We finally had a day with some sunshine and no rain and Karen suggested that we go to Silver River State Park.  Karen had been there many years ago and had fond memories of the place.  The park is in Silver Springs, Florida on the eastern edge of Ocala, Florida, about 35 miles from our wintering grounds at the WCRV Resort in Williston, Florida.  We left around 10 AM and were there by 10:45 AM.  I have posted a photo gallery with today’s date in addition to this blog posting.

Silver River SP is large for an urban location and has two entrances.  We went to the west entrance first.  This is where the water park, springs, glass bottom boats, concessions, and entertainment facilities are located.  There was also a major Ford car club show going on.  We could not buy an annual pass at this entrance, however, so we drove to the east entrance.  The east part of the park is where the campground, hiking trails, historic Cracker homestead, education facilities, and museum are located.  We bought an annual park pass, good for admission of one vehicle with up to eight people at most of the Florida State Parks, went in, and parked at the trailhead area.

We had a leisurely stroll on the 1.9 mile Swamp Trail.  The trail took us through pine Forest and cedar swamp to the south bank of the Silver River.  There was a variety of interesting flora along the way (with an occasional explanatory placard) that Steve and I stopped to photograph.  When we finished the hike we explored and photographed the Cracker homestead recreation, although none of the buildings were open.

While we were on the trail Linda got a call from our daughter.  She was at our house and said the road was icy and the driveway had not been plowed.  We had contracted with someone to take care of this in our absence and apparently they had not been there since the most recent heavy snows and extremely cold temperatures.  I called the phone number we have and got a Verizon message indicating that the number had been changed, disconnected, or was no longer in service.  Great (not).

We had gotten a referral for this snow removal service from the realtor who helped us by our house so I gave him a call.  I made it clear that we understood that this was not his problem and we did not consider him in any way responsible, but if there was any way he could contact this guy and determine if he was still in business we would appreciate it.  I thanked him, indicating that we really did not have anyone else we could call and appreciate any assistance he could provide.  This is one of the potential downsides to being away from home in the winter, but no reason to spoil a good hike.

Our hiking done we returned to the east end of the park.  This part of the park was once a private/commercial enterprise but is now a Florida State Park.  The water park wasn’t open this time of year, but we were there to ride the famous glass bottom boats.  The 30 minute ride gave us a great view of seven of the 20 springs that feed the Silver River.  The water was crystal clear, so light penetrated easily to the bottom (as much as 55 feet down in the spring openings) and was teeming with aquatic life.  A variety of birds were also there, especially Anhinga.  We did not see any alligators, but we did see plenty of warning signs.

The springs have been used for many years to film underwater scenes for movies, including one of the James Bond films.  Most famous, however, was the Sea Hunt TV series starring Lloyd Bridges.  All of the 120+ episodes were filmed in one particular spring that we were able to see.

The Ford car show had a lot of vehicles and a lot of people looking at them.  One whole area was high performance Shelby Cobras with a Ford GT nearby.  We wandered around and took a few pictures.  The wind started to come up and when Linda checked the weather there was a storm front moving our way with severe thunderstorm warnings for Williston.  We decided to head back as we had a couple of stops to make on the way and wanted to be back at the coach before the storms hit.

 

 

Sometime on Friday the Dropbox service developed a major problem as the result of some maintenance they were doing on the system.  Our desktop clients were suddenly unable to connect with the Dropbox cloud servers and I was also not able to log in through the web interface.  I had planned to upload photos for the BCM Arcadia Rally article and couldn’t.  Plan B was to put them on a flash drive and mail them.  I found a 16 GB unit for $9.99 at Staples and bought a padded mailing envelope to ship it in.  We then stopped at the Publix supermarket on US-27 to pick up some things Linda needed to make risotto.  It just started to rain as we got back to the coach, so we quickly got our groceries and ourselves inside.  Moments later the thunder, lightning, wind, and rain began in earnest.

Although Saturday is also fire pit night at WCRV Resort but they do not build a fire when high winds are forecast.  We heard voices over by the fire pit later but decided to hunker down for the evening.  Linda made a traditional Arborio rice risotto with mushrooms, onions, garlic, Pinot Grigio (which we also drank), and four different greens (kale, Swiss chard, spinach, and arugula).  It was truly excellent.  We had fresh strawberries and dark chocolate covered almonds for dessert.  We four people in the coach for dinner everyone has to hold their plates on their laps, but Steve and Karen were good sports about it.