Alexander Springs Recreation Area in Ocala National Forest: April 2 - 7, 2026

 After leaving Colorado after completing our visit with one daughter, we headed to the Richmond, VA area to visit our other daughter before heading south for a family wedding in FL. On our way to central FL, we camped at the Alexander Springs Recreation Area in the Ocala National Forest. I'll keep this blog posting short since we have visited this campground previously with my December 31, 2021 posting providing more description. Here are pictures of the camper at the campsite:

As might be evident, there was significant shade at the site. Since there was a need/desire to run the AC some nights, we set out our deployable solar panels. Even then, we only ran the AC for two or three nights because there was not enough solar energy gathered to do more than that. Fortunately, the nights we didn't run the AC were reasonably cool and we weren't uncomfortable sleeping at any point.

I took a couple of bike rides relying on my recollection of previous routes I used. What I didn't remember was the length of the ride. It was a little over 26 miles and for some reason my body wasn't up for up it on the first ride. My back locked up so that when I attempted to get off the bike when I returned, I had trouble getting off the bike. I was able to recover enough the next day and complete a second ride before we left the campground.

We visited the springs on three of the days. I only swam two of the times because we arrived fairly late one day, it was getting close to 5:30PM, and the swimming area was being closed off. We heard one of the workers tell some other surprised guests they close early for "winter" hours and they are severely understaffed, something 50%.

The day before we left we did some packing up and it started raining towards the end. On the departure day, the rain had moved in so we left without any dilly dallying. Our destination was family in central FL for a wedding and doing some camping at Lake Louisa State Park.