Connie, our neighbor at Little Willies had spoken very
highly of a campground in the Ocala National Forest, Salt Springs CG. We had thought to go to an ORV campground,
Big Scrub, but the USFS site said the roads to it can be filled with soft deep
sand. This bothered us, after all the
Beast (the motorhome) and the Toad (our tow vehicle, Wayne’s rolling man-cave)
are extremely heavy and getting them stuck in soft sand 5 miles from nowhere is
not on our To-Do list. So we followed Connie’s advice and when to Salt Springs.
Monday was our first test-camp trip on the DRZ’s. We spent
the morning getting the rest of the gear together and loaded on our bikes. We left the coach and the cats at Salt
Springs and headed via back roads to the Mud Muckers property outside of
Bunnell.
This is the smallest ferry I've seen this trip. We opted not to ride it across
the lake.
Mud Muckers will be the location of the season opener of the
Grand National Cross County (GNCC) series. We plan to come and watch,
but we wanted to see what we would be taking the Beast and Toad into. Everything looked good, so that plan was
still on.
From there we picked up a mail packet at the Bunnell post
office, and then headed to the Atlantic coast.
We noticed that these beaches were NOT white sand like the
Gulf Coast, but a regular tan colored sand.
Surf's up!!
We traveled south through Flagler Beach and Ormond by the
Sea. We had reservations at Tomoka Beach State Park. We set up camp and walked
around the state park. The good news is
that what we had with us all worked great, but we came back with a list of
things we need to add to our packs!! Oh
well, more tent camping is sure to come.
We’ll get it figured out before July!!!
In the morning we rode over to the Daytona International
Speedway.
This is the home of NASCAR and the location of both the Daytona SuperCross and the Daytona 200 Motorcycle Road Race. Although we originally planned to go to both of these, we have since decided that we’d see more on TV and be warmer! The last SuperCross I went to was in Salt Lake City and it snowed. The way our weather luck is going on this trip I figured at a minimum we’d get rained on!! Plus the roads in the area for both these events are going to be a zoo, clogged with bikers. We’d be on our DRZ’s and stuck in traffic; clutch hand aching and barely able to touch ground is not my idea of a good time. So we took a track tour instead. Wayne and I saw more of the track than we would have at any event.
View of Lake Lloyd, in the track's infield from a luxury box
31 Degree Banking, if you aren't going at least 75MPH, gravity will pull you down
The SuperCross track was in the process of being built
The finish line (I know, but I had to take a picture!)
Information about previous winners. We were the only ones who went straight to the motorcycle section
Now that's a garage!!
After our tour we headed back to camp via the Ocala National
Forest. We checked out that campground,
Big Scrub. The roads are actually in
good shape, we could get in there. Oh well,
Salt Springs is nice too.
Salt Springs is a natural spring rising from vertical fissures (cracks) in the earth. The presence of potassium, magnesium and sodium salts give the waters in the spring a slight salinity. Hence the name Salt Springs.
On Wednesday Wayne finally got a chance to snorkel in the clear
water springs. He had been looking for
an opportunity to play in the water. The
weather wasn’t all that great, but the water is a constant 72 degrees and he
had a wetsuit, so all was good.
I just had to take this picture, even though the flash woke
them both up. This is Andy's favorite place to sleep at night, on either of us, he's not picky...
We woke to rain on Thursday, move day of course. It poured so hard that at one point we just
broke out the books and read for half an hour, waiting for it to end. We didn’t have to be out of our current spot until
1 PM and our next stop, Mud Muckers, didn’t open until 3 PM, so we were in no
hurry to get on the road...
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