Long time no speak. Actually I haven’t been ignoring you. We’ve just been holed up in Ocala working on the daily grind with not much to talk abut. Just because we live like this doesn’t necessarily mean we’re always in vacation mode. We’re just like everyone else at this point, work for the weekend. In our case our weekend is Friday and Saturday.
Since LuLu has been stationary for over a month we felt we needed to get her on the road. She’s like any vehicle. You have to use it to keep it in shape. Spin the bearings and the tires. That kinda thing. So, we decided to take a day trip about 20 miles up the road to Paines Prairie State Park.
There are a number of advantages to taking your house with you on a day trip to the lake, beach or wherever. You have all your stuff with you. Lunch is simply a matter of finding something in the fridge and in our case, the best reason; we don’t have to watch the clock to get back to let the dogs out. They come along too and just “stay home” while we’re out playing.
Paines Prairie is another one of Florida’s gems. Old Florida at it’s finest. It’s 22,000 acres of undisturbed nature. Bike trails, lakes, wildlife including believe it or not a herd of buffalo, and just plain old peace and quiet. It offers a small campground but we didn’t use it. We just parked in a shady spot in the parking lot. We practically had the whole place to ourselves, only seeing a dozen people at most.
The parking lot near the boat ramp. Our home for the day.
Visitors Center
Visitors Center
Observation Tower
The view from the tower.We rode the trails and checked out the visitors center. We climbed the observation tower and just basically spent the day relaxing. Of course the dogs had a blast. They love these kinds of places. The best part, the whole day cost a whooping $6.00 - admission to the park. Can't beat that. Click here for the parks' web site if you want to learn more. Come on now, you know you promised yourself to learn something new every day.
Stay tuned though, Margo is putting together a blog post to show off all the improvements she’s made to transform LuLu's interior into home sweet home. Amazing what a woman’s touch will do.
Till then.
