Stuff Happens!

June 20th – 25th

Monday
Today we decided to adventure out and explore a park in Salt Springs which is about 30 miles south from the Lake Okalawaha KOA Campground. We arrived at the Ocala National Forest/Salt Springs Recreational Area at 10:30 am. What a beautiful area!

They offer 106 sites for camping with full hookups (water, electric and sewage) and 54 sites with no hookups. Other activities are boating, fishing, hiking, picnicking and swimming. Visitors can rent boats and canoes near the Salt Springs Marina. Picnicking and swimming in the springs is one of the favorite things to do at the park.

According to their brochure, the Salt Springs water contains no salt, but a variety of minerals and rare trace elements that gives a mild salt taste to the cold spring water that flows at the rate of 52 million gallons per day. Salt Springs is a natural spring rising from vertical fissures (cracks) deep within the earth. The presence of potassium, magnesium, and sodium salts give the water in the spring a slight salinity, hence the name Salt Springs. In the early 1900s many people came to the spring, believing it had medicinal healing powers.

The manatees come to the Salt Springs in the winter months. This park does not allow any swimming in the winter months. If we are here in the winter I would definitely go back and see the manatees and hang out in the park.

I will say it is a very relaxing, beautiful and peaceful place. I was amazed how clear the Spring was. It was a beautiful day with the temperatures in the low 80’s with a light cool breeze. I could hang out here all day. The water temperature is a constant 72 degrees year-round. It was too cold for me in the morning so we decided to go into town for lunch and grocery shopping. I wanted to go back to the springs and enjoy more of the wonderful energy of the place. It was around 2:00 pm with the temperature around 86 degrees and we decided to do a little hike to get hot and sweaty then go swimming afterward. We hiked on the Bear Swamp Trail.

The trail was about a mile and half long. It was beautiful and relaxing to walk in the forest with lots of cabbage palms, Water Oak trees, Live Oak trees, Cypress trees, Spanish moss, Pine trees, and with plenty of little gnats and flies to bug us along the way. lol

On the trail they built a nice long boardwalk over the semi-dried swamp area.

Ed spotted a Pygmy rattle snake curled up and sleeping in the sun light next to the boardwalk. Geez, that was way to close for my comfort.

Pygmy Rattle Snake

Ed loves to play with critters and decided to nudge it. It woke up and I wasn’t happy about that. It just looked at Ed and did nothing. lol Ed laughed and I walked away. lol He is a crazy nuts to be messing with a poisonous snake.

After the hike we were all hot and sweaty and ready to go swimming in the 72 degrees spring water. Oh my goodness it was cold when I first jump in but I got used to it. The springs had three areas called boils where the water was coming up from the ground. It had lots of rocks around it that we could swim around it. We could stand up on the rocks or sand in some of the area but other areas were probably 6 feet or more deep. There were plenty of bream, striped bass and blue crabs in the springs to see.

The rocks in Salt Springs

Oh we so enjoyed swimming in the springs. I can see why the springs were considered a medicinal healing power back in the day. I could feel a subtle or gentle energy in the water and felt very relaxed and calm. I didn’t want to get out but I was getting a little cold. We stayed at the park for about two hours.

View from the entrance

Beautiful Oak Trees as we walked to the spring

I appreciate the park taking good care of the area and hope the public enjoys the beauty of what mother nature brings us. Thank you mother nature for expressing your beauty for all of us to see and experience. What a great way to end the day.

Tuesday
Later in the afternoon around 2:00 pm, Ed and I wanted to see the other natural springs in the Ocala National Forest area. They have four natural springs; Alexander Springs, Juniper Springs, Salt Springs and Silver Glen Springs. All of the springs connect to Lake George, the second largest lake in Florida. We have seen Salt Springs so our first stop was at Silver Glen Springs.

This spring flows about 65 million gallons of water per day. That is an amazing amount of water. They offer hiking, picnicking, canoe rentals and all year-round swimming and snorkeling.

This spring did not have rocks but did have plenty of grass and sand. The water appeared shallow compared to Salt Springs but it was nice and clear. It is a very well used park. There were lots of boats and people swimming in the spring. It was too crowded for our liking to swim in the springs. To me, the energy of the place felt very congested and a little chaotic. So we went to the next spring, Juniper Springs which is about 15 miles south from Silver Glen Springs.

According to their brochure, Juniper Springs Recreation Area is one of the oldest and best-known National Forest recreation areas in the Southeast. Constructed in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), it has semi-tropical scenery not found on any other National Forest in the continental United States. The combined daily water flow from Juniper and Fern Hammock Springs is about 13 million gallons per day. Day-use activities include picnicking, snorkeling, bird watching, camping, hiking, canoeing and all year-round swimming. They have 78 camp sites with no hookups.

Watermill at Juniper Springs

The spring has a watermill that was used back in the mill days. It does bring water to the Juniper Creek that travels all the way to Lake George. The swimming area of the spring was rather small and looked like a pool area.

The water was murky from the sands being stirred up. It didn’t have the same peaceful feeling as Salt Springs did. So we went back to Salt Springs. It was 4:00 pm by the time we got there and it wasn’t crowded with people. We went swimming and it was again very refreshing, peaceful, and calm. I could get addicted to that place. We left Salt Springs by 6:00 pm and headed back to our campground and had a very nice and relaxing evening.

