Mike Roess Gold Head Branch State Park in Keystone Heights, FL October 28

Tuesday, October 28th around 1pm we left Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park in White Springs, Florida and drove 70 miles southeast to Mike Roess Gold Head Branch State Park in Keystone Heights, Florida for a 14-night stay. This was our first time staying at this Florida State Park.

I always enjoy those short drive days, lol.

Mike Roess Gold Head Branch State Park

Mike Roess Gold Head Branch State Park Is a 600-acre site that was developed back in 1935 by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) which was launched by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 to combat unemployment during the Great Depression. The property was donated by Martin “Mike” Roess (pronounced “Race”) and is one of Florida’s first state parks.

CCC craftsmen were sent to the Gold Head Branch site where they were joined by hundreds of CCC youth. Together they planted trees, cleared areas for campsites, built roads and constructed many of the buildings (such as the lakefront cabins) that are still in use today at the park.

On April 15, 1939, the park was officially dedicated. The park was known for years as simply Gold Head Branch until 1966 when the Florida Board of Parks and Historical Monuments changed the name to honor the late Mike Roess, who passed away in 1952.

Today, visitors to the park can enjoy hiking and wildlife viewing along the park’s nature trails and a 5.44-mile stretch of the Florida National Scenic Trail. Visitors can also swim, canoe or fish in Little Lake Johnson or stay in one of the lakefront cabins.

There are also three campgrounds with water and 30-amp electrical hookups, as well as primitive sites for tent campers.

Our site was sand and grass, but more sand than grass, lol. We had a 30-amp electrical pedestal and water, but the water hook-up was very far away and we had to add a water hose extension. Glad we always carry one!

Campground Cat

Our first surprise was finding a cat hanging out near the storm drain at the entrance to our site. He was lying out sunning himself but as soon as we approached he made a beeline under the grate and into the storm drain. We saw that someone (we found out later it was the campground manager) had left a paper bowl of food and a metal bowl of water out for Campground Cat. He remained skittish for a day or two until he figured out we were not going to hurt him and would be there for a while.

Later in our stay a couple of the nights and early mornings were quite cool, so we took one of our plastic dishpans, lined it with an extra soft, fluffy towel we had and put it out next to the storm drain for him to sleep warmly in when it was cold.

Cindy is such a sucker for lost or homeless creatures! I mean, she even took me in!!

Trail Hiking

Wednesday morning after walking Bella we jumped in the truck and drove to a trailhead we had passed on the way in for a longer-than-expected hike. We had the trail mostly to ourselves, though at the halfway point we saw another couple who were also on the trail. The man had a very nice digital camera and lens around his neck. We went a little farther on the trail looking for an old mill we had read about, but couldn’t find it so we headed back.

As we came around a bend we saw the couple up ahead. The woman was standing with her back to us and the man was lying on the ground with his head by the base of a tree trunk and his legs in the trail. Just as I was about to rush to them asking if something was wrong, the woman turned toward us and said “He’s OK, he’s just taking a photo.”

Turns out he spotted some rare Florida spider that hangs out at the base of tree trunks and was down there with his zoom lens trying to get a good shot.

Halloween

Friday was Halloween. It was also the 29th anniversary of Cindy and I meeting.

We watched our youngest granddaughter, Jade, in a short Halloween movie that was shot this past Summer. We’ve watched her on stage many times and always loved it, but It was a real “treat” for us to see her performing (I say she was starring) in front of the camera for a movie production. She was awesome!

I’ve grabbed some screenshots from the movie and put them together in a collage that you can see in the photo album.

And I wrote a short blog post about my Halloween costume when I was 11 years old.

Weekend

Saturday, November 1st was National Authors Day and I wrote a little bit about it on my writing blog. Authors are important because books are important and we wouldn’t have books without authors. And, if you’re a book reader you most likely have at least one (some of us have more) favorite author. So it’s a good day to remember those authors.

Sunday morning we hiked another 2 1/2 miles around the lake on a different trail. It was interesting to see some of the work that had been done by the CCC some 90 years ago here in the park.

