We finally had a nice warm sunny day and decided to visit Highlands Hammock State Park about 20 miles away near Sebring. It was an excellent day to cycle so we packed up the trikes and Matilda and headed towards Sebring.
Highlands Hammock State Park has a very nice paved one-way loop road through a hardwood hammock and an off-road bike trail around the perimeter of the park. We first took Matilda for a brisk trot/ride. We started off on the unpaved bike trail. She was good for a while, but seemed to poop out after less than 1/2 mile. So we turned back to the car to park Matilda in the shade for the remainder of our ride. We then toured the campground, which looked like a very nice place to stay. There we connected again with the perimeter bike loop and biked the eastern portion of that trail. The surface alternated from hard-packed sand and grass, to short stretches of soft sand. We passed the primitive camping and managed to make it back to the parking lot without getting stuck.
We then biked the paved loop road which was an excellent ride. The loop road passes through a dense hardwood hammock for about 3 miles. Numerous short hiking trails lead from the road. Traffic was light, and we cycled the loop twice. After our ride we returned again
to the parking lot near the cafe, lusting for a cup of wild orange ice cream, but no, not today. The cafe was closed this day. Dang. We did tour the adjacent Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) museum. The CCC museum celebrates the CCC in Florida and the US. The CCC was instrumental in developing many public works projects during the 30s and 40s. Finally we retrieved Matilda and hiked some of the short trails. There we saw several armadillos and got a short glimpse of what might have been a wild hog.
A few days later we returned to Highlands Hammock State Park and biked the park with our friends John and Susan. We biked all the routes we had biked previously, except we explored more of the northern section of the perimeter bike trail. The rangers had warned us that this section contained a bit of deep soft sand, but we did it anyway. This was not a particularly wise decision; the rangers were right. We made it though, with just a little bit of dragging our cycles through the soft sand. We ended up at the cafe where we had a long belated cup of wild orange ice cream. Yum yum!.
Highlands Hammock State Park has a very nice paved one-way loop road through a hardwood hammock and an off-road bike trail around the perimeter of the park. We first took Matilda for a brisk trot/ride. We started off on the unpaved bike trail. She was good for a while, but seemed to poop out after less than 1/2 mile. So we turned back to the car to park Matilda in the shade for the remainder of our ride. We then toured the campground, which looked like a very nice place to stay. There we connected again with the perimeter bike loop and biked the eastern portion of that trail. The surface alternated from hard-packed sand and grass, to short stretches of soft sand. We passed the primitive camping and managed to make it back to the parking lot without getting stuck.
We then biked the paved loop road which was an excellent ride. The loop road passes through a dense hardwood hammock for about 3 miles. Numerous short hiking trails lead from the road. Traffic was light, and we cycled the loop twice. After our ride we returned again
to the parking lot near the cafe, lusting for a cup of wild orange ice cream, but no, not today. The cafe was closed this day. Dang. We did tour the adjacent Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) museum. The CCC museum celebrates the CCC in Florida and the US. The CCC was instrumental in developing many public works projects during the 30s and 40s. Finally we retrieved Matilda and hiked some of the short trails. There we saw several armadillos and got a short glimpse of what might have been a wild hog.A few days later we returned to Highlands Hammock State Park and biked the park with our friends John and Susan. We biked all the routes we had biked previously, except we explored more of the northern section of the perimeter bike trail. The rangers had warned us that this section contained a bit of deep soft sand, but we did it anyway. This was not a particularly wise decision; the rangers were right. We made it though, with just a little bit of dragging our cycles through the soft sand. We ended up at the cafe where we had a long belated cup of wild orange ice cream. Yum yum!.
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