State Park

Three Rivers & Suwannee River State Parks, FL

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5 of 13 Jekyll Island Trip Series.

This post is about two Florida State Parks:

1. Three Rivers State Park – on Lake Seminole, which is formed by the convergence of the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers.

2. Suwanee River State Park – is THE “Swanee River” of the “Way Down Upon Swanee River…” minstrel song by Stephen Foster in 1851 (also known as “Old Folks at Home”). My dad used to sing that song all the time on family vacations. It has been stuck in head now for about a week.

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Taken from the dock at Three Rivers State Park, Florida. That’s Georgia in the fog on the other side of the river.
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Not much to photograph at Three Rivers State Park. If you are a fisherman it would be a great place to hang out. Otherwise there’s not much to do here. The trees in the area where decimated by Hurricane Michael in 2018. This is a small campground and the long ‘asphalt’ road back to the campground looked like it had been carpet bombed. Very slow going dodging potholes. We stayed here because Florida cancelled our reservations at Falling Waters State Park. We were happy to move on to Suwannee River State Park.

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Suwannee River State Park was a big improvement over Three Rivers. This panorama is of the Suwannee (which is flowing from right to left) at the point where the Withlacoochee River joins with the Suwannee. There is a railroad bridge at the very left of the photo. The railroad bridge and a busy ferry crossing at this strategic location during the Civil War caused an interesting historical feature of the park.
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The remains of the Civil War Earthworks. An earthen “fort” is still easy to imagine.
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Gears from old paddleboat and old paddleboat “wheel”
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Clear water from Little Gem Spring flows into the Suwannee. Hiking a trail along the river sure is a lot different in Florida than it is in Indiana…

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River edge of the Suwannee. As the water gets deeper it turns orange, then red, than dark coffee colored from lots of tannins in the water.
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Becky got out her sewing machine and knocked out some quilt blocks
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Rich Reflections
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Cyprus Knees. This is probably boring stuff to Southern folk; but fascinating to Indiana folk.

Topsail Hills Preserve State Park, FL

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4 of 13 Jekyll Island Trip Series.

Wow, what a campground… The fanciest, most resort’ish campground we have seen.

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Our campsite at Topsail. Sites are highly landscaped and semi-private from adjacent sites. Short walk to the bath house. There is also a shuttle to the beach for people like us with no bicycles.
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Favorite pic of a Brown Pelican. These are big, majestic birds. The were floating in “squadrons” along the beach; just using the heavy winds to move them along. More pics below. They were fun to photograph…
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The beach at Topsail with “double red-flag” blowing. That means don’t get in the water. Dunes are roped off to preserve turtle and bird nesting areas. The waves were coming all the way up the beach occasionally. I was looking up shooting pictures of pelicans flying over when a big wave filled my shoes with sandy water…
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The Dunes

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A Least Tern soaring overhead
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Ruddy Turnstone’s: so named because they turn over stones looking for yummy stuff

Monte Sano State Park & Gunter Hill COE Campground, AL

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2 of 13 Jekyll Island Trip Series.

Monte Sano is an interesting park, on top of a mountain, adjacent to Huntsville, Alabama. We enjoyed some relaxing time at Monte Sano even though it rained off and on nearly the entire 2 days we were there. Monte Sano in Spanish means “Mountain of Health”. It was freakishly quiet with just the dripping rain or if it wasn’t raining the drip of mist falling from tree branches. I used the time to finish a series of blog posts from our Newfoundland trip last summer and Becky did some sewing of quilt blocks with her new sewing machine-proving that it can be done in the RV on a rainy day.

Except walking around the campground we only went on one hike when there was a break in the rain. The hike was an enjoyable, magical, mystical, walk in the mountain mist to a Japanese Garden with a Tea House on the park property. The first photo is of the RV in the mist. All the rest are of the Japanese Garden/Tea House hike. All photos are iPhone.

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Bamboo bordered path and Japanese Tea House

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Azaleas
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We left Monte Sano and again headed south on 65 from Huntsville to Montgomery, Alabama. Turning off at “The Old Selma Road” we arrived at Gunter Hill Campground, a Corp of Engineers campground on the Alabama River.