Wednesday
On Tuesday Ed got our sticker for our RV license plate from America Choice RV that we have been waiting to receive for the last two weeks. Oh so glad that the wait is over. So today we went to the DMV to register our domicile to Green Cove Springs by using the RV license plate as our domicile address. Then we registered both of our vehicles and then we registered to vote. The DMV at Green Cove Springs were so knowledgable about our situation and very helpful resolving any issue that we had. I highly recommend them if any of you are interested in using Green Cove Springs as your domicile address.

Now we are just waiting for our mattress to arrive this Friday and then leave to our next destination. Fingers crossed that all will work out. lol

Thursday
Ed spent most of the morning fixing the leak on our bedroom slide out. The bedroom slide completely blocks the hallway when it is in the stowed position. In order to remove the piece of corner moulding I had to have Tracey bring the slide in while I was in the wardrobe closet where I could get access to one of the mounting screws. After I removed that one screw I had Tracey put the slide back out so I could get out of the bedroom and finish the work. I removed the piece of corner moulding and cleaned up the old putty and silicone caulking. Then I put new putty tape in the moulding and re-attached the moulding except for the one screw you can not reach from the outside. There was a line of silicone caulking on the fascia that was detaching from the surface so I removed it and cleaned the surfaces. I applied a new bead of silicone to the moulding and the fascia. I have to give GE some credit for the silicone, it really went on smooth and easy. Maybe the 97 degree temperature I was working in had something to do with that. After that Tracey and I repeated the process of bringing the slide in so I could get that last screw installed.

I worked on our blog and did some laundry in our RV. Oh I am liking our washer and dryer in the RV. The one thing I am getting used to is that when the washer is spinning fast it rocks the RV a little. So there is a little rock n roll going on in our RV. lol

Later in the afternoon around 3:30 pm we went back to Salt Springs for the last time. There were a lot more people and kids in the springs this time. I didn’t feel as relaxed as I did the other times but I did enjoy the water. We stayed there for about two hours.

Friday
Today is the day that we finally leave Florida. Yay! We left KOA around 1:00pm and headed into Palatka to pick up our mattress. We arrived around 1:50 pm. We parked our RV in the parking lot at the Factory Direct Bedding, LLC and put the slides out while still hooked up to the truck. The guys from the factory helped us take out the old heavy mattress from the RV.

Then they put the new light mattress in the RV.

It only took about 15 minute to park, put the slides out, exchange mattresses, bring the slides in and get back on the road again. Before we left Ed noticed the left hydraulic landing gear was down. That was weird. So he brought it back up and we went on our way to the next destination at Reed Bingham State Park in Adel, GA. It is about a three hour drive from Palatka.

About an hour down the road Ed heard a noise. The hydraulic landing gear came down again. Ed brought it back up again and hopefully this time it will stay up.

Front Landing gears

Well, about 15 minutes later it started to come down again. This time the right hydraulic landing gear was coming down as well. So Ed thought it could be just gravity pulling the landing gear down so he put duct tape on it as an easy fix. Well, that didn’t work. By now we were close to Lake City so Ed called America Choice RV service department (where we bought our RV in Ocala) for assistant. They said it was probably a valve issue and to go to Camping World in Lake City and get the valve replaced. Ed wrapped each landing gear with a tie down strap anchored to the generator compartment. Man, I wished I took a picture of Ed’s creative work. lol The strap helped slow down the descent but it sure put a lot of pressure on the tie downs. We arrived at Camping World and they could not help us because they were booked with other customers for service. So Ed called Dominica at America Choice RV to see if they could help us out. She said we can camp in their campground behind the service department and check in the morning with the service department on what they can do for us. We stopped every 20 minutes to bring up the landing gear and relieve the tension it was putting on the straps. It took about an hour and half to get to Ocala from Lake City. We safely arrived at Wild Frontier Campground by 6:45 pm. We park at campsite #57.

Site #57

Ed left the truck hitched to the fifth wheel just in case the landing gear is not able to support the rig. He was able to put down the other hydraulic levelers manually.

The DRV hitched up to the truck

I guess we won’t leave Florida for a couple of days. Pooh! It was a LONG, hot and stressful day. After we got the RV and cat settled, we went out to eat at a pizza place down the road. We were very tired by the end of the evening. One good thing is that I slept on our new mattress and not on the couch. That felt good to sleep with my honey again. 🙂

Saturday
This morning Ed talked to Joel from the service department and they can’t do anything today due to short of staff and closing by 2:00pm. So we are stuck here until Monday. Geez we will ever get out of Florida? So what is the lesson in all of this? Learn to be flexible, patient and go with the flow when stuff happens. It is a learning process for both of us or least for me. Patience is not my best virtue and I wonder if it’s just a red head trait. I am the opposite of Tracey. I am so patient that Tracey mistakes it for procrastination. Funny honey!

Later, we decided to go to the movies because it was to hot (99 degrees) to be outside. We saw Now You See Me 2 and it was a good movie. It was nice to get our situation out of my head for a couple of hours. For the rest of the day we just chilled in our RV.

Well, stay tuned for future updates and hopefully we will be out of Florida by the next blog. lol

See ya’ll later.