We have spent the last few days in the area of Osceola National Forest. We stayed in Lake City Florida for this visit as our RV was too large for any of the spots available in the national forest.
Osceola National Forest is Florida’s northernmost and smallest national forest.
We were hoping to see black bears while driving around in the forest but no luck. They have alerts on the website about black bears but I guess we were just not out at the right time. We did see lots of woodpeckers. Our car GPS showed two locations for the forest so we picked one and started off. We started off on a nice paved road, got down to much skinner paved road and eventually to a one lane dirt road. We got to the GPS location to discover it was just a spot in the middle of the forest. We then picked the other spot and headed out again. An interesting drive but again just miles and miles of a one lane dirt road with no one else in sight. I did glance over periodically to check the gas level in the Explorer, wanted to make sure we did not get below half a tank just in case we had to back track all the way to the starting point. At least we did not run into any streams/creeks that we needed to drive across. I have been know to make Bruce turn around and search for alternate routes rather than drive our vehicle across a creek, no matter how shallow it might look.
The forest service had marked white bands around all the trees where woodpeckers were supposed to have nest so it was easy to spot the nest areas. Not sure we ever saw the red-cockaded woodpeckers that are supposed to be in the area but definitely saw red headed woodpeckers and lots of flying bugs.
We eventually got tired of looking at trees and left the forest and stopped by a ranger station to ask a few questions and take a quick break.
Interesting day but don’t see me needing come back here for a visit. Perhaps it might be more interesting in the spring or late fall.