Hacking My Blogs

Over the weekend I also discovered that, in the previous 30 days, I’d had almost 1900 attempts by the Chinese and 600 attempts by the Singaporeans to hack into my three different blogs. I’m sure they’re hackers because why else would the Chinese or Singaporeans want to read my blog thousands of times in a month, lol?

And they’re not just trying to hack ME, these are mass-automated attacks trying to find vulnerabilities in sites that they can exploit. People like to hack blogs so they can install malware for various nefarious reasons. The worst (for a writer like me) being they take over your site and you can’t get back in and you lose all your writings and data.

So, I spent about 90 minutes and removed the pubic-facing meta login links from the front page of each blog and then hid the actual login page for each site under new, “unusual” url locations instead of the standard wp-login or admin url locations. That should at least make it harder for anyone attempting to try the usual route of blunt force guessing of my login usernames and passwords. Which is what those multiple hits on my sites are.

Lab Logjam

Monday we drove to Middleburg where I had an appointment for some lab tests for an upcoming appointment with my endocrinologist in Orlando. These were fasting tests so I’d had nothing to eat since midnight. My appointment was for 10am, but when I arrived the line of people waiting was out the door. Turns out one of the staff was out sick so they were short-handed. I didn’t get in until 11:15, so I was more than ready for lunch by the time I got out of there, as was Cindy.

Ravenous Raccoons

Tuesday morning as we left our site to walk Bella I noticed the Campground Cat’s food dish was empty (we’d been refilling the water bowl throughout each day while the campground manager usually put food in his food dish in the late afternoon) and I saw raccoon paw prints in the sand around his storm drain hangout. Seems some nocturnal little bugger was eating up all his food. So we went back inside and got Campground Cat some milk which he scarfed down.

He had gotten pretty comfortable with us. He would still can get spooked and run to hide sometimes, but most of the time he let us get close enough to scratch his head or pet him. He meowed whenever we came out of Nomad and we’d even found him lying by the front step when we get up in the mornings.

Thursday we gave Campground Cat some canned chicken in the morning because, again, raccoons. The campground manager kept trying to get us to take the friendly feline with us when we leave, but we couldn’t see that happening for a variety of reasons.

I also wrote a blog post on my personal blog about the famous original artwork for the cover of Superman #233 being auctioned off and my memories about that cover.

And it was National Nachos Day so Cindy made Nachos (with taco meat) for dinner that night. In addition it was Men Make Dinner Day, but I didn’t tell Cindy about THAT until after dinner, lol!

That night we watched what we usually do on Tuesday through Friday nights; the previous day’s airings of The Daily Show, Late Night With Stephen Colbert and The Jimmy Kimmel Show.

Kimmel had Carol Burnett on as a guest. I remember watching her variety show when I was a younger man. It was hard to believe she is 92 because she was still witty, sharp thinking and she said “uh” when talking a lot less than I do, lol. She is still a treasure.

Friday night I watched the first three episodes of Ballard, a spinoff from the wonderful Bosch show. Not the same as Bosch, but still pretty good.

$500 Fine

Saturday I drove into Keystone Heights to do laundry. This laundromat was a dump, but it was close to the campground. The restroom door had a hand-written sign on it that there would be a $500 fine for anyone taking a shower in the restroom. But the restroom was just a sink and a toilet. I mean, you might be able to wash up at the sink, but how the hell was anyone taking a shower in there? You can see a photo of it in the album for this post.

Our middle granddaughter, Abby, celebrated an early 16th birthday party with her friends and her mom sent us some of the photos. It looks like she had a good time.

That night, I watched the next four episodes of Ballard.

Sunday we relaxed. After dinner we watched a 2012 movie This Is 40. It had its funny moments but otherwise a pretty forgettable movie.

Monday, November 10th was the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I happened to be reading John U. Bacon’s recently published book about it and it felt a little like fate to be reading about it on the 50th anniversary.

Finished the final three episodes of the first season of Ballard and enjoyed the series. I was happy to read it was renewed for a second season.

Thanks for following The Wandering Wetheringtons.