A Rest Day

Today was a rest day, an extra day at Lake Louisa State Park.

When we were at Wekiwa Springs, the ranger told Ellen that the state park campgrounds fill up every the weekend starting Thursday night and reservations were always required. With this new fact, we ended up re-planning the weekend part of the trip. The most recent plan was to go to Lake Lousia State Park, then a commercial RV park in Haines City, then Highlands Hammock State Park for Thursday through Saturday nights.

The ride from Lake Louisa to Haines City was mostly on US 27, a fast, busy, four lane, divided highway and the commercial park was like a parking lot and quite expensive.. The ride from Haines City to Highlands Hammock was about 50 miles and much of that route was also on US 27. So we made a change of plan. You can do that when you are retired.

We decided to go to Lake Louisa for two nights and then drive part way to Highlands Hammock, where Ellen would drop me off to do a reasonable ride to the park via side roads while she continued on to the park. So, we made reservations for two nights at Lake Louisa and Saturday night at Highlands Hammock. We did it just in time it seems, as we had to take two different sites at Lake Louisa, the last available on each of Thursday and Friday. We snagged the next-to-last site available at Highlands Hammock for Saturday.

This left us with today as a rest day at Lake Louisa. So we took advantage of it, sleeping late, taking our time over breakfast, etc. While we were waiting for our new campsite to become available, I took out the trash. At Lake Louisa campground there is only one set of dumpsters and they are a 10 minute walk from the campsites. It gave me a nice morning walk and I was greeted by a young raccoon, who was hanging out inside the dumpster (It was still there this evening, even after the rangers came by and left the dumpster open with a plank running from the bottom to the edge to allow it to walk out).

After lunch, the new campsite was empty. Time to move—all of about 100 feet. We still had to go back to the gate to register for tonight. So, in the fashion of rest days on tours, I took a bike ride...all of six miles to the gate and back.



View Lake Louisa to Lake Louisa in a larger map

The highlight of the day was an afternoon walk around Dixie Lake. The campground is set between Dixie and Hammond Lakes and there are trails around most of the perimeter of each. This is not actually as idilic as it seems. The trails, for the most part, are not near the lakes. There are woods between the trail and the lake and you can't actually see the lakes.

As we walked out the back of the campground, we could hear a whistle that sounded like an Osprey coming from the end of Hammond Lake. It didn't seem to be moving and we eventually located a nest in a crotch high in a dead tree. Most of the tall trees here are draped in Spanish Moss, so the nest was barely distinguishable from the large tufts of moss. There was a young bid in the nest which could be seen through binoculars, but just a bit too far for a good photo. A pretty good start to the walk.

As we continued around Dixie Lake we passed through an area of random citrus trees. The first few we came to were full of ripe fruit. They seemed to be ripe clementines or tangerines. Unfortunately, park rules very explicitly prohibit the picking of fruit (it is supposedly against federal law to do so). Sadly, we passed them by.

We heard more Osprey calls on Dixie Lake and spotted one flying over the lake and finally we able to see it perched on a branch. It was a view mostly into the sun, but a took a few photos anyway. We didn't realize, until we downloaded the photos, that it had a fish.

As we continued along the path a smaller bird alighted on a small branch near us. I was just able to take a picture before it flew off. After viewing the image, Ellen was able to identify it as an Eastern Phoebe.

Just before the trail headed away from the lake and up to the road, we spotted another Osprey nest  high in another dead tree. Another young bird could be seen, probably waiting for that fish. It did, however, keep its eyes on us.

The trail ended and we headed back along the campground entrance road where we had the best view of Dixie Lake. There was parking lot that lead to a fishing pier and a good view. There were a couple of folks fishing, but had had less luck than the Osprey. The road also passed through an orange grove that was marked with big Do Not Enter signs because it was a "Citrus Canker Decontamination Area". I don't know, but it seems likely that the plants were infected and they didn't want visitors to walk through and possibly spread the disease. They looked pretty healthy to us.

We were back in time for a nice afternoon shower in the campground's spotless restrooms, complete with solar-heated hot water—and plenty of it. Then it was dinner with a colorful sunset to accompany it.

Some Osprey (and other) photos