Florida Sweet Florida

We're back in Florida!  Our big winter trip isn't quite over (I don't count it as over until we reach Orlando again), but we are finally back in the sun and warmth of the Sunshine State.  Our first stop in Florida was the absolutely beautiful Three Rivers State Park.  This may well be my favorite campsite of our trip.  'Three Rivers' is a more historic name, as they dammed two of the rivers and the park is actually on the resulting Lake Seminole.  Before the dam, the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers converged here to form the Apalachicola River (now they flow into the lake and the Apalachicola River flows out).  The campground for the park is right on the lake and I'd say a third to a half of the sites - including ours - have a clear view of the lake.

Campsite - note the angled parking job and the lake in the background!

We did a bit of parking jigging when we arrived, as the folks next to us had completely turned their RV perpendicular to the intended parking orientation to get a better view of the lake, and we thought that was a great idea.  So we rocked back and forth a bit until we were as angled as our 40' RV could be in the spot.  The maintenance guy was just sitting there staring at us so I stopped over to see if something was wrong...he was amazed as he'd never seen anyone with our size RV attempt to do that!  He told me about the history of the campground, how before Hurricane Michael in 2018, only one site had a lake view and the entire campground was covered in forest.  After the hurricane it took them 4 days to clear the road, and it took the maintenance supervisor two days to clear a path from his onsite house to the maintenance buildings essentially next door.  Indeed, as we biked and hiked around the park we saw piles and piles of fallen trees.  He said the maintenance supervisor's house was the only structure to survive the hurricane, and that was clear as all the structures in the park still looked pretty new.

One of MANY large piles of trees in the park

So our site was just beautiful and nicely equipped with newish fence, picnic table, and (first time I've ever seen this) even a clothesline!  Spring was springing in the area, with buds and flowers on the trees and some beautiful flowers outside our front door that steadily bloomed larger every day we were there.

Pretty flower

Just two days later!

We both had the same picture thought :-)

This little guy perched on our power 
pole was just adorable

From our site we had a good view of several neighborhood osprey and a not-so-good view of the sunset.

This osprey is subduing his freshly caught fish

Sunset at the campground

There were several multiuse trails - we biked two of them and hiked one.  Sadly we picked the smoothest one to hike instead of bike!  Still, the trails were much more bikeable than the ones we'd seen and inadvertently experienced to the west.

Biking the park trails

A beautiful cloudy pre-sunset on our hike

One downside: the 2 mile road from the ranger station to the campground was FULL of potholes.  I mean, you really just can't envision how bad they were (and we didn't manage to take any pictures to help you)...this stressed Aaron a lot, so we kept trips outside the park to a minimum.

This park is kind of in the middle of nowhere; the only major attraction nearby was Florida Caverns State Park.  Sadly this park was also hard hit by the hurricane, and unlike Three Rivers, I'd say about 75% of Florida Caverns park was still closed to the public.  Fortunately for us though, they had prioritized reopening the caverns, so we could still get a tour.  Unfortunately the caverns were half flooded (this apparently happens about twice a year when the area gets a lot of rain), so we didn't get a complete tour.  These caverns are the only ones open to the public in all of Florida, so that was kind of neat.  The caverns were an interesting mix compared to several we've been in - on the one hand, the CCC had done extensive excavation work to make the caves tour-able, so they were quite disturbed.  On the other, there were still areas with the very fine 'straws' that you usually only see in undisturbed caves.  This cave had quite a lot of rimstone pools compared to others we've seen.  It was a fun outing and we had a great tour guide.

Here our tour guide is placing a rock at 
the edge of the flooded pool; each tour guide
does this, if you look in the background you
can see how the pool has been getting steadily 
deeper

Rimstone pools

'Straw' formations

The next day we drove over to the Jim Woodruff Dam overlook, where a very hopeful Muscovy Duck followed us closely as we walked around.  We drove around to the other side of the dam, where we found a small road at the state line; I had to take a picture, well, because Florida Georgia Line.

Hopeful duck

Attempting to straddle the Florida-Georgia line - there was a 
seam in the asphalt between my legs, and the sign announced
entry into the Georgia county

It was a sad morning when we packed up to leave this park.  The beautiful setting and abundant birdsong made it such a peaceful place to be.