Winter Escape to Florida Camping

It has been a long winter and even longer since we took a real vacation. The whole family has been itching to go somewhere. We decided to escape the cold and head to Florida for a week. The day before we left for vacation our niece, Lauren, was born. We swung by the hospital to visit the newest member of Wiley clan before we fled south.

Uncle Sam, cousin Inga, and baby Lauren

We drove down to Georgia the first day to break up the long drive. On our way, we stopped for a much needed oil change, which is a first for me on a road trip. My dad's minivan has needed emergency repairs many times on road trips (hint: don't buy a Chrysler), but I've never stopped for a routine oil change before. Anyway, we stopped in Rome, GA for a day to visit some friends. I'd never been to northern Georgia, but it was love it first sight. The mountains and pines and rivers were beautiful. I will definitely be back. 

Inga is a seasoned traveler.

Malcolm was very happy to be out of his prison, I mean car seat.

Malcolm has never been quite as flexible as Inga, but the first night in the hotel room made that very apparent. Not long after the above picture was taken, Malcolm totally lost his cool. He screamed for several hours for no apparent reason other than being in a strange place. He did finally calm down, but it was a long night. Unfortunately, that wasn't the last of the epic screamfests from Malcolm.

We then drove all the way down to Silver Springs State Park near Ocala, FL. We arrived at our campsite around sunset, which is no big deal for my or Sam or Inga, but Malcolm had never been camping before. Sam and I quickly erected the tent and then I started to feed Malcolm his dinner while Sam and Inga went in search of firewood (to purchase). As soon as it was dark, Malcolm totally lost his cool. He was not okay with being outside in the dark in a strange high chair. He screamed for several hours before finally falling asleep. Poor guy had a very rude introduction to camping.

The next morning was much better. We briefly visited the park playground, but since it was February there were no other kids. The campground was full of snow birds who all thought our kids were super adorable.

Very nice playground and picnic area

It was a bit chilly so I had to go German tourist

We took a short hike in the forest to the Silver River. I really love the native Florida forest with the mix of pines and palms. There is such variety along any path. It was about a 2 mile round trip and Inga walked nearly all of it, which I figure is pretty good for a 3 year old.

Standing by a very large palm. Most were just baby palms.

"Stop, Dad. You're embarrassing me."

Malcolm's introduction to hiking went well.

Crystal clear river full of fish and birds.

Daddy had quite the load on the way back.

We drove to the main entrance of the park for lunch and to see the spring head. Silver Springs has been an attraction since the early 20th century and was privately owned until 2013. A bunch of movies and TV shows were filmed here in the 1960s and 1970s like Sea Hunt and a James Bond movie. The state of Florida now owns it so you know it's beyond it's hey day, but it really is a beautiful park.

Malcolm LOVED playing outside.

So did Inga

Silver Springs is home to the first glass bottom boats, apparently. There is no swimming in the spring head or river supposedly because of alligators. I didn't see any while we were there, but I'm sure they were around. We took the 30 minute boat tour and it was well worth it. We got to see several spring heads along the river. I would have preferred snorkeling, but this worked better for the kids.

Main spring head with boat dock

On our glass bottom boat tour

Unfortunately, it started to rain shortly after our boat tour. Rather than all sit in our tent being grumpy with each other, we all took naps in the car and then Sam drove into Ocala National Forest. He did a little off-roading and we found a bunch of great hikes down the dirt forest service roads. Ocala National Forest looked like a great place to do off-road camping.

The next day we took a morning hike to a sink hole along an interpretive trail. Sam and I enjoyed the hike, but Inga whined pretty much the entire time. She was getting really antsy to get to the princess castle at this point, which she'd been talking about for several months prior. So we packed up camp and headed down to Orlando and the land of Mickey and princesses.

The sink hole was very swampy

Inga found a tunnel

Baby long leaf pine

We had a picnic lunch at a park in Orlando. We always get strange looks when having picnics like white people aren't suppose to do such things. We had stopped here so Inga could play at the playground, but she misbehaved so much we just left after eating lunch.

After this we arrived at our resort at Disney World, but that requires a whole separate post.