Juniper Springs Recreation Area, Florida

December 8, 2023

The camper became suddenly quiet and felt oddly larger than usual after delivering the kids to the airport on the Sunday afternoon after Thanksgiving. The next day, we headed out to our final travel destination of the year--Juniper Springs Recreation Area near Ocala, Florida. Despite getting a reasonably early start, we didn't pull in to the campground until just after sunset. That's what the short days of December will do to ya sometimes. We made good use of our headlamps that evening.

At last, our search for fried livers and chicken gizzards is over! 😉

We passed through some beautiful horse country near Ocala

Most of our 4-day stay at Juniper Springs was quite cool (upper 50s/low 60s in the day, 40s at night), but it was pleasant enough when the sun came out. The springs were beautiful, although we went a little rogue and walked on closed boardwalk and bridge ruins so that we could see some of the springs. We have found that many wooden boardwalk and bridge structures in the South seem to close for years at a time, waiting for the elusive Blue Moon Maintenance Crew to arrive.

Our pleasant campsite

This was the walk on the broken down boardwalk

And the walk to see the other spring on the other side of a broken bridge

We opted to ignore the Closed sign --but at least we obeyed the No Swimming sign, so we're not total degenerates

We had to watch our step a bit

This turtle posed so nicely for us

This was the official swimming area. The water was pleasantly warm, but the air temperature was not.

Hopefully, we can come back when it's a little warmer-- the water looked so inviting!

Several of the original CCC structures have succumbed to the ravages of the humid South

Getting that photosphere!

This closed bridge looked mostly ok-ish, but we didn't dilly dally on it, just in case

On December 1, we left Juniper Springs and headed toward our Tampa-area "home" for the winter. We are staying at the same RV park as last year (different site, though), but this time we will be staying through the end of March instead of the end of February. Yikes--four months in an RV park! Will we survive? While we are not fans of RV parks in general, we expect the weather will more than compensate for the lack of scenery and privacy. Plus, Rick has plenty on his "To Do" list to keep him from getting bored. And, Julie looks forward to spending many warm, sunny days on the deck planning for Year 2025 travels. 

Driving through the less populated "Real Florida"

Enhancing our privacy as best we can at our new RV site

We almost have a view this year

Our first days in Tampa (actually, we are in nearby Ruskin) were quite busy with doctors and dentists and getting ready for our trip up north for the Christmas holiday season. In addition to that, we started looking for a new RV park for next year, and Rick put up three more solar panels on the roof.

One down (new one is on the right)... ...two to go 

A side-trip to Nokomis Beach near Sarasota (on the way back from picking up solar panels in Ft. Meyers)

This will be the last regular blog post for a while until March or April, aside from the occasional post if Julie takes a bunch of pictures and needs to put them somewhere. Additionally, if we are very lucky, we may be graced with another Christmas "guest post" this year!

View off our deck if we use a zoom lens

There is a google group email list which can send you an email when there is a new blog post. Instructions for signing up here: Subscribe OR directly join here: Google Group