“Tucked In” at Lake Griffin State Park…LITERALLY!

  Yep, that’s what we are…tucked in….

HOLY SQUEEZE PLAY, BATMAN!!!  THIS IS TAKING “BEING NEIGHBORLY” TO A WHOLE NEW LEVEL!!

And, no, this is NOT a buddy site…Let  me just say that we very nearly didn’t find our site #16 in this park…There are not any really DEFINED campsites..What you might think is a road could be a camping site…All the sand here looks the same…road, sites, dump station…We got ourselves in a tight spot or two..OK, OK…I  got us in a tight spot or two!! Hey, thankfully McGyver can maneuver this Hiker pretty well…This is one of the hardest campgrounds to find your way around that we have ever been in…It isn’t that it is that big…it just all looks the same..Everywhere is sand., with an occasional post of electric and water thrown in your way for good measure…

Don’t get me wrong, it is a neat park, lots of hanging moss and Live Oak trees mixed in with Palmetto.  Oh, and did I mention that there has been a black bear wandering around digging through the dumpster..? We received the “ warning paper” from the gate guy when we checked in.."A Florida black bear has been seen in the park.  While bears usually try to avoid people, food ,”( LIAR, LIAR) “garbage left outside can easily draw them to where people are.” Just great.  This means that walking to the one and only dumpster , which is a bit of a walk, carrying said garbage bag could become very interesting if Yogi Bear sees smells you …That little tidbit of bear information, combined with this sign…

 

 

….could make for an extremely wild safari adventure…I just might have to send McGyver on the dumpster run….

 

 

 

To make things even more exciting, right after we got all set up we heard sirens…and Den spotted a squad car or two parked just across the road/campsite from us…

It’s amazing how many nosey people come out of their campers to peer at a police car in the campgrounds…While I was standing there, (alright, I was one of the nosey campers too), one of the campers told me that two teenage boys had wandered off one of the trails and were now lost in the jungle-like brush somewhere..unable to find their way out.  To make life at Lake Griffin even more exciting, the search helicopter was circling by now..

…The gentleman in the huge Allegro next to us, by the name of Peter, had walked over to where the police were gathered. Peter came back and asked McGyver (alright, McGyver was one of the nosey campers too!) if he knew how to convert degrees, minutes and seconds to decimal degrees…I need not tell you that OF COURSE HE DID!.   These boys had a cell phone, but their location was given only in degrees, minutes and seconds…(DO NOT ASK ME HOW THIS WORKS, I AM CLUELESS.).. Den wrote down the info Peter gave him, went online and converted it,  then gave the conversion back to Peter.  Apparently, Peter took it to the cops and about 15 minutes later the boys were located…As I said, this could be the beginning of a very interesting 2 weeks…

This morning dawned without incident…good.  We took our walk around the park…

Griffin Lake State Park is home to one the largest Live Oak in the state of Florida…

Den, you take my picture and I’ll take yours, OK?…………………………You could try to act more excited, McGyver!!

A great plus we found here at this park is the fact that they have a coin laundry on the grounds…It is at the end of the bath/shower house…

Now THIS is what I call “airing out your dirty laundry in  public”…the laundry room is open air, with  lots of folding tables,a sink, 3 washers and 3 dryers…As is usually the case in most laundries, one of the washing machines was “out of order”…Whatever…So far Den and I have not had the pleasure experience of having to go into town and to find a laundry at a “Laundromat”..Usually that trip involves meeting some very unique characters, accompanied by washers that overflow, dryers that over heat, or do not heat at all…AND… never an attendant on duty..

Soooooo…this is already been MORE than just our run of the mill campground visit…If we came here to lower our blood pressure, that idea could be compromised a bit if past experience means anything…I hope you kids in the GMC don’t wander off the trail and get lost…DON’T MAKE ME COME OUT THERE!!!…and DON’T take any food with you, for GOD’S SAKE!!…McGyver and I will be here for 2 weeks and I will continue blogging about our already memorable camping at Lake Griffin…Stay tuned…

“Someone once threw me a small, brown, hairy kiwi fruit, and I threw a wastebasket over it until it was dead.”

                                                                                                                                                                                        ~Erma Bombeck