Highlands Hammock State Park - Sebring, FL

So I went off to the middle of the state of Florida.  Acres and acres of orange, grapefruit & lemon trees along the way (and not much else).  It really seemed like I was in a different state.  This site (#108) was a little tight but there were some good sized sites in this campground.

The park offers some biking trails.  I tried the 8 mile off-road loop - 1/4 of it is very soft sand that is difficult to even walk your bike through.  Good workout though!  There is also a 3 mile paved loop with many short hiking trail heads off it.  I did it on bike - beautiful ride through the fern canopy:

In general, this place was a little creepy.  Nice scenery but almost no wildlife:

The waters here had no wildlife in them unlike everywhere else we've been - eerie but looked cool.

Aside from the deer that jumped in front of my truck as I drove into the park, the only other wildlife I saw all throughout the park were armadillos:

There were lots of wild grapefruit trees:

and wild orange trees throughout the area too:

I was advised to go to the 7 Lakes area of the park to do kayaking.  When I got there, it was an over sized puddle with several feet of mud to drag your kayak through to make the water - don't bother!  Might of been a good place to hike but the only other person there was a very strange dude high on life (or something else) so I left.  Decided to drive around Jackson Lake in Sebring to see what was there.  Again, no animals and the 2 beaches I stopped at were closed for "aquatic spraying" - maybe that's why no wildlife?  Then I drove out to Avon Park Air Force base wildlife refuge but due to bombing, the area was closed for a few days - call ahead next time!

Another day I hit Lake June and Winter Scrub State Park.  This too was a little strange but par for the course around this place.  The road into the park was barely passable if you were not in a truck due to downed branches.  I was the only one there.  I did the very short hike off the parking lot but all I found there were spider webs (in my face).  I walked down to the waterfront (Lake June) where there was no wildlife except this large gator cruising the shoreline (and people boat, swim & ski in here):

I hiked about 1.5 miles in on a sand road without seeing much wildlife except these 2 eagles off in the distance up in trees:

On the way back out of the park, this large sandhill crane was walking along the dirt road:

And finally I stopped at another park along Lake June on the way back to look for more wildlife.  This guy was the best I could come up with:

Now I'm off to Ft Myers to Woodsmoke RV campground for a few days to pick up Suze.  We head for Rainbow Springs early next week.  More to come . . .