Heartland Bound and Catching Up (part 1)

(2024 Heartland Ep 1)

Welcome to RabbiTRAILS as we get underway with our summer 2024 travels. 

After an epic 2023 journey to Alaska, we are staying (much) closer to home this year.

Why 2024 Heartland? 

Much of our trip this year will be traveling through the central United States heartland from Texas to Minnesota.  We’re bound to see oilwells, windmills, cattle herds, cicadas and miles of cornfields. Hopefully we won’t encounter tornadoes and hailstorms!

Other affairs of the heart will be at play as we travel:  catching up with family in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and possibly Connecticut, and a visit with a close friend in New Hampshire.

We top it all off with something near and dear to our hearts:  two weeks serving at Camp Cedarbrook camps in Texas and Ohio.  As we connect all of this together, we’ll be on the lookout for interesting RabbiTRAILS to follow and share with you.

Before things get underway, there’s some catching up needed since our last blog post in December: 2023 Alaska Revisited Recap.

Catching Up, Part 1

Earlier this year Percy, Pap and a new addition carried us on a couple trips.

When we travel closer to home, Pat and I enjoy kayaking in addition to biking.  There’s no easy way to take kayaks with our current setup, so we purchased a small utility trailer and configured it to haul two kayaks, our bikes and assorted other camping gear.  Introducing Junior, Percy and Pap’s first cousin!    

Tomoka State Park

In January, we camped with longtime friends, John and Carol, at Tomoka State Park a few miles north of Daytona Beach.  Located on the Tomoka River, the park includes the site of an ancient Timucuan Indian village and a large statue of Timucuan Chief Tomokie.  The monument is a reminder that the area was populated by Native Americans for centuries before Europeans arrived.

For several days we kayaked, biked and took several local side trips.  We toured nearby Bulow Plantation Ruins Historic State Park.  Developed in 1821, the plantation was once the largest plantation in East Florida where indigo, cotton, rice and sugarcane were cultivated.  The plantation was destroyed in the Seminole War of 1836, and, although many of the original plantation structures no longer exist, sizeable remnants of a large sugar mill can still be seen.  The plantation is an interesting part of Florida history.

_{Ruins of the sugar mill at Bulow Ruins Historic State Park}

We stopped for lunch at Aunt Catfish’s on the River restaurant in Port Orange.  The menu offerings were what one would expect at a southern-style seafood restaurant. We learned they served homemade cinnamon buns and it was game on!  Although the buns were smaller than the ginormous buns we sampled on our 2023 Alaska Revisited journey, they were wonderfully sweet and cinnamony.  We had to have more than one to satisfy our bun craving!

Manatee Springs State Park

We left Tomoka and crossed the state, where we camped at Manatee Springs State Park. 

Manatee Springs is a first magnitude (e.g. large) spring that flows into the Suwannee River.  A boardwalk extends nearly a quarter mile from the spring through a swampy area with tall Spanish moss-covered cypress trees.  The boardwalk ends at a small pier on the Suwannee River. 

One morning we kayaked the run and along the Suwannee for several miles, where we enjoyed the sunny, cool and quiet surroundings.

When we returned to the spring, we were delighted to find several manatees swimming near the boat launch area.  We paused for several minutes to watch the large potato-shaped animals swim about and surface from time to time.  I used my GoPro camera to capture some underwater photos of the spectacle.      

As we walked along the boardwalk one evening, we noticed the cypress trees surrounding the spring run were filled with hundreds of large, American black vultures. It was a rather Gothic spectacle in the evening twilight.

Our Manatee Springs stay included visits to Cedar Key, where we rode our bicycles around the small Gulf Coast community, and Fanning Springs, where we admired a remnant of an old bridge that crossed the Suwannee River inscribed with the title of Stephen Foster’s memorable song, “Way Down Upon the Suwannee River!”

Henry Turns 6

Our trip ended near Macon, GA with a sixth birthday celebration for our grandson, Henry.

_{Son-in-law Josh, daughter Liz, and grandkids, Emilia and Henry; Henry celebrates his birthday}

Next Week

Catching Up (part 2): Florida Keys and Everglades National Park