Lake City to Silver River State Park

We left Oaks 'N Pines this morning a little after 10:30 and drove south on US-441 to Lake City and then west to I-75. We stopped for lunch at noon at a rest area near Paynes Prairie. At Ocala we took SR-40 east to CR-35 and then south on it to Silver River State Park.

From Silver River State Park

We arrived here at 2 p.m. and after checking in at the Ranger Station we went to our campsite in Sharpes Ferry Camping Area. We are in site #8 and we have 50 amp electric and water hookups. Since we are Florida residents and seniors, we are eligible for the Florida State parks senior discount. We are paying $103.68 (inc tax) for our week's stay here, which is $12.96 a night.

From Silver River State Park

The sites are gravel and we are surrounded by trees. The pull-through is really a long and wide one, so we have plenty of room here. Mike set out our portable satellite dish this afternoon.

From Silver River State Park

There aren't a lot of people here today, but I'm sure by this weekend the park will fill up.

White Springs to Lake City, FL

We had a short travel day today - only about 12 miles.

We left Stephen Foster State Park a little after 11 a.m. and took US-41 south to I-10 and then I-10 east to US-441 north to Oaks 'N Pines RV Park. We have stayed here several times and it's convenient to I-10 and I-75.

From April 2010

It only took us about 20 minutes or so to drive here from Stephen Foster State Park. We are in site #49 with full hookups (30 amp), cable TV and free wifi. We're using Passport America and its costing us $19.62 with tax to stay here for tonight.

From April 2010

Tomorrow we'll be going to Silver River State Park at Ocala. According to the online reservations for Silver River State Park, the site we wanted there is reserved for tonight. Since we needed a place to stay for tonight, we decided to come to Oaks 'N Pines - we've always been pleased with our stays here. It is right on I-10, but the traffic noise hasn't bothered us.

The Spring House and White Springs

This morning we drove around the town of White Springs to look at some of the historic homes there. We stopped first at the Spring House just outside the entrance to the Stephen Foster State Park on the bank of the Suwannee River.

From April 2010

The sulphur springs at White Springs was regarded as a sacred healing ground by the Indians that lived in this area. In 1835 Bryant and Elizabeth Sheffield bought the land that included the springs and what is now most of the town of White Springs. They build a plantation here and eventually a hotel beside the springs. A log spring house surrounded the spring until 1903 when a concrete and coquina wall was built. The spring house was four-tiered and had treatment rooms, an elevator and a concession area.


By the late 1800's 14 luxury hotels and many boarding houses had been built to accommodate the visitors who came by train to White Sulphur Springs.


Now all that remains of the spring house is the concrete and coquina wall. You can see the holes in the sides of the wall that mark where the original tiers would have been.

From April 2010

Before we left the spring house, we walked down to view the Suwannee River.

From April 2010

We then drove around White Springs to look at some of the historic homes here and the Telford Hotel. The Telford is the only hotel left of the original 14 luxury hotels - the others were destroyed in the 1911 fire.

From April 2010

From April 2010

Stephen Foster Carillon Tower & Museum

After lunch today we headed over to see the Carillon Tower here at the Stephen Foster State Folk Culture Center. The interior is quite impressive and houses copies of the some of Stephen Foster's original manuscripts and dioramas depicting some of his tunes.

From April 2010

There were daguerreotypes of Stephen & Jane Foster, a piano owned by Andrew Carnegie and a model of the carillon system.

From April 2010

In the camellia garden near the Tower we found a marker commemorating the organization of the 2nd Girl Scout Troop in White Springs in 1912.

From April 2010

We walked from the Tower over to the Craft Village, unfortunately many of the craft demonstrators weren't there this afternoon, but we did enjoy browsing around the Gift Shop.

After buying some postcards and some local honey at the gift shop, we drove over to the Museum. Our guide around the museum was Pat (dressed in an 1860's costume). There was only 1 other couple with us in the museum tour.

From April 2010

Pat told us about the life of Stephen Foster and the history of the song "Suwannee River" or "Old Folks at Home". He originally wrote the tune about the Pedee River and realized that it just didn't sound right. He tried the names of several different rivers before he settled on the Suwannee. We learned that Stephen Foster never

From April 2010

We learned a lot from our guide, Pat, about the life of Stephen Foster and she dispelled some of the myths about him. He was not a Southerner, he didn't die an alcoholic, and he didn't support slavery. We also learned that he never saw the Suwannee River.

Stephen Foster State Park

Tomorrow we are going to visit the Stephen Foster Museum, Carillon Tower and Craft Village here in the state park.

According to the brochures for the state park, the memorial to Stephen Foster was suggested in 1931 by Josiah K. Lilly, son of Eli K. Lilly the pharmaceutical manufacturer. Stephen Foster's song, "Old Folks at Home", made the Suwannee River known worldwide and was designated the official Florida state song in 1935. The Florida Federation of Music Clubs adopted his idea and obtained contributions of land here in White Springs, Florida and the park opened in 1950.

The Stephen Foster Museum is housed in an antebellum style mansion which was built purposely to house the displays. This was one of our first sights as we drove through the park on our way to the campground.

From April 2010

Our next sight on the way to the campground was the Stephen Foster Memorial Carillon - a 200 foot bell tower which was completed in 1957. The 97-bell carillon was installed the summer of 1958. It is one of the largest musical instruments produced in the Western Hemisphere and the world's largest tubular carillon in the number of bells. The carillon plays Stephen Foster's tunes daily and can be heard here in the campground.

From April 2010

There is also a Craft Village with several small log houses across from the Carillon Tower with different crafts being displayed and the Gift Shop is also there.

Around Stephen Foster State Park

We drove over to Live Oak to the Walmart Supercenter to do some shopping and on our way back through the State Park we took some photos of areas that we missed when we drove through the park on our way to the campground.

