FL Living – Page 2

John Pennekamp State Park, Key Largo

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We wanted to do one last camping trip before school started (anyone else think the summer flew by?). Some place that we could drive to in one day and then stay for several nights. Some place with lots to do – preferably swimming, hiking, and biking. We had visited John Pennekamp State Park in Key Largo when we drove to Key West earlier in the year and knew that it was the perfect place to go. I managed to snag a site for four nights.

According to the description, the sites are narrow – maybe 16′ wide. So I measured our camper – it’s eight feet wide. Even with the slide and awning out, we fit. The site was plenty long, but we found a perfectly level spot close to the front and were reluctant to back up anymore. We just barely got our car off the road, but no one complained.

We didn’t have neighbors most of the time which was good since the sites are pretty close together and the kids sometimes forget to not cut through other sites. Honestly though, we didn’t spend that much time at our site.

Our campsite was right by the pond and we had lots of wildlife to keep us entertained. These crabs are such a pretty blue, but they don’t hang around when they see you moving!

There were lots of iguanas! We would come back from snorkeling and they would be scurrying back to the pond area.

Some of them were little, but there were a few bigger ones too.

I was surprised at the different colors!

One of the things we wanted to do was snorkel. John Pennekamp is the first undersea park in the United States. If you have an underwater camera, bring it! We don’t have one and wished we did the whole time we were snorkeling. We’re thinking about this one for when we go back.

Offshore is a replica of a Spanish shipwreck complete with more cannons and an anchor. The kids loved snorkeling out to it.

There are lots of jellyfish too. They mostly sit upside down on the bottom, but you will see them floating through the water too.

Even though bikes are not allowed on the hiking trails, we rode our bikes around the campground – to the visitor center, to the trail head, just around so the kids could burn some energy. The Grove Trail is a beautiful trail! Make sure you wear lots (and lots!) of bug spray.

It ends at an old citrus grove.

While we were walking along the trail it started sprinkling and when we finally got here, it decided to start raining a little more. We still took time to walk around the grove and made it back to our campsite without getting too wet.

The Wild Tamarind Trail is all about different trees. The tree you are to be looking at is marked with a ribbon which is nice. It’s always frustrating when you’re not sure which tree the sign is talking about.

We’re planning to go back again in the semi-near future – winter is a tough time to get a site! We’ll be taking a couple more snorkels and (hopefully) an underwater camera. 🙂

*This post contains affiliate links. See my disclosure policy for more information.

Florida Caverns State Park

On our recent longer trip, we spent three nights at Florida Caverns State Park in Marianna, FL (in the panhandle). When we arrived, it had been raining and our site was pretty muddy. All the sites were back-ins and it took us a couple tries to get the trailer where we wanted it. Happily, it didn’t rain much while we were there and the site dried out pretty quickly. The main reason I picked this campground was because of the cavern, but it wasn’t open until Thursday (it’s closed Tuesday & Wednesday). There was lots to keep us busy and we were definitely not bored!

The kids wanted to go through here so I went along. It’s pretty low, but there were no bats.

These spiders (golden silk orbweavers) seemed to be everywhere! It reminded me of another camping trip. As long as they stay outside & don’t get in my path, it’s all good.

Can you see her? Just hanging out, waiting for some unsuspecting bug to come along.

All along the bluff trail were cypress swamps.

The kids had so much fun exploring and the scenery is beautiful. There were a couple geocaches too.

Any entrances to caves/caverns were blocked off, but we still tried to see inside. One nice thing – the air coming out of them was cool! It was really hot that day and it was like nature’s air conditioning.

The trail wasn’t all easy – there were a few spots that were steeper.

The cavern tour was definitely worth the wait and the money (admission really isn’t that much – $8/adult & $5/kid). Our tour guide was great! We learned about the cavern – both how it was found & excavated and how they occur naturally. For instance, the column in this picture is cracked because at some point in the recent past the ground shifted some. Eventually, the crack with fill in and the stalagmite and stalactite will become a column again.

There are just so many photogenic things in the cavern!

This is Blue Hole. There’s a path to it from the campground and you can also access it from the day entrance. We stuck our toes in – it was a cool 72. Every afternoon, there were lots of people swimming here! However, it’s 30 feet deep and I wasn’t comfortable letting my kids swim without any kind of floaties or life vests (I didn’t know there was swimming so we didn’t pack any swim stuff).

