Editor’s note: Mark Bradford is contributing occasional posts from his diary on traveling the country with his wife Wendy while they rent out their Mishawaka home for more than six months.
Day 203 of our 220-day sojourn
January 8, 2024 — Homosassa, Florida
Wendy and I plan to start heading north on January 25, so we are down to our last 17 days of a sojourn that will now reach about 220 days.
We have been staying in her mom’s home, usually by ourselves, as her mother also has a place in The Villages. However, Wendy is helping her mom go through a rather massive amount of things she has accumulated in her nine decades on this earth. It is a process that has gone deliciously slow for the most part, with every box stirring up another set of memories. At this point, there is no need to rush and mom and daughter, who have always been close, are being drawn closer.
One of the things that we have missed in our extended stay here is the sense of discovery that we enjoyed everywhere else we went. Our days have become a daily routine of golf, going to the Y, Panera, out someplace to eat, swimming and watching Doc Martin re-runs on Roku.
Sunday, we decided to take a walk-about. I usually drive at 60 mph down U.S. 19 to Spring Hill for the Panera bread and I always wondered what the Chassahowitzka Wildlife Management Area was as I sped past. So Sunday, Wendy and I tossed dog Corky in the car and drove eight miles and turned right into what I will call the “real Florida.”
Once you pass the welcome station, the road eventually deteriorates into a single lane, full of potholes. This is a place that visitors to the population centers around Tampa don’t even acknowledge. It is a land of savannah grass, small trees, and lots of sand. It is also a land of nuance. If you want loud noises and expensive, crowded restaurants, go to Orlando, where nuance is spelled nuisance. If you want to discover, wander into a few parks and forests in the real Florida.
On the day we were there, we saw only about 10 cars on the nearly 35,000 acres. It is a place that contains more than 350 species of animals and insects, supposedly including a few bears. We found a couple of trails that went essentially nowhere but were thankfully flat and well marked. So, with my “What if we get lost?” anxiety mitigated, the walk turned out to be quite pleasant. While it was snowing in Indiana, it was a perfect 60 degrees with no wind.
In short, it was perfect. Corky even pooped a few yards off the trail and we didn’t clean it up Yay!
On our way back to the entrance, we drove down an even narrower lane and discovered one of the best natural springs for scuba diving in the United States. Florida is built on an aquifer, which supplies the state with a huge source of water. Just about a quarter mile walk from the driving path is one of the best inland scuba diving sites in the USA.
A mile south of that is Eagle’s Nest sinkhole, which scuba divers sometimes refer to as the Mount Everest of this type of diving.
We wandered down the path and our trek was made even better when we found about 10 total strangers doing scuba, something Wendy knows nothing about.
I got there first and told a young man that my wife would be there in a few minutes and to be ready for 1,000 questions. He laughed and said it was OK. Sure enough, Wendy launched into her interrogation mode and Corky and I walked back to the car, where I could listen to a game while she learned everything about scuba diving. It was a perfect ending.
It felt good to be on a walk-about and it made me wonder just how long we will be able to stay in our home In Mishawaka before the call of the mild-wild gets too strong to resist.
With apologies to the famous Blues Brothers quote: “17 Days, 1000 miles to Mishawaka, we got a full tank of gas, the dog is in the back, it’s cold, and Mark lost his sunglasses.”
Hit it.