From April 2010

From April 2010

From April 2010

From April 2010

Stephen Foster State Park

We didn't do a lot today. We did take a walk around the campground and looked at the different sites and picked a couple that we would like to be on if we come back here.

We did find out what was wrong with our satellite reception. Mike hooked up a different cable to the satellite dish and we had satellite TV. He is going to put new connectors on the cable he replaced and see if that will take care of the problem with that cable.

I went to the restroom/shower/laundry this afternoon. There are 2 washers ($1 a load) and 2 dryers ($1 a load). After putting in a couple of loads, I went in to take a shower. There are 2 shower stalls in the restroom and fairly large. There is a separate shower for handicapped and it is locked with a numeric key pad. The restrooms and showers are clean and well maintained.

Mike took his shower after I got back from doing the laundry and he said the men's area was the same as the women's.

Chattahoochee to White Springs, FL

By the time we broke camp and stopped at the dump station to empty our tanks, it was 11:45 when we left Eastbank Campground and headed south; but it’s only 148 miles to White Springs. We took US 90 east to CR 269 south to CR 270A to I-10 east.

We stopped at the Pilot at Midway to fill the tank in the RV ($2.739 gal). Then we stopped for lunch at the rest area a couple of miles east of Midway. While we were there Mike did his usual walk around and checked the oil in the RV. He told me to come outside and bring the camera. This is what he discovered in the RV engine.

Visit with cousins

Today we drove over to Tallahassee to visit with Mike’s cousin Dick and his wife Ernestine.  We hadn’t seen them in quite a few years. We met their two daughters, Cindy and Debbie, who were there and we had a nice visit. Dick has been ill since the first of the year, so we only stayed for about an hour.

On the way back to Eastbank Campground we stopped at the Camping World in Midway to do some shopping. We bought the 2010 edition of the Next Exit (we had the 2009 edition). We rely a lot on the Next Exit when we are traveling on the interstates even though we use Microsoft Streets & Trips for our trip routing and we have a Garmin gps.

We also stopped at the Flying J to get gas in the Saturn ($2.729 a gal with our discount) before heading back to the campground.

We are leaving Eastbank Campground tomorrow and heading to White Springs, FL to the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park. We have enjoyed our stay here at Lake Seminole and will definitely come back to Eastbank Campground.

Eastbank Campground

We've been spending our days here just relaxing and enjoying the campground.

From April 2010

Here are a some photos we took of the campground. The campground filled up during the weekend, but by Sunday afternoon the campground was less than half full.

From April 2010

From April 2010

From April 2010

Back to Dothan

We sat outside to drink our morning coffee before having breakfast just enjoying the scenery. It was a little on the cool side, so we put our lightweight jackets on.

From April 2010

We watched a pair of bald eagles flying over the lake and some really large fish jumping in the lake near the shore.. There were a few boats out on the lake this morning and I’m sure there will be more this weekend. There are also a few pairs of Canadian geese here and a pair walked up on shore near our site.

From April 2010

We said goodbye to Dee and James this morning and wished we had had more time to visit. We exchanged information and they’ve invited us to stay at their place if we come to Jacksonville.

We drove back over to Dothan this afternoon to pick up our mail at the UPS Store. We had ordered a couple of things and they were delayed in shipment and didn’t arrive until today. Since we were going to have to go back to Dothan to get our packages, we had American Home Base send our regular mail to Dothan.

We also stopped by our storage unit to get a large outdoor mat that we had stored and now decided that we could use.

We had had a long list of things to do and errands to run before we left Dothan and one of the items was to buy Tinker’s dog food. So we waited to go to Petsmart until today and Tinker always enjoys going to Petsmart.

Once we ran our errands in Dothan, we headed back to Lake Seminole.

Dothan to Lake Seminole

We left The Willows about 11:30 this morning and headed south on US 231 to Florida. We left a little later than usual since we only have about 82 miles to go today.

We stopped at the Florida Welcome Center at noon and decided to fix lunch. While Mike was walking Tinker, I went into the Welcome Center and loaded up on travel brochures.

From April 2010

From April 2010

After lunch we headed on south to I-10 and a stop at the Walmart Supercenter in Marianna, FL to buy some supplies. There are 2 Supercenters in Dothan, but they don’t have any RV supplies anymore. We continued east on I-10 to Exit 158 and took SR 286 north to Sneads and then US 90 to Chattahoochee and then north to Eastbank Campground on Lake Seminole in Georgia.

We arrived at Eastbank (a Corp of Engineer campground) about 3 p.m. We are in Loop A on site #1 – a back-in. We have water and 30 amp electric. The sites are staggered, so we have a good view of Lake Seminole.

From April 2010

This afternoon we met Dee and James from Jacksonville who are in the 5th wheel in site 2 next to us. They had wanted to stay another day, but someone will be coming in tomorrow on their site. They are on their way to Pine Bluff, AR to spend about a month.

2010 Trip Preparations

We’ve been spending the last several days getting ready to leave Dothan and start on our trip this year around Florida. We took a few things over to our storage unit that we won’t be needing this year – mostly our winter clothes. We also took a few clothes and books over to the Thrift Shop for the Wiregrass Humane Society.

There is always some last minute shopping to be done and I did leave one errand undone – buying Tinker’s dog food at Petsmart since we’re having to come back to Dothan to get our mail. We had ordered a couple of things and they were delayed in shipment and won’t be delivered until later this week to our mail box at the UPS store here. We already have reservations at Lake Seminole at Eastbank Campground and will have to drive back to Dothan to get our mail and packages and stop at Petsmart for Tinker's food.

We are looking forward to getting back on the road and visiting the Florida State Parks.