A Meandering Road Trip down to Lake George, FL & vicinity

 After a foggy start, yesterday was predicted to become sunny, breezy and to warm up to the 80's here in North FL so we decided to make a day of it road touring down and around Lake George, a journey of about 100 miles each way.  We headed down through the Nat'l Forest, stopped at Interlachen to pick up a Subway wrap then stopped for a gander in the Rodman Resevoir/Dam campgrounds.  What a pleasant first stop, a beautiful, clean, manicured picnic area with covered tables and a few photo op's too.

Picnic pavilion at Rodman 

Plenty of lily pads and Egrets

Nice sunny spot

Just nice to get out and walk around. As we left we passed by the Dam and saw tons of birds fishing, including at least 3 Osprey circling around overhead.

To the right of the pier across the way you can see all
the birds lined up; cormorants, pelicans and others
plus the osprey just circling overhead.

From there we headed down to our projected lunch spot, Salt Springs - this part of FL is really neat with the St. John's river, (flows south to north - one of the very few in the U.S. that does), many freshwater springs and lakes galore.  Of course there are a lot of "piney woods" too which we don't particularly enjoy for hiking or hanging out.  However, there are also many. many live oaks (some are giants), also cypress is fairly abundant.

If you zoom in on this area map you can see
many of the various springs and lakes.

One portion of the Salt Springs boiling up from the aquifer

While looking for manatee (nope I didn't see any), we did see juvenile mullets and a few  fairly good-sized ones plus some cool looking blue crabs.  There were several swimmers out and about.  The boat ramp and springhead are separated w/ buoys.

This is taken from the spring head with the spring run 
heading out to join the St. Johns River (and the boaters).

Blue crab zooming around.

A giant of an old live oak. The branches get so large
they swoop down to rest on the ground. Usually full
of the ubiquitous Spanish Moss which I find kind of
creepy but my Southern husband likes just fine.

After lunch we headed on south then east around the bottom of Lake George just to check out the various lakeside properties and marinas and such - cheap thrills, lol.  Lots of pastoral views - green grass and black cows.

Coming on north again we passed by a fascinating roadside yard art business - I could have easily spent a hour or two browsing!  However, with miles to go and in an attempt to avoid any rush hour traffic we pretty much breezed on by.  I did get a few pics though.

They had all manner of large statuary - I loved the horses and elk,
Ed voted for the bear. Look these guys up on line:
Barberville Roadside Yard Art & Produce

And then, it's "home again, home again" and luckily for me I had some grilled chicken drums and baked potatoes ready to go (for their 2nd go round) so after sautéing some fresh spinach/onions and hitting it with some shredded parmesan, an easy supper was at hand.

Thanks for visiting, hope you enjoyed meandering with us!