< more recent | 22-31 December 2020 | older >
31 December 2020: Welcomed in the New Year with champagne and a nice warm fire in the backyard fire pit. The temperatures dropped as it got closer to midnight, but the warmth from the blaze made it comfortable, and it felt good to have “escaped” 2020 healthy and ready to take on what we hope will be a gentler year in 2021 …
30 December 2020: Made the last stretch of highway driving where all roads seemed to converge on New York City in a web of bridges and tunnels and heavy traffic. Felt good to be in familiar territory again, and very glad to arrive home a bit early and in daylight …
29 December 2020: Driving northbound on the I-95 most of the day, trying to make as many miles towards home as possible to make it back in time to celebrate the New Year there. Had to take a break and get off the highway to stop for a photo when I saw this incredible moon so low in the sky just after dusk, while there was still enough ambient light to get a decent photo without using the tripod. Made it through South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington DC before stopping in Maryland just north of Baltimore for the night …
28 December 2020: Took some time breaking down camp this morning and drying out all the tarps and the bottom of the tent before packing everything away. It was slower than usual because the sun was warm and the prairie was quiet and it just felt good to linger a bit after having toughed it out during the storm and freezing temperatures. Florida was feeling “back to normal” and it was hard to leave. Drove a few more forest roads on the way out to pavement, then began the serious business of marathoning towards home. Got through Florida and Georgia before stopping for the night in South Carolina …
27 December 2020: Covered the northern segment of the Badge of Honor route, and took some time to visit a favorite hiking trail, too. The weather has finally warmed back up to “normal” Florida temperatures, and the sunset was perfect. Enjoyed a final bonfire at camp late into the evening …
26 December 2020: Took some time to practice navigation, plotting the 81-mile “Tread Lightly Four Wheel Drive Way,” one of seven trails that was added to the Jeep Badge of Honor program in 2020. It is the only “Badge of Honor” trail in the Ocala National Forest, and is really a route rather than a single “trail.” Spent today on the “southern” section of the route, below Florida State Road 40 …
25 December 2020: Christmas morning came with a beautiful sunrise, though it was cold out, and there was just a big sigh of relief on having survived the night. The tent did not blow away even though a gust of wind busted the zipper and sent a blast of rain inside in the middle of the night not just once but three times! Winds reached 28mph and the rain continued until around 1am before easing up, though the wind did not stop until early morning. Yet the morning sun shone brightly and even though it was cold hovering just a little over freezing all morning the fact that it was Christmas made it a good day. Checked out some favorite trails in the afternoon, then prepared a Christmas dinner as the bonfire blazed …
24 December 2020: The rain was predicted to hold off until 8pm, leaving time to prepare a holiday meal for early afternoon before securing the tent for strong winds and gathering enough firewood to be sure to be able to keep warm once the temperatures dropped to below freezing as they are forecast to in the early morning hours. Camp was calm and beautiful until the weather hit, and the spanish moss looked like golden tinsel …
23 December 2020: Headed inland today, to the Ocala National Forest to set up “Christmas Camp” at Hopkins Prarie, and was lucky to get “campsite 17”, which overlooks the prairie and has the most beautiful view of the sunsets. With a weather forecast predicting cold and rain over the holidays there were only a few other campers there, giving a wonderful feeling of solitude in the wilderness. At dusk the “christmas star” appeared on the horizon …
22 December 2020: Moved camp to Anastasia Island on the other side of St. Augustine from Vilano Beach and took some time to just enjoy exploring the beach dunes and an interesting forest trail along an ancient “Coquina Quarry” where the Spanish sourced the unique shell-stone that was used to build the fortress known as the Castillo de San Marcos …
THIS MONTH:
Holiday road trip time. Getting ready to load up the Jeep and heading south for warmer climates and fun times on- and off-road (and maybe discovering some new places on the way). This year we are taking a bit of extra time to explore the wilder side of Florida’s “Forgotten Coast” as we make our way to our Christmas Camp…
