy Ernie. Back then he told the story of the Ghost Train and scared the crap out of his young daughter. They were not on this trip, but stories of the Ghost Train were spun and we were on a mission to go find it!
Around 11 or so, the fire started to wind down and instead of stoking it back up, we piled into Marc's SUV and headed up to Hobe mountain. Hobe mountain is the highest natural spot south of Lake Okeechobee in all of South Florida. 86 ft above sea level, the observation deck is probably about another 30-40 ft high on top of it. It offers a commanding view of the surrounding area. It was dark, so you'll have to look at our blog entry from 2 summers ago for daytime pics...here are two of them:
Looking east to the ocean
Shot from the ground, you get the idea.
So we all pile up there and Marc brought his small telescope, but it's too cloudy to really see anything....but then, HERE COMES THE GHOST TRAIN! Well not really, but it is an FEC frieght train heading south. It's really cool at night to watch a train wind through the park as its headlight lights up the woods. As it was cloudy with a low ceiling, there was LOTS of reflected light so we could see the whole train span the park from to to bottom! Pretty neat.
The next morning I woke up early and got on the bike for a ride, trying to find a good vantage to get some sunrise photos. Not quite what I was hoping for, but they were okay.
Back to the campground, I saw a bunny hopping around the nature center, and took a trail through the woods that wound up outside two of the ranger's houses.
Got back to the site and people were up and about. Breakfast started on our site and then migrated to the other one. I went back our site for something and found this little guy tore open our trash bag and was snacking on a muffin wrapper.
After breakfast, we headed over to the nature center for the skins and skulls class for the kids. I learned a few things like Manatee bones are solid (unlike ours) so they can sink better. Here is a manatee skull:
The volunteer ranger was very knowledgeable and talked to the kids (ours were the oldest, some were 5 or 6) about the different animals and there skulls. I learned quite a few things myself.
On the left is a diamond back skin on the piece of wood, followed by a shed, a wild pig, an eight point buck, a coyote, a raccoon and a tortoise shell.
Go go gator
Couple of big takeaways:
1. They trap over 140 feral pigs a month in the park, but are losing as they are procreating faster.
2. Gopher Tortoises dig really long tunnels that all the animals hide in together during forest fires and don't eat one another. Kind of an emergency truce. Ranger said they opened one up and over 400 animals came out of a single one!
3. Coyotes are indigenous to the area and their main diet is rodents, not road runners. (further research shows that they became established in South Florida in the 1980s and back filled in where the wolf population was destroyed by humans).
They built this huge Chickee next to the river where the old amphitheater was. It was about 75x35 feet under the cover! It still smelled fresh.
As we had brought the kayaks, Naya forgot the paddles, so we had to wait until Lucy went to work on Saturday and ran by the house to get them.
It was forecast to rain really bad in the evening and it being mother's day, the tenting folks, decided to pack up their tents, but hang around. We got the kayaks launched and they rented some canoes and we went upstream to Kitchen Creek. It was a fun easy paddle that lasted just shy of 2 hours.
Marc really liked the GMC and dug the view from the driver's seat
As dusk set in and the no see ums came out to feast Aaron and company split the scene and back to Broward and AC suburban living.
We had a nice visit with Jim and Janie, but they turn in early as they were leaving around 8AM to beat the weather home. The promised rain never showed itself, and we went back to the tower lookout again on Saturday night as I didn't have enough wood left to get a proper fire going.
Around 5 AM I woke to the plunk plunk of rain drops, but it never really got going. Just enough to wet the pop up tent cover. After J&J left, it was just us, so I saw the real rain heading toward us on the radar, so we packed up and were off the site around 10:30. Being Mother's Day, I called my sister and told her we were on our way as she was having a brunch for our Mom.
Driving south, here came the rain. It poured pretty good about 5 minutes down the road from this picture.
We got home and cleaned everything up before it started to rain again, so we had pretty good timing.
Next 6 weeks are just crazy busy, so won't be much camping probably until September as after this run, we have a family reunion in early August and then Naya starts high school!
