Every Day is a Gift!
Whether it’s towing our fifth wheel to get to our next campground or taking a scenic drive after setting up camp, we spend a lot of time in our truck when we are wandering around the U.S. and Canada. While Henry drives, my time is often spent looking through the windshield of our truck at the lines in the middle of the road .
March, 2018 marked the fifth anniversary of the WanderingDawgs blog. I started the blog in 2013 as a way to keep friends and family up to date on our journey from Georgia to Alaska and back. I never dreamed that five years later I would still be blogging.
Thank you to everyone who visits Wandering Dawgs. I really appreciate all the visits, likes, comments and shares over the years.
Every now and then I check on the traffic statistics for the blog. Here are the top five posts of 2017.
Number 1: For three years in a row, the most viewed post is Starting the Lonesome Dove Cattle Trail. So far, it is the also the number one post for 2018.
Why is this the most popular post? I can only guess that there are as many other Lonesome Dove fans out there that are frustrated because there isn’t more information available about the actual trail that the fictional Hat Creek Cattle Company followed when they took their cattle herd from the Rio Grande in south Texas to Montana.
Number 2: The second most viewed post of 2017 is Wandering Around America One State at a Time – New Mexico.
Number 3: Palo Duro Canyon – the Grand Canyon of Texas.
Number 4: Wandering Around America one State at a Time – Tennessee.
Number 5: Wandering Around America one State at a Time – Utah.
Thanks for stopping by. I hope you will come back soon to see what we are up to.
It’s been two years since our last visit to Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park in White Springs. During that stay we did a lot of exploring around the park, the town of White Springs, and nearby Big Shoals State Park. I posted about those adventures at Way Down upon the Suwannee River.
We returned to the park this February. The carillon tower is a focal point in the park and one of my favorite things about being there is hearing the the bells from the carillon chime on the quarter hour and hearing Stephen Foster’s music throughout the day. Unfortunately, the carillon wasn’t working this year.
We didn’t visit the museum on this trip but there are interesting exhibits about Stephen Foster and his many songs.
Even though it was only February there were some beautiful spring blooms. Gotta love Florida!
One day we took a drive to Suwanee River State Park near Live Oak to check it out. High on the banks above the Suwanee River, we enjoyed a walk on an easy trail to the confluence of the Suwanee and Withlacoochee Rivers. Beside the trail were relics from riverboats that once traveled up and down the river.
We enjoyed wonderful views from an overlook at the confluence of the two rivers.
After our walk we sat on a wooden swing overlooking the Suwanee River enjoying a picnic lunch. Doesn’t get much better than that.
Tourists have been traveling to Silver Springs to see the crystal clear water since the early 1800’s. One of Florida’s first tourist attractions, the first glass bottom boat tours began in the late 1870’s. During the 1900’s the attraction grew to include a jungle cruise and animal exhibits.
Silver Springs was a popular filming location for Hollywood during the 1900’s. Some of the films shot there include several Tarzan movies with Johnny Weissmuller, the 1954 version of Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Moonraker (a James Bond movie). It was also a location for the TV series Sea Hunt. Some of the sets still exist around the property.
In 1971, Silver Springs was named a National Natural Landmark. Today, Silver Springs State Park is owned and operated by the state of Florida. The state operates the famous glass bottom boats now but there are no more jungle cruises. Visitors can walk beside the springs or sit in one of the rocking chairs to enjoy the view. There are boardwalks and trails as well as a boat launch area with canoe and kayak rentals.
This is one of our favorite Florida state parks and we wanted to spend a few days there to unwind after the excitement of the Daytona 500. We were able to reserve our favorite campsite and I was glad to see it hadn’t change much. There was gopher tortoise hole right next to the campsite just like I remembered and the resident tortoise paid us a visit our first night.
One day we drove over to the main entrance of the park for a ride on one of the famous glass bottom boats. Captain Oscar has been working at Silver Springs since the early 1960’s and had lots of interesting stories about the park.
After the boat tour we wandered around the path next to the springs before taking a walk on the boardwalk trail.
Another day we rented a kayak for a beautiful paddle on the Silver River.
I felt like I was in one of the old Tarzan movies as I walked along the river trail near the campground.
Back in the 1930s during the day of the Jungle Cruise boat ride, the operator of the ride brought in a group of wild rhesus monkeys to use as part of the attraction. Not knowing they could swim, he left them on one of the islands beside the Silver River. When he later returned to the island he was surprised to see they were gone. The monkeys are still living in the area and are often seen by visitors.
Although we didn’t see any of the monkeys on this visit, we saw many of them when we kayaked down the Silver River in 2009.
The monkeys can be very aggressive at times. All around the park are signs warning about the danger of feeding the monkeys. Now where else in the United States would you see a sign like this?
Our wandering has taken us to some memorable geographical points of interest in the United States.
Although these next points aren’t the most extreme in the U.S., they are the farthest directional points we visited.
This post was inspired by the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge: Variations on a Theme
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