Friday April 16th 2021

Rain was in the forecast for today. The day started cloudy, but instead of getting darker it got lighter as the morning progressed. Enough sun to cast a good shadow got through the high clouds by midday. Today’s rain remained north of here in the Marion, Lake and Volusia county areas. The current forecast has the front remaining north of here until late Sunday. The first part of next week is forecast to be very wet. Over three inches of rain is in the forecast.

Yesterday when I was out driving around in the area south of my current location, I saw a sign for Catfish Creek Preserve State Park. A little internet research identified the area as the Allen David Broussard Catfish Creek Preserve State Park. Today, I set out to explore the park. It is located in the middle of nowhere east of Dundee and north of Lake Wales. The only developed area that I found was a small dirt parking lot with an outhouse, a picnic table and sign board describing the trails. It was easy to miss.

The park is made up of sand hills and scrub vegetation. There are several miles of trails originating from the parking lot. Most of the trails are wide with deep soft sand which appears to be great for horses, but lousy for people. The trails go up and down little sand hills about twenty feet high. The maps indicate there were ponds and wetlands further along the trails, but I didn’t last that long. It was very uncomfortable walking. I gave up after about half an hour and returned to the parking lot.

Back at the campground this afternoon the park came to life. New RVs arrived every few minutes to fill in many of the sites that were empty all week. I now have neighbors close on both sides. It has gone from nobody around to lots of people walking and talking all over the place.