Aucilla Boat Ramp

People will tell you it’s hard to find wild camping in Florida and there is no doubt general gun hunting season is a nuisance. Ocala and Osceola National Forests shut down dispersed camping from November through January roughly to allow hunters free rein. Apalachicola National Forest on the panhandle starts hunting season a bit later but still, the entirety of the cooler months are closed to wild camping and the organized campgrounds are mostly taken by keen hunters. I wish general gun season could be broken up a bit, extended at each end say but opened up in the middle for campers to enjoy the forests in mid winter, so failing that compromise I look elsewhere. 

One place I like  is the boat ramp on the Aucilla River in the Big Bend of Florida. You get three nights free but I only took one this trip. I had a date in Hell so I drove in and stopped basically to sleep, no reservations, no fees, no fuss. 

They charge boaters five bucks to launch and while the cash box is an honor system I did see a Wildlife Officer come by in the evening to check the single parked truck and trailer. 

Google will guide you directly to the grassy parking lot down the usual white gravel road from US Highway 98. 

The trash cans were bursting when I got there so it was good I had dumped mine when I got expensive gas -$3:60 for regular- on the way. 

I picked my grassy spot leaving room for Rusty to lounge in the grass while I had the door open and that was that. Free legal and undisturbed for the night. 

A man cane by and parked his SUV at the boat ramp. He read the  wildlife information notices with deep interest and took a walk. I waved as he zipped past saying as he went “I guess you could sleep in that?” nodding his chin at my home, GANNET2. “I do sleep in that,” I replied but he was gone back to his car and his normal life.  

Later the boat attached to the truck came back to the dock and they drove off. I was alone in the pitch dark. It was silent and lovely and slightly brisk. 

I had lean cuisine and some yoghurt wondering what Layne  might be having in California and I watched Ruby in Paradise, a slip of a film set in the Florida panhandle of fond memory and then settled down with my Kindle reading a Geoffrey Household thriller. Rusty was snoring on his bed on my bed. 

A very loud truck came down the road in the dark. I looked out and saw lots of clearance lamps and wondered how big the boat was and were they going to launch now? It turns out it was a German overlanding truck. Vast and cumbersome and supremely capable. Rather them than me. 

In the morning Rusty took me on a brisk walk round the field. The Germans never appeared. 

I was wrapping up my exercise tape (tai chi for elderly westerners I call  The Body Project on YouTube) when they started their huge deep rumbly engine and took off around 9:30 never having descended to earth while staying there. He waved as he drove by and blocked out the daylight. Pity the truck and trailer that meets him on the dirt single lane: 

An hour later we were on Highway 98 bound for Tate’s  Hell. 

Abandon hope all ye who enter….

Cedar Key

I hadn’t been to Cedar Key in a while. It’s one of those places that like Key West struggles with gentrification and Air B and B but seems to have retained quite a lot of its fishing village ambiance. 

Driving through the woods across the state the idea was to stop for lunch and give Rusty a chance at his favorite urban walking ambiance. 

On the way from Potts Preserve I stopped to buy some berries at a Publix.  As I walked Rusty around I spotted an oil change shop with a high roof, necessary for a van with GANNET2’s 9’3” clearance (2.80 meters). We are coming up on 60,000 miles so it was close enough to time for the next 5,000 mile oil change. Then I saw a high roof car wash next door…It wasn’t the greatest but it did the job. 

On the way to the coast I stopped and checked out the camping at Goethe State Forest for future reference. It was okay with rather small spots stuck a bit close together. There were five camping spots packed like sardines in a vast spacious forest. Go figure. But they had the usual “ non potable water” made potable by our Berkey filter, so…

The one and a half gallon Berkey costs nearly $300 but the filters can be simply scrubbed clean with a sponge or a toothbrush if they get clogged and they should last ten years. It’s very simple and requires no spare or replacement parts which for overlanding abroad is ideal. I’ve put pond water in it so dirty it clogged the filters but the filtered water is clean and delicious. 

Anyway the water tank was full again with 30 gallons and we drove on. 

I ended up not eating in Cedar Key. There was no outside seating and it was a lovely sunny day. I decided to make my own picnic on our way north. We walked about an hour through the village in the sunshine though I have to say there weren’t many people about. Rusty loved it!