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.