Salt Springs

At the boat launch in the tent camping area

It’s summer here at Salt Springs — complete with sticky humidity and biting bugs. We’ve already gone through a half bottle of Deep Woods Off. But we are loving it here!

In the tent camping area

Although the campground is a Forest Service campground, it’s run by concessionaires. So it’s actually a big RV park, complete with full hookups. But we’re paying $16 a night with our senior pass.

During the winter, you can stay up to 180 days here. There is an unbelievable assortment of big rigs, small rigs, popups, home built campers, a teardrop, and even several tents in the RV area because they want hookups. The sites are all different sizes — from spacious to cramped. It looks like they built the pads around the trees, so tree placement apparently determines the size of the individual sites. We happened to get a really big one.

Down by the canal

In addition to the main campground, there is a primitive RV area with no hookups, and a primitive tent camping area. The RV park gets pretty full on the weekends, but there are a lot of open sites during the week.

It rained yesterday, and threatened to rain all of this morning. But it cleared up early this afternoon and is beautiful now.

Ron took Sheba with him when he did laundry this morning. So Sunny and I had a leisurely walk through the tent camping area to the canal. The management keeps that area beautifully manicured, so it’s a

Turtle in the canal

pleasure to linger there. We gave the water a wide berth, though, because there are alligators there, and I’d bet some of them are probably big. Big enough to be a danger to a small dog, anyway.

We haven’t made it to the springs yet this trip. Dogs aren’t allowed down there so it takes some planning for us. 🙂

Alligator warning sign

Verizon data service is spotty and sporadic here. Sometimes I can get a good enough signal to surf a bit. Other times I can barely send text email. And other times, all I get is “server not found.” But there isn’t a good enough signal for a phone call. You might connect if you are lucky, but you will certainly drop the call.

At first, we were disappointed when we arrived, with comparisons of Ocean Pond fresh in our minds. However, Salt Springs is wonderful in a different way. There are a

Our Casita at Salt Springs

lot of snowbirds who spend the winter here. The club house has lots of activities — we got asked if we were on our way to Bingo twice.

And best of all, one of the Palatka churches is doing a Christmas cantata here Saturday night. We’re to bring finger foods and they’ll supply the beverages.

I am REALLY looking forward to the cantata!