April 30, 2014, Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park

White Springs, Florida

We woke up to a gray day under the huge live oak trees.  Ted went to see when we could meet with the Park Services Specialist.  Her name is Stephanie McClain and she came to our motor home about 9:45.  She told us about the park and what is expected of volunteers, etc.  Since we are interested in doing crafts, if we should decide to come here, we were told we needed to talk to Susan Conley. She is the ranger in charge of the gift shop and Craft Square where artisans demonstrate and talk to visitors of the park.  We went to talk to Susan and she seemed enthusiastic about having Ted build a kayak in the open air barn.  We told her we would keep in touch as we were not planning on being in Florida next winter.

Open Air Barn

Once we got done looking at all the neat crafts for sale in the gift shop, we went over to the museum.  They had eight wonderful dioramas depicting Stephen Foster's songs as well as several old pianos, some that were played by Foster himself.  Stephen Foster never came to Florida and picked the name of the river in Old Folks at Home, the state song of Florida, from an atlas.  The desk where he finished writing the song was also in the museum.  We watched a short film about the area around White Springs and returned to the motor home for lunch.

Museum

After lunch we were going to walk to the carillon building but it started to sprinkle as we were leaving so took the car.  The carillon building is mostly marble inside and is a memorial to Stephen Foster with original artifacts as well as reproductions.  There were two more three dimensional dioramas.  The one below had the boy jumping, the banjo player plucking and the chicken pecking at the watermelon.  All the dioramas had some thing moving...most often a riverboat.

Diorama

The bells in this carillon are tubular unlike the ones in Bok Tower and other carillons we have seen.  Hopefully, the pictures depict how they are set up and something about them.

Since we already had the car, we decided to drive down by the canoe launch in the park.....obviously no hiking and no launching.

Then we stopped at White Sulfur Springs and the water was up to the 4th level of the spring house.  Ted's picture was taken on March 14th showing Jack Roberts in front of the spring house.  The river in actually on the other side of the spring house from where we were standing.

White Sulfur Springs

Below is Jack Roberts on the river side of the Spring House on Mar 10th.

Next we drove out to the public ramp on Rt. 41 where the Magnificent Seven from 27/80 began their 70-mile Suwannee River trip.  We rode around the area a bit then came back to the campsite.

Below is the boat ramp at the start of our Suwannee River Trip on Mar 10th.

What a difference in just 6 weeks!

Leaving MacArthur Beach State Park

It is with mixed feelings that we are leaving MacArthur Beach State Park, our winter home for the past few years. We have made some wonderful friends here, both at the park and in the community, and we will miss the people most of all. There are many changes taking place at the park and it won't be the same when and if we return. When we started our journey six and a half years ago, we said we would only stay in one place for two years and we have been here five. It is time to move on to new adventures so we are heading west planning to reach the Canadian Rockies and then spending next winter in Arizona to be closer to exploring the rest of the west.  We hope you enjoy reading about our travels and will send us comments from time to time so we can stay connected to our family and friends.

After saying our final good-byes, we joined the northward migration of the "elder beasts".  We traveled up I-95 to Jacksonville, turning west on I-10.  Visibility was impaired by the huge number of love bugs that met their demise on the front of our motor home.  Unfortunately we leave Florida at the height of their mating season each year which makes for a big mess.  Fortunately for us, we went through a huge thunderstorm before reaching our destination which cleaned most of them off.

We arrived at Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park late afternoon and set up in the volunteer village.  Volunteers came out of the woodwork to check us out.  They seemed nice but one was a little put out that we were just passing through and were checking the place out for possible future volunteering.  My first impression of the village was that it was buggy and that we would get absolutely no satellite or antenna connection.

We went for a walk around the park listening to the carillon chime every fifteen minutes.  It is set in a beautiful tower which closed at five.  All the other buildings had also closed before we got there.  There are outdoor and indoor stages, auditoriums and meeting spaces all through the park as well as a museum, gift shop and exhibition area for various craft demonstrations. 

We walked down to the Suwanee River which is four feet above flood level.  The river is a dark, dark brown and you can not see into it at all.  The area around the boardwalk where we were was really calm and the reflections of the trees in the water was spectacular.

The water level is 21 feet higher than mid March when we took our river trip on the Suwannee.



Sheila's Test

We are trying to see if I can write my journal in the blog and have Ted imbed photos within my journal. We are hoping that people will only have to receive one notification each day. 

Sweetwater Cabin

Ted inserted the above photo and I am now writing again.  It looks like we are in business.  When I type, the font is not what I want to publish.  Let's see if it changes to Arial.

It does change to Arial.

Subscriber Test

Today's brief post is to test how subscribers are notified.  The forecast is for mostly sunny with a high of 86.  Yesterday was 93 when 85 was forecast.  I am headed up to scrub the roof.  The Strangler Fig is dropping so many berries this year.

Preparing to Leave MacArthur Beach

We are preparing to get on the road once again, getting everything needed back into the RV after spending 6 months at MacArthur Beach State Park in North Palm Beach, FL.  Razor and Karen have already shoved off and making their way north, Jim Budd is leaving Monday, and we plan to lift the jacks, hook up the car, and get the big wheels rolling on Tuesday morning.

I gave up my SheepscotWoodenKayaks.com domain which also means no more SheepscotWoodenKayaks blog.  This is my first attempt at using Blogger, trying to get through the startup choices.  

Unlike 2 years ago, Sheila will write into this blog.  We will include photos within the text and when needed link a web album.  So I have linked an album from our recent trip to Sweetwater Springs to see how it will work:
https://picasaweb.google.com/115859097710257188914/April152014JuniperSprings?authkey=Gv1sRgCKeYs4qvs5TGDg#

Hopefully, after posting, I will find a way to notify those of you that would like to sign up for our travel blog.

    Ted