Oscar Scherer State Park- January 7th-12th, 2009

We are state park campers. If you read our posts from last summer and fall, you are very aware of that. However, we have never camped in a state park outside of the upper midwest. So when we planned this trip, we decided to make reservations to stay at Oscar Scherer State Park in Osprey, Florida, just north of Venice, to see another state park campground. We were not disappointed. We had a private camping spot with lots of vegetation,


with a beautiful, old pine tree right by our camper.

Paul loves his pine trees.
I loved the privacy.

And, something always important to Suzanne when we took our kids camping, there was a very clean bathroom and shower facility, not far from us.

The park has a nature center with free wi-fi and each afternoon musicians would set up in the screened area there and play for a couple of hours. That was unique!

There was a little lake with a swimming beach. However, with the alligator warning, I don't see it as a spot to bring your kids.



We took advantage of the hiking trails in the park. OSSP is known for its scrub jay population. There are only 52 of these birds in this area and we saw at least 6 of them out on the trail. The park is working to improve the habitat to support this small population. These are the only scrub jays in the eastern United States. The rest of them are in the southwest and the loss of habitat between the two locales has stranded these poor guys. Bummer for them to be situated in beautiful Florida!

The plant life made the hiking a real treat for us.


We, of course, had to seek out a local seafood market so we could grill outside in this fantastic weather. This was a meal of scamp and shrimp.

Yum!
We also had a great spaghetti dinner at Beth and Gary's house the second night we were here in Venice. We forgot the camera that night, but brought it the morning we went to the beach and stopped at their house. Isn't their lanai a beautiful spot? They have such a nice home in Venice.

The four of us spent Saturday afternoon at Casperson Beach. What a great spot.

Didn't I tell you Paul was good at retirement? He is actually posing for the camera here. He spent the rest of the time at the beach sifting for shark's teeth. I, as usual, was under the shade of an umbrella.

Speaking of beautiful homes, that night we went to Kent and Margie's for dinner. Margie was so dear and kept up Christmas until we got there so we could get a chance to see their decorations!

They have a wonderful new outdoor kitchen and so Kent grilled steak. Absolutely fantastic!!! We sat and visited and laughed for hours out on their lanai that evening. We got back to the state park very late.

The next morning, the campground hosts, who were our next door neighbors, alerted us to a bald eagle in the dead tree at the back of our campsite. We watched him (or her) for about 20 minutes.
We spent two hours on Sunday afternoon in a canoe out on South Creek, which runs through Oscar Scherer State Park. Our campsite was right along this creek, but you couldn't see it because of the vegetation.

It was one of the most beautiful canoe rides I have ever taken.

The sun through the moss on the trees was so stunning. It is so hard to capture the scene on camera properly.

There were hundreds of mullets swimming in the creek. They jump right out of the water, so it was pretty fun to watch them. I am sure we saw at least 300 fish while we were out there.
There were also lots of oyster beds in the creek. In fact, you can't take a canoe or kayak out during low tide because it exposes the oyster beds in the middle of the creekbed. We had never been so close to oyster beds before so found them quite interesting.


We are experiencing the local flavor as much as possible.

Last Monday we moved to a new park. This afternoon, Paul will golf with Kent, Marge and Gary at Pelican Pointe. Tomorrow we all are going to experience the banjos out here at Snook's Haven, some sort of notorious local watering hole by our campground. We will keep you posted as we get out there and enjoy. All I can say right now is that we like Venice very, very much...........

Homosassa, Florida-Nature's Coast Area-January 2nd-7th

Sorry it's taken so long to get out a new posting, but I've been rather busy the last few days......


Well, maybe not busy, but just not in a wi-fi friendly environment.
As I stated in the last post, we left Inver Grove Heights on New Year's Eve morning at 5:50 a.m. and drove 600 miles through icy Wisconsin as far as Effingham, Illinois. We were exhausted.

Although we were out of the snow belt, it was still cold.

They had a terrible ice storm in that area the prior week, so we were lucky we missed that.
We were up and on the road the next morning at 5:40 and drove through Nashville and Chattanooga and Atlanta and landed for the night in Forsyth, Georgia.

The landscape had certainly changed since Minnesota, but was still cold, so we hoteled it again. We were up and on the road again before 6 a.m. on the 2nd of January. We stopped at a truck wash that morning in southern Georgia before the sun came up and cleaned the road salt off the camper and truck and headed into sunny Florida. We checked in Nature's Resort in Homosassa to stay for five nights.

We had a nice campsite, complete with a little side yard that even had a bird bath!! It was just like summer at home with cardinals, catbirds and hibiscus. We spent our first afternoon and evening dewinterizing the camper and setting up for our stay here for the next month.

We spent the next days exploring the area. We toured an old sugar mill plantation site,

went to Homosassa Wildlife State Park,

poked around some local resort spots,
and, of course found the gulf.

We asked around and found a local spot down on the docks that sold fresh seafood and, as a result had several great meals of flounder, grouper, pongo, shrimp and scallops.


We found time to enjoy getting to know our neighbors in the resort before we headed out each day to explore more of the area.

We visited Crystal River Archeological Site

and Crystal Bay.

We drove up to the Cedar Key area and could have drifted away there for quite some time,

if we had some money
and a Harley.

We spent a day in Weeki Wachi out at Bayport Beach.

The spots were beautiful

and not crowded at all.


Now, we are settling into the Venice area at Oscar Scherer State Park. We arrived last night and had dinner with Beth, Gary, Kent and Marge. Paul has decided to get a tattoo. Me, I'm not so sure.....We'll keep you posted.

The trip begins.....

We left our frozen yard early in the morning on December 31st. The first challenge was just getting up our hill with the camper! Luckily, there were no problems there, but we did drive on icy roads through a long stretch of Wisconsin. After driving almost 600 miles, we stayed in Effingham, Illinois and never even waited up to see the old year out.


The next morning we were on the road before 6 a.m.
At a gas stop that afternoon in southern Kentucky, I decided to see if I could get a newspaper. The lady in front of me in line asked for directions. As she and the clerk carried on a conversation, my mind started to fixate on their accents. I realized I was taken immediately to


Then it was my turn, and as soon as I opened my mouth and started to talk the clerk's eyes opened a bit and I suddenly became very aware of those very tall vowels and clipped consonants coming out of my mouth that mark the accent of the people from the frozen north. I wondered if in her mind she was picturing

All I could think of was that foot sticking out of that wood chipper. It just isn't fair to think about those horrifying scenes from a movie and place those stereotypes on an entire population! But, it does happen, obviously!!! Incidentally, there were no papers available. Hmmmmm.

The second night we made it south of Atlanta to Forsyth, Georgia.


And now we are at our first destination, Homosassa, Florida.

We have found this to be a wonderful slice of "Old Florida." I will share pictures as soon as I can.
Tomorrow we check into Oscar Scherer State Park in Osprey, Florida, which is right by Venice. I am excited to see Kent and Margie!!! And, Beth and Gary, too!!!!

We'll keep you posted!