Just under the bridge, this little guy was swimming. He’s little – maybe two feet long. Apparently, for whatever reason, gators don’t swim in blue hole. I’m not totally convinced (besides, where there’s a baby, there’s got to be a mama!). There’s nothing stopping them except maybe the cooler water?

We thoroughly enjoyed our time at Florida Caverns State Park! If we are ever in the area and need a place to stay, we will definitely stay here again!

Silver Springs State Park Florida

We recently went on a slightly longer (5 nights) camping trip. Because our tow vehicle is older (a 2005 Explorer), we’re reluctant to go much faster than 60, maybe 65 if we’re going down a hill. So, we tend to travel only 200 – 250 miles a day. That puts us on the road for about 4-5 hours. I’m sure we could go farther, but we want to arrive with day light to set up and hopefully enough light to check out the campground (aka get the kids outside to burn off some energy). So, on our recent longer trip, we stopped at Silver Springs State Park for the night. We love staying at state parks in Florida – there’s hiking and normally geocaches.

The campsites here were huge! I purposely picked a pull through site since we were just staying for one night. The plan was to unhook and pull the car straight forward. Then the next day we could back the car straight back and hooking up would be easy. Except things never go as planned.

The camp sites are huge are Silver Springs State Park

Looks good, right?

The camp sites are huge at Silver Springs State Park.

No, Mom, we can’t put our bed down.

We were too close to the post to put one of the beds down.

The slide cleared the water hook up by about three inches!

With such huge sites we still managed to have inches to spare.

These are the things that happen when I’m in charge of where to park. Normally DH tells me where to go and things go much better! In my defense, having a slide and side pop out bed are new and I’m more concerned with getting us close enough to our hook ups! You should know that the above pictures happened after we hooked the camper back up and moved it a bit and after I got back from getting gas! Before we moved it, there wasn’t room for the slide. Of course I could blame it on the fact that we arrived at our campsite with 15 miles of gas left! One thing you must know about me is that I am absolutely paranoid about running out of gas! When the miles to empty gets down close to 50, I’m looking for a gas station and that’s when we’re not towing. I’m still not sure why we let it get that low while we were towing!! So, I was mostly wanting to get the camper parked so we could shut the car off and stop using up our remaining gas! Then, because DH does all the outside hooking up, it only made sense that I would be the one to go get gas. Did I mention that the campsite was almost two miles from the main road?? Did I mention my paranoia? I prayed the whole way to the gas station! When I pulled into the first one I came to, I had 9 miles left! I put 19.488 gallons into a 20 gallon tank. That was way too close for me!! On the way back from getting gas, I got a text from DH that we had to move the camper (DD was with me, I wasn’t texting and driving). Gah! So, we moved it. Got the slide out. Still couldn’t put the bed down. Didn’t care. It was for one night and the kids could share a bed (they normally do anyway – they each have a lightweight sleeping bag).

A few days later, on our way home, we spent another night here in the same site. Only this time we made sure to leave room for the slide and the bed. Then, we decided to go for a hike and see the sink hole. Off we went. The trail was wide and well marked.

Hiking trail at Silver Springs State Park

Hiking along a trail at Silver Springs State Park

I’m always amazed at the oak trees!

The picture doesn’t show it very well, but this is the sink hole. It’s fairly large. We walked down the side a bit, but there wasn’t really a path. Also, about here we remembered that we forgot to put on bug spray. We did so good the entire trip and then the last hike we forget. After we arrived home, we found ticks on both boys and me. No worries though- we went to see the doctor when we got home.
Sink Hole at Silver Springs State Park

Plus, there were spiders everywhere! Not little ones, but bigger ones hanging over our heads. Gah!

Golden orb weaver spider at Silver Springs State Park

A golden orb weaver near the center of the picture.

As we got to the end of the trail, we heard something moving around in the brush. We stood quietly for a minute and this deer came out. She wasn’t too concerned about us and even my camera clicking didn’t scare her. Then we got a little too close and moved a little too fast and she was gone.

Deer along trail at Silver Springs State Park

The one thing we really wanted to see was the museum and cracker village. It’s only open on the weekend because during the week it’s used for local schools. So Saturday morning before heading out, we headed to the museum. It’s $2/person and well worth it!

