​#340 Withlacochee River Park

We wanted to stay for as long as possible in the Florida State Parks and we learned about the rules that you stay 14 days you can leave for 3 days and then they'll lay to stay 14 more. We looked for a site I call 3 nights elsewhere.

As I was making reservations for Hillsborough River State Park, I made the first one skip 3 days and then made the second one.

I wasn't sure where that would be but there was a national forest in the area and I found out they had camping.

Found out mainly by looking at free camp.net. We had tried to go by there a year earlier and the gate was closed at five and that was that.

You hate to be too judgy but the people that work there just do not like the phone. I called multiple times they never answered so I guess they just kind of had a little bit of an attitude.

Here we are a year later looking around and we checked it out and they had availability and it was huge just a big 10-acre field that had RV full hookups less the sewer.

We signed up for three nights and it was a very nice place to be. The sites were 30 amps and so I found myself positioned in between near enough to both I ran a long cord to the second one I was able to pick up a second 30-amp source.

I have this cool splitter that puts 30-amps on each leg and doubles your abilities. After doing this we can run two air conditioners and that was just great. There were some folks across the way and they were going to have a star party and that was kind of neat.

We went into town one evening and found a nice family-owned diner. The way the lady who served was handling herself and the staff I could tell she was the owner.

She was no-nonsense and I will point out she was an African American small business owner and I could tell she was successful because the place was packed.

On our second day, India and I went on a nice long hike. We try to get in two miles and that was enough for us for that day.

I'm always fixing something or repairing something. India keeps busy doing needlepoint and scrapbooking.

The next day I wanted to go kayaking. I noticed there was a launch in a river with the namesake of the park.

I put in and tried using my kayak sail but I couldn't catch any steady wind. It just wasn't going to happen so I started paddling. I went with the flow for maybe a fourth of a mile but didn’t know the area so I turned around and paddled upstream. My logic was after a while when I was satisfied I could ride the current back to the launch as a means of resting.

I explored for maybe half a mile or so I'm not sure and I took a bunny trail off to the right but it became beyond shallow maybe like 4 in deep and at some point and I realized there was no going any further. I went back to where I had taken a right forward and this time took the left fork and it was the main flow.

I paddled for quite a while and I had to negotiate some pretty quick water flow areas.

I passed under some huge Cypress trees which were kind of cool and then I found the river was completely blocked by a large fallen tree.

I'm sure maybe I could have gone around it but at some point, it just seemed like it was time to turn back.

It was a nice paddle but would have been better if the river hadn't been blocked. I felt like telling some people at the main office could they maybe hit that with a chainsaw but they weren't very nice when checked in I didn't figure it'd take it very well If I complained about the river.

We rode by this dumpster every time we went into town

I was riding around in the afternoon heading towards the park and Ben called. The signal was sketchy so I pulled over off the road to talk before I hit a dead zone. I caught up with Ben a little and pretty soon a lady across the way walked out her front door hopped into a gator buggy and drove down a 100 ft driveway and came right up to my truck. She said, what exactly are you doing? I wasn’t sure quite why she was so all up in it but I said just talking on the phone. I knew if I drove any further I was about to lose the cell tower. She said ok I understand. We’ve just had some break-ins and I thought maybe you were up to no good. I told him I was sorry I worried her and I would move on. We were buds now so it was all good.

Well, that made up our three nights at the River Park and we were ready and allowed to go by Hillsboro now.

Dade City, Florida

GPS: 28.339769, -82.120064