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Our Rig
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After a weekend stop on Jekyll Island, we headed down to Ocala National Forest, hoping for warmer weather; instead, north Florida got its first snow storm of the season. It was too cold to get out on the open water, so we did some hiking instead. After we moved to a senior trailer park near Tampa, we tried to do some canoeing here but found most of the small streams closed due to cleanup efforts to remove the trees felled by the hurricanes. After a lot of misinformation from county employees, we found a section of the Hillsboro River that was open, so we canoed it. From here we moved to the east coast, and mostly did hiking and birding. We did an eight-mile canoe trip on the Rock Springs Run of the Wekiva River, a National Wild and Scenic River. We were told we were departing the put-in an hour and a half too late to catch the shuttle bus back; but we signed up for it anyway, knowing we would be charged a $100/hour if they had to wait for us. We hustled down the river and got to the takeout an hour before the shuttle bus was scheduled to arrive.
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| The Crane Whisperer |
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| Rock Springs Run |
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Tri Colored Heron
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We headed further south to Lake Worth and went out to dinner at a Peruvian restaurant with nephew Randy and his wife Alba. We learned the hard way to closely check the bill. Who would expect a 20 percent service charge for a group of four? We spent Super Bowl Sunday with my cousin Mary and daughter Crystal. Mary kept us well fed with her home cooking. On the way back we stopped to have dinner with Phil Guyer and his wife Nancy at a nice water front seafood restaurant. Before we left Florida, we paddled the Santa Fe River while smaller streams in the area remained closed due to the hurricanes.
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Mary
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We put our RV in storage before we checked into our timeshare in Hilton Head, SC. We took a day trip to Savannah and took a tour of an historic cemetery and a walk along the Savannah River front. We had an e-bike with us that we used on some of the canoe shuttles and had it locked to a bike rack outside our unit. One morning we found the lock had been tampered with in an attempt to steal it. We could not open the damaged lock so we had to have it cut off. We visited with Pat’s friend Rick and his wife Maureen. Rick prepared four delicious pizzas from scratch for our dining enjoyment.
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| Savannah Cemetery |
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| In Savannah |
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| Savannah Riverboat |
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They shouldn't joke about free beer!
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. In Hilton Head we walked around Fort Howard, built during the civil war to protect an area where freed slaves lived. From here we drove back to Odenton, MD. While we were gone, MD had one of the worst winters it has experienced in many years. Our condo was without power for two days. I guess you just can’t escape problems.
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Flag at Fort Howard This replica 1864 flag is one version of the Union flag flown during the Civil War. In 1864, beginning to foresee victory, the Union considered the nation undivided, and the confederate state's stars were included. |
