On The Move Again

Eastbank Campground, Lake Seminole, GA - Site #C24



In this edition—we watch birds some more, friends leave Fort Pickens, we leave Fort Pickens, plan to spend a few days at Lake Seminole and the weather finally turns warm.

It has been a few days since the last journal entry. We've finished up our stay at Fort Pickens, which turned out to be a little longer than expected. We were supposed to leave on Saturday, having spent our maximum 14 days there, but our friends were not to leave until Sunday. So, bright and early Friday morning, I rode my bike up to the registration office while Ellen was out on her morning walk. I asked if we could extand for a couple of more days, through the weekend, leaving on Monday. Our site, E6, was free for the period.

The ranger entered it and the reservation system baulked...we'd reached the max. Since the ranger noticed that there were two names under the same phone number, mine and Ellen's, she decided to give it a try with Ellen's name and my Senior Pass. It gave the same message. She was a bit hesitant to continue, but I pointed out that there were about 20 sites available over the weekend, so we wouldn't be taking anything away from another camper.

She gave it a try and, even with the message, it accepted the reservation. We could stay. We were now leaving Monday. This gave us another day with our friends, a chance to see them off and...the opportunity to see the finale episide of Downton Abbey.

Sunday turned out to be quite the foggy day, but we got in a couple of more walks out to the fort. We saw the Sora again, but more interestingly, we saw a Swallow-tailed Kite, the first of the year, and also a Little Blue Heron, another bird we had not seen before. It was a good finish to our stay at Fort Pickens...and we did watch the last episode of Downton Abbey.

Monday morning, we headed off. After much hemming and hawing about where to go next, (should we go a little bit south and stay afew days in Ocala National Forest, hoping it would warm enough at home to melt the snow or should we start towards home, albeit a bit slowly?), we decided that we would head northward.

Our first stop would be Lake Seminole, just over the Florida-Georgia border. The Eastbank campground, run by the Army Corps of Engineers, is one of our favorites. Lake Seminole is a Corps Lake, with the campground just upstream from the dam. It usually has sites available. We took the back roads route and were there by 12:30pm, which quickly became 1:30pm, as we crossed back into the Eastern Time Zone (and the Georgia border) just before the entrance to the campground.

It had several empty sites and we took one we've had before, Site A2, right on the water. We only took one night, still not sure what kind progress we wanted to make. By the evening, we saw that the next few days were going to be warm (we haven't seen warm in a while), so we decided to stay on a bit longer.

We took a late walk around the campground to find the best sites and the site we consider the best in the campground, C24, was going to free up this morning. I walked up to the entrance station first thing this morning. Fortunately, the campers in the site last night decided to leave early because I had to wait until they actually checked out. We now have the site until Friday morning. It is a pull-through site right on the lake with no one close by on either side. It has a concrete pad. Speedy's doors open directly onto the water and we have trees behind us. Most importantly, it is as far from the streetlighting as any site here. The Corps really likes to light up the night.

The birding here hasn't been to bad either. There are lots of ducks on the lake, coots, scaup and Canvasbacks, mostly. We've seen Palm, Pine and Yellow-rumped Warblers, Swamp and Chipping Sparrows, Common Gallinule, Belted Kingfisher, Osprey, Downy and Red-bellied Woodpeckers and Bald Eagles. I'm sure I've forgotten some. We have also seen a huge number of large turtles, all in the same small swampy area and a little alligator. We've barely left the campground.

It was on the 80s today and sunny...finally!