Author: bjregan

This week it is not the reptilian, lazy black Florida Gators that we are amongst, but it is the famous Florida Gators intercollegiate sports teams here in Gainesville, home of the University of Florida. The orange and blue colors are everywhere and the university is central to the life of the town. (Photo below of the mascots Albert and Alberta Gator is not a photo we took, but was found on the web).

With a spell of rainy weather this week we have not ventured as much as usual on nature excursions, leaving more time for things like exploring the university campus. We have found that Gainesville is a bike friendly town and, although, our hotel is not close to downtown or the university, it is possible to ride our bikes there from the hotel.

Lake Alice is a wildlife area in the center of the campus, a sanctuary for alligators (the reptilian kind) and birds.

When we stopped at the lake we saw only one small alligator, but there were at least a half dozen, huge snapping turtles, floating near the shoreline competing with the birds and alligator for whatever food could be found.

In the case of the ibis, the lunch we saw him gobbling down was a discarded french fry. I suppose that is typical food one would find in the middle of a college campus.

Yesterday was the best day of the week for bike riding. We did a 32-mile ride from Gainesville to Hawthorne (a nearby village) and back.

The Gainesville-Hawthorne State Trail that we used surprised us with a fun 2-mile stretch that had some hills and curves. Up until this point, everything in Florida has been flat, but there are a few hilly areas around Gainesville. (“Hilly”, of course, being a relative term for those of you who ride in Oregon and Iowa).

We were joined on the ride by our friend, Jerry.



Although, I have been complaining about “rainy” weather, it is mostly clouds, sprinkles, and threat of thunderstorms. There has been very little accumulation of moisture. The evidence of the drought conditions is everywhere. None of the creeks along the way had water in them, including Prairie Creek, seen in this photo.

Jerry had been on this trail last January and said that the creek at that time had water in it and he had wondered how deep the creek was. The bottom is definitely visible now!

Well, the sun is not visible now and, so far, it looks like today will be another drizzly day. But at least it is warm outside. Maybe not a day for riding bikes but we still have some hiking trails in the area to explore. Time to get out the rain jackets and see what we can discover.

Literally, it’s freezing. Last night and the night before the temperature here in Ocala dropped down to a frigid 26 degrees. I know, for those of you in the Midwest and Northeast that’s not cold at all. But our blood has thinned since we’ve been down here and I didn’t expect to go out and have to scrape frost from the windshield of the car while in Florida. One thing for sure, I’m glad that we are in a warm hotel room and not out in a tent in the Ocala National Forest.

Given the weather conditions, we have temporarily delayed our plans to camp and have been spending more time investigating outdoor activities in the Ocala area. The Cross Florida Greenway trail has a section that passes through Ocala. One day last week, looking at a map, we were able to find a way to ride our bikes from the hotel room to the Teak Way Drive Trailhead.

This area of the Greenway has a 3 mile unpaved hiking section through the Marshall Swamp, as well as a section of 3 paved loop trails that we could ride our bikes on.

In contrast to the 110-mile Greenway trail, which is mostly unpaved the Withlacoochee State Trail, at 46 miles, is the longest paved trail in Florida. The Citrus Springs trailhead is about an hour’s drive from Ocala and the day that we did some biking there we were joined by our friend, Jerry.


We weren’t prepared to do the whole trail, but, instead pedaled 16 miles south to Inverness, where we had lunch downtown, before pedaling back.

When we were here in January we had made a short visit to the Silver Springs State Park that is just outside Ocala. It was late in the day and we only had time to hike a short trail before the park closed. Also, it is only on weekends that the museum at the park is open to visitors. So on Saturday we made another visit, which allowed us to tour the museum and walk a couple of other trails.

We learned more about the Silver Springs area at the museum and were especially interested in the information about films and TV shows that were made here over the years. These included six of the original “Tarzan” movies filmed in the 1930s and 1940s, “The Yearling,” starring Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman that was filmed in 1946, “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” in 1954, and more than 100 episodes of the famous television series “Sea Hunt,” that starred Lloyd Bridges.

Silver Springs is the site of one of the largest artesian spring formations in the world, producing nearly 550 million gallons of crystal-clear water daily. In the mid-1800s tourists flocked by steamboat to see the crystal-clear waters of Silver Springs. In 1878 when Hullam Jones invented the glass bottom boat, its popularity soared, laying the groundwork for a flourishing tourist industry here. In the 1920s, Carl Ray and W.M. Davidson made the land around the headwaters of the Spring into something resembling the attraction that is there today, now known as the Silver Springs Nature Theme Park. The attraction features native animal exhibits and glass bottom boat tours of the springs. Since it is a separate, privately-owned concession, with a steep price tag we did not go to the theme park. Instead, we walked a couple of the trails that we hadn’t seen when we were first here. At the end of the Swamp Trail a viewing platform allowed us to peer over into Silver River, where we got a sense of the beauty of this clear water that allows you to see the sandy bottom, and many fish swimming through the grass and reeds.

The viewing platform was the one spot where we also finally saw some wildlife. Since leaving the southern part of Florida we haven’t seen many birds or other creatures of interest. On the platform we saw an alligator, a great blue heron, ibises, turtles, cormorant, and many fishes.

The other exciting viewing of the day was in the woods on the way back. I had heard that there were armadillos in Florida but had only caught a glimpse of one from a distance. This time we came upon one that was so busy snuffling his way through the leaves looking for his lunch that he was oblivious to me standing there with my camera.

I thought he might walk right over my foot. Armadillos don’t look like they can move very fast but when he finally became aware of our presence he scampered off in a flash.

Now it’s time for us to scamper off and leave Ocala behind. We hear that the weather will warm back up to more normal temperatures in a couple of days. Until then we will continue to hotel and sightsee and then, depending on whether or not we have strayed too far from Ocala, we may circle back and do the camping we had hoped to do in the Ocala National Forest.