Highlands Hammock State Park, Sebring, Florida
This morning’s view
Pancakes for breakfast! Yum!! It’s been a while! Since we had such a big breakfast, we skipped lunch. By now, I have no idea what we had for dinner. It’s February 21st, and I have no pictures to help jog my memory.
It was about 8:30 when we headed out to bike down yesterday’s walking trail. We wanted to see what we missed. 😊 There was some deep sand near the end, but other than that, it was easy biking. And we went much faster! And it was much cooler! And we already knew there was nothing to take pictures of. 😊
He’s even skinnier than me in shadow pictures! : (
I was secretly glad he had to walk his bike too. : )
I didn’t realize it at the time, but it turned into a loop trail, connecting with the maintenance area we saw the other day. Of course, my resident Boy Scout, Navigator and Walking Map, already knew exactly where we were going. When all was said and done, we biked about 6 miles.
Then it was back to the road/bike path to some additional walking trails. We started with the Richard Lieber Memorial Trail. Not much here, except another 1,000 year old tree! Even though it too, lost some concrete, it had new branches growing on it.
That’s wood stuck to the concrete on the left side.
I don’t know what this grassy-looking stuff is growing on the palm tree.
On to the Fern Garden Trail.
We didn’t see any.
There’s a snake!
Blaine wanted to see it move, so he threw twigs at it until it slithered into the water.
Peter Pan syndrome . . .
Blaine simply couldn’t stand looking at all that inviting fruit and had to have some for himself.
Remember the last time we picked an orange in a Park?
I refused to sit on his shoulders this time.
He improvised.
Look at that concentration!
Today, most varieties are either thornless or have thin, blunt, flexible thorns found only at the base of the leaves. Oranges that are bitter and not commonly consumed, however, may have large thorns. The hardy or trifoliate orange tree, for example, features sharp, 2-inch long thorns and sour fruit.
He got his reward!
Up next, the Young Hammock Trail. Beautiful trail, but the most surprising thing here were the two roadblocks we encountered. 😊
Roadblock #1.
Eventually, they saw us and let us pass. : )
Roadblock #2
Now things are going to get interesting.
Guess what? There’s a trail that’s been closed. The Cypress Swamp Trail.
Guess what? We hid our bikes and went on it anyway. tee hee!
It was the most beautiful one we’ve been on and we’ve seen just about all of them!
We could see where repairs had been made. A lot of them.
Supposedly closed because of extensive hurricane damage, the only part that appeared unfinished to us was this platform.
We’ve noticed these plaques on all the boardwalks here. We’re assuming people made donations to the park to have them posted.
Alaska? In Florida?
Anyone speak German?
101?!? Good for her!
I know it’s not supposed to be, but I thought this was funny. : )
Now he’s at peace with mom???
It was time to move. This time from #109 back to #116. Crazy!
It’s been a week, so it’s time to dump our tanks. This campground has about 150 sites. They have one dump station, and it’s in a very awkward place. The lines get long and are formed in two different lines. We got lucky. There were only two ahead of us.
While we were waiting, a woman came running up to Blaine’s window. She was a visiting neighbor from the site we left. They thought we’d forgotten our bikes. Isn’t that sweet of her to chase us down? We promised we’d be over to get them very soon. 😊
Once we were set up, we met the neighbors on both sides of us. That rarely happens! On the one side, theres a husband and wife and 4 dogs. We only met him and we’ve yet to see his wife. The dogs we only saw once. He talked about all the motorhomes he’s had and modified – one from an old school bus. Nice guy!
The other side we met because of a snake.
He came over to tell us that a 3-4 foot black snake fell from a tree right beside his wife and then scurried under our coach. We were outside. We talked to Larry for a while and then Dixie came over. We never saw the snake. Hopefully, it didn’t decide to take up residence in a wheel-well or somewhere. . . .
We seem to have the most in common with these people than any one else we’ve met on the road – they don’t understand having pets on the road/camping for extended periods, they left all their family in Wisconsin and we learned that we’ve been to many of the same campgrounds. They started full-timing last December.
After dinner, we walked about the campground, but didn’t see anything worth taking pictures of.
And then Blaine had a whopper of an idea and we watched a previous 2-hour episode of the Amazing Race we’d missed.
Outside.
That was fun. 😊
TOTAL HIKING MILES: 3
Year To Date: 150.5
Daily Average: 3.01