We left Erik and Rhea’s on Wednesday morning to go have lunch with my cousins Barb and Dale in Punta Gorda, with tentative plans to head back for another night in Erik and Rhea’s yard. However, cousins being cousins, despite the fact that we haven’t seen Barb and Dale in decades, the conversation and the laughter never really paused, and lunch transitioned to snacks and drinks in their lovely house overlooking a lake, which transitioned into a night in their driveway rather than a drive back to Sarasota.
I seem to have missed the photo of the four of us on my camera roll, so I swiped this from Barb’s FB page.
We left in the morning to head north with our next major stop being Tallahassee, which we knew we wouldn’t make in a day. We looked for places with hiking trails along our route, and found Payne’s Creek State Park, which is a small park dedicated to some people who were killed by the Indians. Putting aside the question of whether it’s a nice thing to memorialize people who were killed because they were trying to take somebody else’s land, it was a nice little park and we had a good walk with the dogs.
We felt comfortable walking the dogs in this park since this was the largest alligator we saw. It’s sunning on a submerged observation tower which was knocked off it’s shore line posts and into the river in a storm.
We left Payne’s Creek and made it as far as a Walmart in Dunnellon, where we passed a peaceful night before heading to the nearby Goethe State Forest for a hike in the morning. Goethe State Forest was already on our radar because Tom had competed at the Black Prong CDE in the state forest with Shawn before we moved to Belize, so we knew we would find some good hiking opportunities. We were not disappointed.
The forest has two main trail areas, Apex and Black Prong. Since we’d been to the Black Prong area, we decided to hike from Apex.
With the exception of a few spots of deep mud and standing water, most of the hike was through pine forest on flat, sandy trails.
We had a quick lunch in the camper, and left Goethe, heading for Tallahassee. We took back roads (meaning not interstates) the whole way, and were a little surprised when we were only 10 miles from the Capitol building and we were still in the pine forest. But, as we got closer, we saw more signs of civilization and the last few miles were more of what we expect when we drive into a capital city. We drove into the area shortly before 6PM, and were delighted to find a gravel parking lot just a couple of blocks from the capitol which was wide open and free between 6PM and 6AM. We parked, got the dogs out, and walked up a small hill to the capitol.
The word that comes to mind to describe the Florida Capitol is “whimsical.” Most of the capitols we’ve visited look like they were designed to command respect and be impressive. With its candy-striped window awnings and cartoon-like carving of the state seal, Florida’s capitol is more like something from a fairy-tale about capitol buildings. The entire area was also super clean, and while that should have been a positive impression, it also made it feel sterile. We didn’t see anybody walking around, and the park near the building was white cement blocks with astroturf, not real grass. It looks beautiful, but feels sterile. On the other hand, this lends to the not-really-real feeling, so we’re still not sure what the architects’ intentions were.
Since it was dark by the time we left the capitol district, we decided to find a place to boondock in Tallahassee. On iOverlander, the Tallahassee area is riddled with potential boondocking spots since the city doesn’t appear to have any overnight parking restrictions. In fact, even the lot where we’d parked in the middle of the city was listed as a safe place to stay. We wanted to get out of the city so we headed towards shopping land, with our first stop at a Target. The manager there said that parking was allowed, but he didn’t recommend it because of a problem with homeless people and vandalism in the area. We always take the advice of the locals, so we took his advice and headed a couple of miles down the road to a Walmart, where we were met with the same response. We then called a Cabela’s which is slightly out of the city, and were told that their lot was fine to park in, although they turn off the lights at night so it would be dark. We found the darkness to be refreshing, and ended up having a quiet night along with a few other vans and campers who had apparently found the same thing we did about the “normal” overnight stopping places.
While we were stopped, we started looking around for places to hike in the morning. Years ago I had competed at the Red Hills Horse Trials, which I knew was near Tallahassee. I didn’t realize it was held at a city park, and that the city park was huge. So, in the morning we drove to the Elinor Klapp-Phipps Park and had a great five-mile hike through the woods.
Since it was dark by the time we left the capitol district, we decided to find a place to boondock in Tallahassee. On iOverlander, the Tallahassee area is riddled with potential boondocking spots since the city doesn’t appear to have any overnight parking restrictions. In fact, even the lot where we’d parked in the middle of the city was listed as a safe place to stay. We wanted to get out of the city so we headed towards shopping land, with our first stop at a Target. The manager there said that parking was allowed, but he didn’t recommend it because of a problem with homeless people and vandalism in the area. We always take the advice of the locals, so we took his advice and headed a couple of miles down the road to a Walmart, where we were met with the same response. We then called a Cabela’s which is slightly out of the city, and were told that their lot was fine to park in, although they turn off the lights at night so it would be dark. We found the darkness to be refreshing, and ended up having a quiet night along with a few other vans and campers who had apparently found the same thing we did about the “normal” overnight stopping places.
While we were stopped, we started looking around for places to hike in the morning. Years ago I had competed at the Red Hills Horse Trials, which I knew was near Tallahassee. I didn’t realize it was held at a city park, and that the city park was huge. So, in the morning we drove to the Elinor Klapp-Phipps Park and had a great five-mile hike through the woods.
Although the Red Hills Horse Trials have been canceled due to equestrian politics, some jumps are still standing along the trails.
It’s hard to believe this is a city park since there are no signs of civilization. While we saw plenty of people using the park on a beautiful Saturday morning, it’s so big that everyone is spread out.
We left Tallahassee with the intention of getting back to our friends in Georgia, but it was starting to get dark around Macon so we stopped for the night, again at a Cabela’s. Tom took a look at available hiking spots for the morning, and found that the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park is in Macon, so that’s where we went in the morning, which turned out great since it was not only a nice place to walk the dogs, but a very interesting National Park to check off our list. The history of the park extends from Paleo people 17,000 years ago to more modern Native Americans from only 1,000 years ago, to Civil War battles and more current civilization efforts. After living in Belize and having lots of exposure to Maya history, it was very interesting to us to walk around what feels a lot like the Maya sites in Belize. Also like Belize, two disrupted mounds are highlighted because one was destroyed to lay railroad tracks, another was reduced in size by about half because its material was used for road fill.
We left Macon and headed back to our friends Del and Vicky, where we are making our last preparations to head into what will be, for us, the wilderness. We feel like we are heading into the next phase of our trip, since we won’t be jumping between friends and family, and will be visiting places where we don’t know anybody. We thought of a few more things we need for this next phase, and ordered them so they’d be waiting for us in Georgia, and we figure with a couple of days of cleaning and organizing, we’ll be ready to hit the road again.