Camping trip

We took our 2nd camping trip in our new camper this 4th of July weekend and had another fabulous time at another beautiful park. We went to Kelly Park in Apopka, home of Rock Springs. Aside from the raisin eating raccoon (as I mentioned in the previous post), we had a wonderful time.

This park has plenty to see in the way of wild life. We saw plenty of deer, some turtles, beautiful birds, black bear tracks and, yes, plenty of raccoons. We ventured over to the springs during the hot days to enjoy the 68 degree water. The 1 1/2 mile stretch of spring-fed river through the park is shallow enough to walk through the whole way. At the deepest point it was chest deep, but it usually only got as high as our waists.

Many people rent tubes and float down the river. However, as we learned from the lazy rivers at Cypress Gardens and Blizzard Beach, Amelie has no concept of the word "lazy" and would not rest easy in one of these tubes for a relaxing ride. She'd rather swim past all the lazy riders and swim like a dolphin, whale or mermaid. As, at Cypress Gardens, we were lapping most of the people who did get the point of the "lazy" part (Amelie renamed it the Crazy river which seemed more apt) we decided to save the $10 per day to rent the tubes.

Throughout the weekend, we went on hikes, rode bikes, looked at wildlife and took walks down the nice cool river. The beginning of the river was a beautiful setting of crystal blue water that started from some small caves. It was a busy weekend being the 4th of July and Amelie wasn't always thrilled with the large crowds (she would say she wanted to go home when things got hectic), but seemed fine once we got into a calmer part of the river or park.

She did enjoy helping with as much of the setup as she could. She particularly enjoyed helping Baba pump up the air in his bicycle tires. We had a pump that did not work (we borrowed one from another camper), but she loved it and kept "helping" pump air into just about anything around the campsite. Whenever one of us said we had to do something Amelie jumped right in with an enthusiastic "Can I help?" Except for lighting the fuel lanterns, we pretty much let her help.

She mostly enjoyed getting to use her flashlight which she seems to associate with the utmost camping tool. Each night we roasted marshmallows for s'mores (a favorite of Mama's and Amelie's).

One night, Allen heard what he throught was a bear huffing through our campsite. The next morning we saw bear tracks near our car. On our hikes we saw plenty of deer tracks (and lots of deer) and some more bear tracks. As we were walking through a part of the woods where a lot of deer lingered, I told Amelie (who was chatting away quite happily) that we had to be very quiet so we wouldn't scare the deer. She then yelled to Baba, "Be quiet Baba, we don't want to scare the deer!"

We even went on a night mission on our bikes one night to see if we could find the otters playing in the water, but didn't have any luck on that front.

The park had a very nice playground that we went to one evening and Amelie had a great time having the whole place to herself.

We left for the weekend in time to head back to Lakeland and see Poppy who had been visiting for the long weekend from PA. Amelie really looked forward to seeing him and talked all the way home about the things they could do together. She really wanted Poppy to read to her and see some of her new things. The two got to spend some good quality time together before he flew back. We'll be happy to see him again very soon!

By the way, Allen wanted me to point out that the last picture is a bear track 25 feet away from our camper.