Ladies Offroad Network “12 Days of Giving,” an online extravaganza of year-end giveaways. Join in for the nightly LIVE@5pm from December 7 to December 18, as Charlene Bower reveals all the Ladies Offroad Network plans for 2021 with nightly drawings for over $10,000 in gifts and adventures. There will be three winners each night — one for a gift-bag of offroad goodies, one for a set of three t-shirts, and one big winner of a “Golden Ticket” which offers free entry to any of the 2021 LON Adventures…
COMING UP SOON:
Looking ahead to a return to Paris as soon as possible to reconnect with friends and some favorite places in the city of light. Timing is still uncertain due to the pandemic, but we hope the trip is back on the calendar for early 2021…
Planning for the next extended overland adventure in the southwest, tentatively on the calendar for some time late winter 2021. There are already several tentative events on the agenda in Arizona and southern California, and we will share more details as things get confirmed…
Advanced sand dune training with Barlow Adventures at the Imperial Sand Dunes in southern California. This three day driving and navigation program focuses on moving safely and effectively through large dunefields. Skills-building exercises are intended to improve pace, line choice and vehicle control, as well as developing precision map and compass navigation technique…
JEEP BADGE OF HONOR
The Jeep Badge of Honor program offers users the chance to earn “badges” by completing specific trails around the country. There are currently 56 trails that have Badges of Honor. Jeep added seven new ones to the list in 2020, including one in the Ocala National Forest — the only one in Florida. The 81-mile route is called “Tread Lightly! Four Wheel Drive Way” and it combines a series of Forest Roads that weave through different landscapes providing an opportunity to relax and enjoy the diverse wildlife of the park. There’s nothing very technical, but deep sand, dense overgrowth and tight turns make things a bit interesting…
ABOUT SPANISH MOSS
Spanish moss is an epiphytic flowering plant that often grows upon larger trees in tropical and subtropical climates, including the Southern United States. It is commonly found on the southern live oak and bald-cypress in lowlands, swamps, and marshes. Spanish moss is neither a moss nor a lichen and it is not native to Spain. Instead, it is a bromeliad, which means it is in the same taxonomic family as pineapples and succulent house plants. Spanish moss grows hanging from tree branches in full sun through partial shade. The plant consists of one or more slender stems bearing alternate thin, curved or curly, heavily scaled leaves that grow vegetatively in chain-like fashion, forming hanging structures up to 240 inches in length. It’s tiny gray scales trap water until the plant can absorb it. The plant’s tissues can hold more water than the plant needs, to keep it going through dry periods. When the tissues plump up after a rain, Spanish moss appears more green. As the water is used, it returns to a gray hue. Spanish moss was given its name by French explorers. The French were reminded of the Spanish conquistadors’ long beards, so they called it Barbe Espagnol, or “Spanish Beard.” …
OCALA NATIONAL FOREST
The Ocala National Forest is the southernmost forest in the continental United States and protects the world’s largest contiguous sand pine scrub forest. Located three miles east of Ocala and 16 miles southeast of Gainesville, it covers 607 square miles of Central Florida. The Ocala National Forest was established in 1908 and is the oldest national forest east of the Mississippi River. The word Ocala is thought to be a derivative of a Timucuan term meaning “fair land” or “big hammock”. Dry, sandy areas support Florida longleaf pine sandhills and Florida peninsula inland scrub. Inland scrub consists of sand pines growing amid shrublands of evergreen oaks. The forest contains the largest concentration of sand pine in the world as well as some of the best remaining stands of longleaf pine in central Florida. Where fire is absent, southern coastal plain oak domes and hammocks can grow. These are small stands of thick evergreen oaks. The forest contains several slow-moving rivers and numerous wet “prairies”. The forest’s spring-fed rivers support southern coastal plain hammocks of evergreen and hardwood trees. The prairies are Floridian highlands freshwater marshes. The Ocala Forest is also known for having over 600 natural lakes and ponds. Between the river boundaries of this Forest lie central