Friday, January 17th, 2003
Our home for the weekend was going to be Highland Hammock State Park, about 80 miles south, so we packed up and reluctantly left Blue Springs. We stopped at Wekiwa Springs for a Volksmarch along the way, and had a nice walk in the pine/palmetto forest. It was a bit spooky when we arrived because we were the only car in a huge 200-300 car parking lot, and my natural thought is “Where are all the people?” In fact we didn’t see anyone for almost the entire walk. As Monika walked past the concession stand to the spring area, she came face to face with a Great Blue Heron not more than 10 feet away. She froze, I froze, and the heron calmly walked away to put more distance between us while I was fumbling getting the camera out. The rest of the trail was extremely well marked—they even have numbered the benches and carved arrows on them to show the direction of the trail. The trail was sandy soil, sometimes covered with long pine needles which made it very soft. After two hours of threading our way thru the pine forests we returned to the concession stand where we saw a couple brave and hardy souls heading for the springs with towels and bathing suits. The spring water was 72 degrees, but the air temperatures were only in the 50s so I had no desire to emulate them. Instead, we continued south and did some shopping along the way.

One of shopping goals was some fresh food to balance all the canned meals we were having. Since it was quite cold in the evenings, we decided to buy some (real) eggs and ham for dinner that night and breakfast the next morning, figuring that it keep overnight. A second goal was to find a 12-volt DC power supply that would plug into an electric socket so that I could use our portable refrigerator to keep fresh milk. We fruitlessly pursued that goal at a camping supply store and hardware store before giving up and stopping at a Wal-Mart to buy a battery charger that I hoped would serve the purpose. Trying it out would have to wait because our primitive campsite had no electricity, of course. It turned out when we reached Highland Hammock State Park that the site also had no running water and a pit toilet, which was a bit more primitive than we had hoped for.

As luck would have it, our campsite (P-13) was across from 2 group campsites which Boy Scout Troops 115 and 250 had decided to use for the weekend. Troop 250 didn’t arrive until 10 p.m. and were not exactly “courteous or kind” in yelling and screaming while setting up their campsite across from us. They didn’t settle down until about midnight, when we all finally got some sleep. We couldn’t use Mr. Heater, of course, and it became really cold in the tent by morning. The air mattress went flat during the night, which made it colder beneath us and a lot harder, making sleep more difficult.