Lake Louisa State Park: March 1 - 5, 2022

 Here is a picture of the rig at Lake Louisa:

There are actually three lakes associated with the park. Lake Hammond and Bear Lake are contained  within the park and Lake Louisa makes up part of the park's border. The Florida State Parks are close to full occupancy while we have been in Florida so staying at Lake Louisa took a little persistence and good luck. We concentrated on this park since it was close to our Florida family. This was the first time we had shore power for the camper since December when we stayed at an AirBnB in Bumpass Va with our kids. In addition to having shore power, the bathrooms were also very high class. So with having shore power and nice bathrooms, I felt out of my element. For instance, the bathrooms at our previous campgrounds didn't have paper towels for hand drying like Lake Louisa. Some of them did have hand dryers but I only used them sparingly so the paper towels and the nice bathrooms provided me a feeling of luxury.

The smaller lakes contained within the park provided opportunities for non-powered boating and fishing. Here is a picture of Lake Hammond which was close to the campground.

Lake Louisa had a beach for swimming, but due to our relatively short stay at the park and a triathlon being held at the park I never made it to the beach. I biked there the day before the race when the road was closed to cars and once I made it to the beach parking lot it was already overtaken by race participants and preparation. Speaking of bike riding I was able to ride my road for the first time since early January. It was 3 miles from the campground to the main road and from there I would travel along the main road for a few miles. It wasn't the most pleasurable ride since it was a 6 lane highway but at least it had a bike lane, one for both directions.

When we departed on March 5, we headed to Jane's brother's place in Montverde FL where the camper will be parked until we start our trek back north. After arriving in Montverde and parking the camper, Jane's parents picked us up so we could go on the Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive. This drive was a recommendation we had received from a volunteer at Rock Springs Preserve. Since the town of Montverde is on Lake Apopka I had saved the drive for our stay at Montverde. We were not disappointed. The drive is on the north shore where the open waters of the lake weren't visible; it was primarily a mixture of marshland and levees. This area was teeming with birds, many of them water fowl, and alligators. You can get out of your car but we chose to stay in ours, other than one pit stop along on the drive at one of the parking areas and taking a picture of an alligator at the start of the drive. The drive is about 10 miles long. I would estimate we saw an alligator on average about every few hundred yards. The wildlife seemed accustomed to all the visitors, i. e. they went about their normal activities while cars drove by and people were taking pictures. Here are a few pictures that we took. Other than the first one, the other two were taken while inside the car.

Our plans for now are to do a lot of family visiting for the remainder of our stay in Florida and then head back up north to NH. We will stay at our son's residences in NH for most or all of April and then start heading west to Colorado. The next blog post should occur when we start our trek west. Until then, I hope the Ukraine crisis has ended and World War 3 has not started. This conflict and the pandemic are world events I never expected to see in my lifetime.