Well last night was supposed to be our last cold night for a while. Once again we need to turn on the heat for a couple of hours to overcome the 38 degree temperatures. This morning I got up at 6:30 AM, hit the "warm up" button and went back to bed for another 45 minutes. The dogs didn't even stir. Finally Punky decided we'd had enough sleep and started bestowing kisses on us until our feet found the floor. Heh, heh!
Once everyone was up, walked and fed we saddled up the Hyundai, grabbed the HoloPuter, leashes, poop bags, cameras and headed over to Bushnell and breakfast at the Bakery. Grabbing a couple of local papers, we had a relaxing breakfast. Tina had Ham and Eggs, over easy, while I tucked into a very good Ham and Cheese omelet. On the way out we bought a couple of scones, some macaroons and a cranberry muffin for snacks later, yummmmm!We had mapped out a route of interest which took us to the small community of Nobleton on the Withlacootchee River. Other than the Canoe and Kayak rental (http://www.nobletonoutpost.com/index2.html) place it was mostly just a collection of small homes.
From Nobleton we headed for Inverness on Henderson Lake following several back roads. Along the way we saw a "Rails to Trails" project which is a paved bicycle path on an abandoned rail track. We made a note to find out more about the trail when we got back home. About eight miles from Nobleton we passed through Floral City and onto a more developed road finally reaching Inverness on the shores of Henderson Lake. This entire area is covered with lakes of all sizes.
We got lost in Inverness and ended up driving out into the country where we stopped at a dog park and kennel. Turns out the 11 acre fenced dog park is privately owned and funded by memberships. We got a guided tour of the facilities and were really impressed. The area is split into two sections, both sides having their own pond, bathing/drying stations, a dedicated training area and grooming room. Really pretty neat! For $34/month (for two dogs) you get unlimited use and a key to access the facilities. Since we had no idea where we were, Tina walked the dogs in the parking lot while I pulled up the "hp" and displayed a map of the area. Ahah!! Just what I thought. We're not where we're supposed to be. Hmpfff. We need to go back to Inverness, find the courthouse and get back on route.
Leaving the dog park we wound our way back to town and after trying several streets around the courthouse finally found ourselves back on track headed for Long Hammock. Eventually we realized that we missed our turn, did a "U'y" and made our turn at Rutland. Turns out our "holoputer" had sent us into a wilderness area.After several miles on a questionable road we arrived at an open gate that had a sign on it, "No Motorized Vehicles Beyond This Point". Great. Turning around we came face to face with a small group of range bovines, included several youngsters. Tina immediately got out of the car and tried to converse with them to no avail. But they were cute. Once again the somewhat trusty "hp" was brought out and we mapped a new route to Long Hammock. Since we were trying to avoid major roads, I found another side road and we were on our way again.
Re-tracing our route back to the main road we turned east for four miles then north on county road 475. Two miles later we turned east, crossed I-75 and following CR 475 continued north looking for Long Hammock. We drove and we drove and we drove on CR 475 eventually ending up in Ocala City, nearly 30 miles north of where Long Hammock should have been. Since it was now after noon, we drove through town until we found..... STARBUCKS!! Grabbing the dang "hp" we went in for a couple of Triple Vente Mocha's. Once we were seated, out came the "hp" and after it made several rude noises displayed a map of the area. That's when we really learned how far off base we really were... I begin to suspect gremlins living in the holoputer, might be leftovers from the time it was hooked up in the Swift Dora when Commander Scorpion and I were on a mission for the Galactic Space Command, but that's another story (refer to chapter 9 in "Out of the Black and Into the Blue" (http://blacktoblue.blogspot.com/). I digress...Finishing our drinks we headed back towards Long Hammock following Hwy 301 eventually arriving at "The Villages", a huge multi development planned community (http://www.thevillages.com/) where golf carts are the primary mode of transportation and they have their own newspaper. Winding our way through various collections of housing and shopping we finally drove through Long Hammock on towards Lady Lake, once again on our planned route of exploration.
After driving through Lady Lake it was on to Eustis where we made a pit stop to walk the kids. From Eustis, on the shores of Lake Eustis continued southwest to Leesburg where we drove through the Historic District along Lake Harris looking for a restaurant (Vic Embers Steak and Seafood) that was supposed to be very good. We didn't find it so since this was our last stop on our drive we decided to continue on to Bushnell and have dinner at Sonnys Barbeque Pit. Dinner was pretty good and we even brought home some chicken for tomorrows lunch.
By the time we got home it was nearly 6:00 PM and we'd covered something like 190 miles, but all in all it was a nice day and we got to see a lot of the countryside.
To see all our photos, click on:
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