Favor-Dykes State Park

Great ferry rates

Monday morning we awoke to 51 degrees and nearly the same wind as we had experienced on Sunday. We scratched our morning kayaking plans, knowing that the winds would have just pushed us all over the place. It would have been no fun. After breakfast we packed up and headed down the road to the St John's River Ferry and crossed over the river to avoid I-95 and Jacksonville. What we experienced instead was classic 1A or A1A commercialism and sometimes gaudy tourist restaurants and sites. We even passed up the Fountain of Youth; hard to believe, huh?

We have restocked our groceries and now are in Faver-Dykes State Park. We decided to marginally ignore...okay...totally ignore the GPS as it directed us to the park because it seemed to make no sense. Well, it did make sense, which we discovered when we couldn't get to the park on the route we thought was better than the GPS's. Oh well, eight miles of back-tracking and we arrived. The park is small with only 30 spots but all have electricity and water and some with concrete pads as well.

Tuesday, 21 February

Just off I-95 near the access road into the campground there are several tourist oriented fresh tropical fruit stands. The large signs boldly advertise freshly-shelled pecans for $3.99 a bag and $1.00/bag oranges. Lure them in, lure them in. We rode our bikes out to the these stores in hopes of the deals they offer. Hum, think again...we got there and found that the advertising was technically correct, but not what we expected. Two smallish oranges in a plastic bag for $1 is a “snack pack” and the pecans are the crushed ones useable only for breading fish or cooking. Was it false advertising? Not really, but it was certainly misleading.

Kayak transporters

There is a small river (Pellicer Creek) to which we have access, however, not directly from the campground so David and Paul balanced the uninflated kayaks on their bikes and wheeled them over to the river so we could paddle. We had a nice paddle but did not see nearly as many birds as we had thought might be present. There were egrets and cormorants, LBBs (little brown birds) and ospreys.

The park is loaded with runty little squirrels, which endlessly scamper up and down trees fetching nuts and carry them off. Paul tried putting out sunflower seeds to attract birds, but only got the pesky squirrels. They've even used our picnic table to dine, leaving behind small piles of nut shell debris. There are also lots of birds, some we've not seen close enough to identify...actually....most of which we have not gotten close to id but one, by the process of elimination, has to be the red-bellied woodpecker.

After dinner we four were sitting by the campfire, when our next-door neighbour came crashing through the palmetto into our site, taking a shortcut to the facilities. He pretended to be surprised at our presence, saying “Oh, I didn't know you were here!!” We let him know that we certainly were, and complimented him for not stumbling over our blazing fire. When he finished his business he found another way back to his motor palace.

Wednesday, 22 February

We awoke to 53 degrees no wind. After breakfast we found that the weather was perfect for kayaking or at least we thought it was. By the time we got to the river it was fairly windy but we went anyway. We had a great paddle in the wind, got to see some osprey fishing and then headed back to the campsites. We managed a two short hikes in the afternoon. In the evening we had a nice light rain and a we had a real treat...we got to listen to Michael J (Michael Vickery) who is one of the premier dulcimer (hammer or mountain) players in the US! He just happened to be in the same campground at the same time and we just happened to meet him! Pretty amazing! His music is traditional American and truly foot tapping stuff. His band is the “Good For Nuthin String Band”.

Eagle eye Dee shouted out that this Osprey had a fish!  First time Marty got a shot of one with a fish.  Had to come to Florida to get it!

Thursday morning, February 23

Had rain last evening and have awakened to 68 degrees, our warmest morning yet. Today we move on to Wekiwa Springs State Park, which is north of Orlando.