Do you like to just get up and drive just to see what you can see? Robert and I do. Sometimes we start driving and we don’t know where we’ll end up. Today we decided that we needed to get out of the hustle and bustle of Pinellas County, so we headed north-east toward Ocala. We wanted to check out the Ocala National Forest.
We set the GPS to avoid highways as we had no interest being on the interstate. Besides our adventure today was all about the journey and not about the destination. We loaded up the three wieners, hopped in the Jeep and we were off.
We started the drive from our place in Largo and went north on the Bayside Bridge on Hwy 611 toward Trinity. We went east on Hwy 54 toward Land o’ Lakes, where we then got onto Hwy 41 north. We drove through Brooksville, the birth place of our wiener dogs. They didn’t seem to recognize anything; of course, they were lounging in the back of the Jeep and not really paying attention. Once we got to Inverness, we took Hwy 44 east toward Wildwood. Then we went north on Hwy 301.
We came up on Silver Springs State Park, so we decided to pull in for a pit stop. We drove around the park a bit and stopped at the museum and trail head area. We thought we’d take one of the trails to get the dogs and us some exercise, but we barely got started and we were attacked by mosquitos. It seemed like they were swarming us. We decided that we would rather just turn back and continue down the road to our original destination of Ocala National Forest. Before we left the park, however, we did do a drive by of their campsites. They were very nice. They were nicely spaced apart and had wonderful pull through sites. We need to go back and stay and explore more…next time BUG SPRAY!! (As a side-note, the ranger station did have a sign posted saying that due to recent weather conditions, the mosquitos were thick. Believe the ranger station signs.)
From Silver Springs, we went east on Hwy 40. The drive was beautiful. We saw a sign for Big Scrub public campground and decided to take the road. I believe the road was marked for national forest road 588 going south. The road soon turned into paved to dirt. It was a wonderful country drive, our favorite part of the trip. There are a lot of ATV and Jeep trails, but we didn’t have a map, so we kept on the main dirt road. Then at the corner of NF roads 588 & 573, we pulled into the campground. It was empty, since it was Sunday late afternoon and all the ATVers went home. We got out and walked around to give the dogs a pit stop. We met up with the campground host and had a nice conversation. Turns out last year he and his wife were campground hosts in Stockton, MO, our old stomping grounds. That is certainly a place where we’d like to return and do a day or two camping. There are no hookups, but the campsites are in full sun so we should be able to use our solar just fine.
We got back on the road traveling east on NF road 573 until we got to Hwy 19. It was time to head back home as the sun was setting soon. We made our way south on Hwy 19 and went through Eustis and Tavares. We then went through the most unusual named town – Howey in the Hills – where we went west on Hwy 48. We went through Okahumpka and Center City. Since it was now dark and couldn’t see the nice countryside, we decided to get on I75 south to make our way back home the quick route.
We had such a wonderful, relaxing Sunday drive. We anticipated doing more hiking than we did to tire out the dogs, but the mosquitos scared us off. That’s OK, we were glad they were with us as they did a wonderful job traveling today.
