Camping With Stephen
May 21-26, 2003

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    For the second year Stephen and I decided to go camping. I had grand plans which included driving all the way to St. Louis to show Stephen the Gateway Arch and several days in the Smoky Mountains. It didn't quite work out that way as those plans were too optimistic and I had forgotten that it was Memorial Day weekend.
   I picked Stephen up at school on the last day (straight A's and Honor Role!) at about 11:30 and we headed up the road toward Ocala which is just a couple of hours away.  As we pulled into Silver River State Park Campground Stephen immediately saw a piliated woodpecker which is one of my favorite birds so I knew it was a good omen.  This is a new state park and everything was in great shape and the campsites were very nice.   The bad news is that the Silver River of Silver Springs fame is not near the campground. It was quite a long bike ride to get to it so it doesn't look like there is access for boating and we didn't find a good swimming area.  The views were good however.  We grabbed a pizza for supper in Silver Springs.
    The next morning we drove up to the Florida panhandle to just west of Tallahassee to Florida Caverns State Park. It rained and poured the whole way once we got on I-10 so we decided not to camp there, but we did take the tour of the caverns.  It is a relatively small limestone cave system but had a large amount of formations. This was Stephen's first experience of going underground.   It continued to rain as we drove West to Pensacola, but just as we got there it cleared up nicely.  We cut over to the Gulf of Mexico shore and found a National Seashore camping place called Ft. Pickens at the tip of Pensacola Beach.  What a neat place!  The beaches are pure white and the Gulf waters were clear and warm with just the right amount of surf caused by a pretty hard wind.  The campground was in a nice woods and within walking distance of both the Gulf and Pensacola Bay.  We swam in the Gulf and saw several eagle rays swim by us just a few feet away.  Ft. Pickens  was built back in the 1800's for shore defense and the ruins are fun to roam around in. The weather was perfect.
    Sometime on Thursday it finally dawned on me that this was going to be Memorial Day weekend and that it was going to be very difficult to get campsites over the weekend so Friday morning at O645 I went up to the campsite registration office thinking I would just stay at Ft. Pickens through the Holiday, but there were already about ten others sitting in their lawn chairs sipping coffee thinking the same thing.  And the camp was all reserved  for Saturday and Sunday nights.
    After the long drive from Ocala to Pensacola Stephen and I both agreed that driving all the way up to St. Louis was going to be too long of a haul so we decided to head directly over to the Smoky Mountains, but first we had the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola to see.  This was one of our prime destinations and it didn't disappoint.  There are hundreds of carefully restored naval aircraft from the early days of flight to the present day plus simulators, IMAXmovies and a simulated Blue Angels ride.  We enjoyed wandering around looking at all of the aircraft.  We ate lunch at the museum in a recreation of the Subic Baty Officers Club.  When Subic Bay Naval Base Phillipines was shut down they moved all of the hand carved squadon plaques to Pensacola and recreated the O Club.  I found and photographed the VA-25 Fist of the Fleet plaque which was Dean's FA-18 squadron.
    After lunch we headed North into Alabama driving about five hours until I started getting tired. We were approaching Birmingham and I quickly spotted Oak Mountain State Park in my AAA Campbook. We were within a mile of the interstate exit for the park when I checked.  We pulled in there and to my surprise got a campsite which I extended through Sunday night. The park was filled up a couple of hours later. Oak Mountain is just minutes from Birmingham but is out in the forest and is huge. It has lakes with swimming and boating, a golf course, hiking trails, horseback riding and all sorts of stuff. The campground hosts even sponsored bingo games and provided free donuts on Saturday mornings.  On Saturday we rented a canoe and paddled the lake and got into a big splash fight with each other getting soaked.   Also we drove up a really rough road and then hiked about twenty minutes to Peavine Falls which was very beautiful. People told me that usually the falls just trickled but they've had lots of rain so it was gushing for us.
     Stephen found a muddy swamp which he relished riding both bikes through the mud and water. That's what boys do I guess.  The lake was just steps from our campsite so we could just dive in and wash off. However there was so much particulate in the water that it left a film of dirt all over your body so a shower was needed after swimming.  Again weather was great with lows of 58 and highs about 80.  On Sunday we drove sixty mile to Cheaha State Park for the day. It is the highest point in Alabama at only 2400 feet but gives marvelous views out over Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee. It was fun because there were lots of rock formations to climb around on. Sunday afternoon it started raining and rained all night so the tent and canopy got soaked, but we were dry and toasty inside the tent.
    With the decline in the weather and after four nights of camping Stephen was making noises that he was tired of Poppy and would rather be home with his friends.  I can understand this and since these trips are for Stephen I'm ready to hang it up when he is.  So after our final rainy night I got up at 04:30 and broke camp while Stephen slept. By 05:30 we were on the road seeing twelve deer along the road as we left the park.  We drove 10 hours to get back home in increasing Memorial Day traffic. Saw several wrecks along the way but we made it fine arriving back in Rockledge at 4:00 pm.   It was disappointing that we never made it to St. Louis or the Smokys with raft riding and horseback riding but neither one of us relished the long drives.  About five days is the limit for entertaining an eleven year old I guess.  Stephen was a perfect gentleman the whole trip and we both enjoyed it abbreviated as it was.