General gun hunting season starts November 5th this year and runs into sometime in February in Ocala National Forest. Normally I wouldn’t care one or the other but dispersed camping isn’t allowed during the shooting season, for reasons that are obvious I hope, so during some of the best weather for boondocking the national forests in Florida are closed.
Which was one reason we chose to spend a few days in the forest this past week. There are three national forests in Florida, in addition to Ocala there is Apalachicola and Osceola and all three have varied General Gun Seasons you need to check for each winter.
By the time General Gun Season is over and cool weather dispersed camping resumes we expect to be swimming Mexico’s Pacific Coast. A different form of dispersed camping.
In addition to National Forests Florida’s water management districts offer low cost or free campgrounds and some dispersed camping, which may also have hunting season black outs but those we shall save for later when we travel north in December. This year we wanted to get at least some Florida boondocking under our belt and we succeeded in that. Five nights of utter serenity.
I found a spot on iOverlander with no waterfront, no views and no features. Our spot was up a short dead end, perfectly level, surrounded by second growth pine tree monoculture and if no great scenic value at all. Perhaps that was its greatest value to us. We were well off the beaten path. Even on Saturday we saw only three vehicles pass by on the sand track a hundred yards away through the trees. The rest of the time we were alone in silence.
We had internet access on Verizon and occasionally we could hear cars in the paved Highway 445 in the distance. But we felt alone. The sun was low on the horizon half hidden by the young pine trees so we did run through our batteries and we had eight gallons of water left in our 30 gallon tank while our trash bag was pretty full. But those were all just signs we had a very excellent stay.
2 comments:
Would like to try some of when we are back in st Aug. May have. Quick key west run as we have a couple driveways available.
August in the national forests is hot and sticky. We did it once as a test and without air conditioning we would have died. Rain, insects and wet sand are challenges. Van life in Florida in august requires electrical hookups in my book. See how you find it!
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