Florida - Day 28 - back down into central Florida

Mike Roess Gold Head Branch State Park, Keystone Heights

Monday, 13 February 2023

My knee continues to be very swollen and sore.  It seems like this has been going on for a couple of weeks, though it's actually only been 5 days.  Still, it seems to me it's time to find a clinic to take a look at this thing, just in case.

today's route, some of this (see below)

From the Suwannee River, I drove down to Lake City, and then cut down to Starke and Waldo, because I was getting desperate for a place to dump my recycling.  And from there I took as direct a route as I could back up to tonight's campground.

Starting in the Live Oak area, I passed pine plantations here and there.  And I found the county courthouse here.

Suwannee County Courthouse
Live Oak

Impressive, isn't it?  It was built in 1904 and was unusual for the time because courthouses in other counties were built of wood, not brick.  And the clock tower was visible throughout the town's limits (as they were at that time).  To me that unusual top looked like stained glass or copper, but I couldn't find anything online that mentioned it - even the county's website devoted to this building.

Near the town of Houston, I passed a blueberry farm.

Farther along, I thought I might be seeing a tree nursery because it was a very large area that had been planted with different types of trees, but kept together by species and planted in rows.

I got gasoline ($3.29/gallon), then at Lake Butler I came to the Union County Courthouse.  I'm not bothering to post a photo of that one, because though it too is built of brick, it looks so ordinary it could be a school building from that time.

And I passed a large solar field, making me realize I hadn't seen many at all in Florida, "The Sunshine State."  Surely the governor's so-called "anti-woke" focus that insists companies and banks and retirement funds shouldn't be allowed to consider climate change and alternate energy impacts in their investment strategies is not also allowing that to deny themselves almost free energy from the sunshine they're so proud of.

I bypassed Starke, crossed the Santa Fe River, and in Waldo stopped at the Veterans Park for a break.  That turned out not to be the best place to park, though I didn't know of a better one and it was right on the road, so I couldn't get lost.  But it was very small, and most of it was fenced off for a playground, so there wasn't much of anywhere for Dext and me to walk.  But we managed, and everybody got some lunch.

From Waldo, we went down the road toward Gainesville to drop a load of stuff at the recycling place I'd used before.  Always a relief to get rid of it.  Ahead of me in line was a woman in a small Honda with a sunroof.  While I waited, a Great Dane poked its head through the sunroof and stared at us, and it really looked funny.

We went through a series of small towns such as Grove Park, Hawthorne, Melrose, and then through Keystone Heights, which sits on Lake Brooklyn.  Along the road I saw some bird of prey - either a hawk or a falcon - that showed a lot of yellow as it was taking off.  I found several birds that fit that description, almost all of which never come to Florida.  My best guess is a juvenile Peregrine Falcon, that have buff-colored breasts at that age.  They spend winters in Florida.

I was curious where the town got its name, because Keystone Heights seemed a little more high-falutin' than other Florida place names.  Turns out the town was originally called Brooklyn.  A developer from Pennsylvania came to the area and liked it enough to move his family here.  He laid out and developed an area near the town, named it Keystone Heights (Pennsylvania is "The Keystone State"), and over time the 2 areas merged.  (Maybe the Brooklyn name came originally from a settler from New York?)

Tonight's campground ranked among the oddest we've found yet.  Most of Florida's state parks are pretty nice - usually dirt roads and very low tech shower facilities - but well laid out with comfortable campsites.  This one wasn't like the others.  The map they gave me at check-in didn't show the roads in the campground; it showed the campsites and left it to the imagination how to get there.  

When I got to my area, I saw the obvious road to my campsite said "do not enter" - "one way."  Then after driving around on a hilly, rocky road I found what seemed to be the correct way in, but I wasn't willing to risk it.  It was a steep incline, narrow because of tree trunks alongside the road, with the tree roots growing out into the road and making it look almost impassible.  I started to go that way and then chickened out of that steep incline.  Instead, I went around and went in the do-not-enter entrance.  Later I saw another camper come in the way I didn't take, and it didn't look like they had any trouble, but I've done that before in other campgrounds (seems like there was a bad one in Michigan) and it was never a pleasant experience.  Especially since, one way or not, I could clearly and easily see that absolutely nobody was moving in that area, let alone racing to cut me off at the exit.

My campsite was in the Lakeview area of the campground, and my site was supposed to be right near the lake.  Neither of those things was true.  Well, we did have a view of the lake if we made our way through some tall thick grass to get to the lake's edge.  But nothing from the site itself.  Oh well.  I wasn't counting on it.

Of course, my hotspot couldn't get an internet signal so I couldn't get any work done as I'd hoped to do.  Dext and I tried to walk, but there wasn't really much of anywhere to go, other than wading through the grass (but I was afraid of ticks, even in February).  Strange place.