highlands, coastal lowlands, swamps, springs and hundreds of lakes and ponds. Ocala has a wide variety of wildlife including black bears, alligators, white-tailed deer, wild boar, and numerous small animals, such as squirrels, bats, coyote, gray fox, red fox, opossum, raccoon, river otter, bobcat, skunk, southeastern pocket gopher, and nine-banded armadillo. The United States Navy’s Pinecastle Bombing Range in the Ocala National Forest is the only place on the East Coast where the Navy can do live impact training. The Navy drops nearly 20,000 bombs a year at the site, a few hundred of which are live. F/A-18 Hornet jet fighters and other aircraft take off from Naval Air Station Jacksonville or from aircraft carriers off the Florida coast, fly low over the forest, and drop their bombs in the middle 450 acres of the range. The Navy has used the area for target practice for 50 years under a special use permit from the U.S. Forest Service…
ANASTASIA ISLAND
Anastasia Island is a barrier island located off the northeast Atlantic coast of Florida. It sits east of St. Augustine, running north–south in a slightly southeastern direction to Matanzas Inlet. The island is about 14 miles long and an average of 1 mile in width. It is separated from the mainland by the Matanzas River, part of the Intracoastal waterway. Juan Ponce de León may have landed on the barrier island in 1513. Spanish Admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, founder of St. Augustine, moved his initial settlement to Anastasia Island after a revolt by the Timucuan Indians in 1566. This settlement was short-lived, and the colonists moved back to the mainland at the site of present-day downtown St. Augustine. The Spanish built a wooden watch-tower on the northern end of Anastasia Island to warn the town of approaching vessels by raising signal flags. The Spanish eventually replaced the tower with a coquina structure that was converted into a lighthouse soon after Florida came into the possession of the United States in 1821. Beneath the sandy soil of most of the island lie layers of coquina, a shelly rock in various stages of consolidation. This rock is composed primarily of whole and fragmented shells of the donax, or coquina, clam admixed occasionally with scattered fossils of various marine vertebrates, including sharks’ and rays’ teeth. This deposition is known as the Anastasia Formation, and was formed during the Late Pleistocene epoch, in the period of successive glacial ages from about 110,000 years to 11,700 years ago. It is the only local natural source of stone, and was quarried by the Spanish and later the British to construct many of the buildings in St. Augustine including the Castillo de San Marcos …
Nesconset | Paris | Belgrade | Cape May | Asateague | Fargo | Sumatra | Sopchoppy | St. Augustine | Ocala | Ft. McCoy
MORE NOTES FROM THE ROAD:
15-21 December – Holiday Roadtrip
7-14 December – Holiday Roadtrip
1-6 December – Long Island
15-30 November – Long Island
1-14 November – Long Island
28-31 October – Roadtrip East
22-27 October – Moab
15-21 October – Moab
8-14 October – Moab
1-7 October – Roadtrip West
16-30 September – Roadtrip West
1-15 September – Long Island
16-31 August – Long Island
1-15 August – Summer Roadtrip
22-31 July – Summer Roadtrip
14-21 July – Summer Roadtrip
1-13 July – Long Island
16-30 June – Long Island
1-15 June – Bald Eagle
16-31 May – Central PA
1-15 May – Re-opening Trails
April – Lockdown NY
16-31 March – Lockdown NY
9-15 March – Roadtrip Home
1-8 March – Moab
23-29 February – Vegas to Anza Borrego
15-22 February – Southwest Roadtrip
8-14 February – Southwest Roadtrip
1-7 February – Glamis to Vegas
27-31 January – Yuma to Glamis
15-26 January – Nevada to Arizona
1-14 January – Starting the New Year
24-31 December – Holidays on the Road
16-23 December – Cross-Country Drive
Archive
EVENTS
LADIES OFFROAD NETWORK NONCON 2020
Recap from the Ladies Offroad Network camping and wheeling event, dubbed the “NonCon” as in “not the convention,” that came together after the official convention was cancelled due to the pandemic… [read]
RE-OPENING
Report from the first trail run with the Off Road Consulting group at Rausch Creek Off Road Park as the post-pandemic phased re-openings begin in Pennsylvania and some of our favorite local trails re-open to the public after the two-month shutdown… [read]
REFLECTIONS
EGYPT: CAIRO REFLECTIONS
A quick overview of impressions from a stop in Cairo during our recent scouting mission in Egypt and Sudan … [read]
SPECIAL REPORT
A look into south-eastern Algeria on the border with Libya and Niger: overlanding with the Tuareg in one of the most remote corners of the Sahara … [read]
