02-20-2019 Visiting Gainesville and the Sweetwater Preserve

Current Location: Pelican Roost RV Park, Mayport Naval Station, Jacksonville Florida

Raining, thunderstorms, dark skies and 68 degrees F at 11 AM

The first few days of our stay at Oleno State Park were fairly quiet.  Mo rested her leg and I took Mattie for several hikes around the park trails that I wrote about in the previous post. 

Wish I had recorded the cacophony of bird song as I walked this trail at Sweetwater.

Once good thing about down time, is that it gave Mo a chance to communicate with her tax person and get some of that complex stuff taken care of.  In the event that we aren’t home by tax time, it is good to get it all handled with email.  Mo actually purchased a small Canon printer for our travels, but what we didn’t think about is that it doesn’t have the capacity to copy or scan documents. 

With a lot of paperwork that needed copying before being sent back to the tax person in Oregon, we needed access to some kind of office store.  Hence a trip to Gainesville.  I searched for a time in nearby High Springs without any results, and we didn’t really want to drive farther north, so we piled into the Tracker for the trip east toward the city and the closest office supply store with a copying facility that I could find.

It was another pretty drive through open countryside.  I have said this over and over, but the best part about traveling in northern Florida are the quiet empty roads.  Until we got close to Gainesville, that is.  Once we approached I-75 the traffic picked up and the 3 lanes on each side of our highway were filled with people going in and out of the big malls.  I looked wistfully at the Dillard’s store, a place I used to love to shop when visiting Florida, but we were on a mission, and it was too hot to leave Mo alone in the car while I “wish-shopped”.  I rarely ever buy anything when shopping those big department stores.

We found the Office Max easily, parked right in front, and in a matter of minutes had all the papers copied and sent off in a Priority Mail envelope from right there in the store.  Easy stuff, and under two bucks for all the copies.  A lot cheaper and easier than hauling around a printer big enough to scan or copy.

Looking around for things to do since we were in Gainesville, the choices that didn’t involve walking that interested us were few.  I have visited Paynes Prairie in the past, and loved it, but getting to the entrance required a considerable drive around the prairie to the south.  We also loved visiting Micanopy on our trip here in 2014 and by myself in 2011 (here), but it was a drive in a different direction, and walking around the sweet little town looking for cute shops and ice cream was also not too high on Mo’s list for the afternoon.

Instead, she said, “Do something you want to do and I’ll wait in the car..  I had read about the Sweetwater Preserve in the “best things to do in Gainesville”, so we headed east toward the University of Florida, enjoying the narrow streets and university vibe and then continued south toward the Sweetwater Preserve.

We knew that the dog couldn’t go on the trails, but since Mo also couldn’t go on the trails, that wasn’t a problem.  The day was warming up, though, so I was happy to find a nice breezy shelter at the entrance to the preserve where Mo could sit with the dog if waiting at the car got to be too much. Camera in hand, I headed for the trails. 

Sweetwater Wetlands Park is an excellent example of what a city can do if it is committed to clean water and to preserving a treasure like Paynes Prairie. The park, which consists of more than 125 acres of wetlands and ponds, was created to improve the water quality of wetlands in Paynes Prairie and the Floridan Aquifer.

Now a thriving habitat, Sweetwater Wetlands Park is filled with vast numbers of plants and animals, including birds, butterflies, alligators and Florida cracker horses. At the park, you can walk more than 3.5 miles of crushed gravel trails and boardwalks, experience the lush landscape from viewing platforms, and learn about the habitat through educational signs and tours.

An extra benefit that I talked about with a walker I encountered, was the elevated level of the pathways.  He said no matter the weather, no matter the flooding, one can always walk the wetland trails to view the wildlife.  There were bikers and walkers, and several people with cameras taking photos of the birds, although the trails never felt crowded.

I saw a bird I have never previously encountered, the limpkin.  This bird is endemic to only this southern part of the country and parts of the Caribbean.  They were amazingly curious, and unafraid, letting me approach more closely than many birds I have seen in the wild.

A young anhinga on the boardwalk just begging me to take her photo

I only walked the short loop, about a mile and a half, and took my time photographing the birds and the one lone alligator lying in the grass. 

First and only alligator I have seen so far on this trip to Florida, but I have heard that perhaps there will be more when we walk the wetland boardwalks at NAS Jacksonville where we will be camped from March 3 to March 10.

We ended the day with BLT’s at the Diner in High Springs.  Fun to look at on the outside, and a typical sandwich, burger kind of place on the inside.  It seemed quite popular with the locals.

Currently, where I sit at Mayport, the rain is coming down harder and harder, and even the thought of a drive down A1A toward Jacksonville Beach doesn’t sound very appealing.  As I write and add photographs, I am especially appreciative of the lovely, warm and sunny days that we have had in the midst of some days that have been not quite so nice.  Ah, weather, but then again we could be home in snowy Oregon, where photos of record snows and weather warnings about low temperatures are a daily occurrence.

I’m glad we are here.

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