A Columbian Mammoth skeleton – the less hairy, larger relative of the wooly mammoth.

Columbian Mammoth Skeleton

A megaladon (great white shark relative) mouth – they could grow up to 65 feet long!

Megaladon Shark

I would hate to have to use a canoe like this – I’m leery of modern canoes!

Dugout Canoe

This machine looks almost exactly like the one my kids use except that theirs is electric.

Singer Sewing Machine

A cracker (early Florida settler) house. Once a month they have people who come in and bring the cracker settlement to life. All we could do was look at the buildings and peek in some of the windows.

One room school and church building. There’s a geocache there too.

One room school house and church at Silver Springs State Park.

There is so much more to do at Silver Springs! We didn’t leave the campground area. There’s a whole other section to the park that we’re hoping to check out sometime in the near future – more hiking trails, an ornamental garden, boat rentals, and a glass bottom boat ride.

Everglades

Everglades National Park

Earlier this year, we took a long weekend trip to Key West. Along the way, we stopped at two different areas (entrances) in the Everglades. We weren’t sure what to expect. By the time we got there the first day, it was late afternoon and we didn’t have much time to walk around. Our boys weren’t happy – they wanted to explore more! We promised that we would stop back in a couple days after we drove to Key West.

To get there, we drove across Florida on I75 aka Alligator Alley. They were so many spots to pull off and look. We took our time and enjoyed the drive.

Driving on the highway, you don’t see the canal.

The view from one of the pull-offs.

I’m not sure what I expected, but it was definitely different! There is just so much open space (it is 1.5 million acres!!)! Our first day, we stopped at the Royal Palms entrance in Homestead. We walked the Anhinga Trail and the Gumbo Limbo Trail. Gumbo limbo trees are so awesome (and I have NO pictures of them)! They would make an awesome (and totally natural) fence!

The birds along the Anhinga Trail are so used to people, that they don’t seem to notice. They just go about their business like there’s no one around.

Heron at Everglades

Bird Everglades Royal Palm

We also drove partway to Flamingo, but the gas gauge was bordering on E (and I’m totally paranoid about running out of gas) so we turned around. Later we realized that there’s a gas station when you get to Flamingo (oops…apparently my map reading skills need work).

There are some geocaches that we stopped for, but cell signal is very iffy!!

I love driving on roads like this! It’s like an adventure!

Along the way we stopped at different walkways.

Walkway in the Everglades

We wanted to walk out to this pond, but recent rains meant it was pretty flooded.

Flooded Pond Everglades

We almost didn’t stop at Shark Valley. People were parking along the road and it looked so SO crowded, but we decided to drive through the parking area and see if there were any open spots. There was and we had a quick lunch before setting off to explore. The trail is 15 miles round trip. We were definitely not up for a long hike and we didn’t have our bikes with us (they do offer a tram for a price), but we just walked down the trail a bit. There were alligators laying right along the trail!!

We saw a mama and her baby.

Look how tiny her baby is!

Alligator in Shark Valley Everglades

We were so glad we stopped! We’re planning to go back again when we have more time and the weather cools off. Have you ever been to the Everglades? What was your favorite place?

Manatee Viewing Center, Apollo Beach

One of the places we like to go is the Manatee Viewing Center at Tampa Electric in Apollo Beach, FL. When the water temperatures drop, manatees seek out warmer water. One of the places they have found it is the discharge canal where clean, warmer saltwater flows back into Tampa Bay. TEC has a very nice setup complete with a boardwalk with plenty of viewing areas, an educational building, and a nature trail with a tower overlooking Tampa Bay.

Sometimes they have a docent who will answer questions about the manatees. They also have pictures of some of the manatees that visit regularly that have distinctive scars so you can try to find them.

You can also get a great view of TEC just across the canal. You can see a lot of manatees here!

You can also walk out on a dock/boardwalk where you can see lots of fish and some birds too. They have signs up identifying the different birds and fish you might see.

We didn’t walk out to the tower. It’s about a 1/2 mile hike and the nature trails close at 4pm. We got there at 3:30 and decided that we would have to come back another time to check out the tower.

There is plenty of parking available. When we went, the main parking lot was full. They had two shuttles taking people from the overflow parking over to the main entrance and there were people directing traffic. Even with so many people there, there was plenty of room to see the manatees.