Day 1 Continued In SFFCCS Park

The above is Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park. Seriously, could the state have chosen a longer name??


We fully intended to hike this day, so we packed up our packs with food and water and headed out to find the Canoe Ramp and Suwanne River trail. What we found was water way over the banks of the river, the launch ramp barricaded off and no place to walk.






So after taking a few pictures, we walked back, yes disappointed, to the museum and checked it out. If you look closely here, to my left (your right) is the rinse off shower for when you get out of the river. Also, showing is the top portion only of a bench to sit on and watch the river go by. Hmm, not today. The trails go off side to side away from me and were completely under water. Let's see, alligators and snakes and mosquitoes, oh my!!




The park really is worth visiting but we were disappointed, the weather has been so wet and has caused all the flooding. Ah well, looks like we'll return to visit in a drier time :)

Isn't this little guy cute? This is a pine lizard. They grow them big in 'the swamp!'




The museum is a pretty building filled with dioramas of more of Stephen Foster's songs. It also contains musical instruments, mostly pianos that he used. For a man to never have stepped foot in Florida or really anywhere south, he has quite a reputation and following!

Here is the front of the museum.

Here are the 2 main end rooms. The pictures in the center of each room also depict an imagined scene from a Stephen Foster song.

Here is another diorama for "Way Down Upon de Swanee Ribber." I promise, that is how it is spelled.


 

Here is the rear of the building. Since the park goes out around the back, the four sides of the building are cemetrical and well kept.

 After finishing the museum and having explored everything we could find to do, even nabbing a geocache, we  headed back to the camper. Ahh, but not straight back. That is sooo boring! So I meandered in the woods behind the rv area knowing that the path would lead, eventually, back to our very own campsite. We walked through mosquito infested swamp areas (with a deet spray on it wasn't that bad) and did find a path we could use to duck out onto the pavement after about 15 minutes. We arrived at our back door a few minutes later and realized we had picked up about 20 baby ticks on this little detour.

Wow, another reason not to come back in the spring/summer! We found all but one apparently and made our way inside. After a few minutes, Bob felt one more crawling up his neck. I never thought about ticks being fast critters, but they are miniature speed demons. That one was tossed out the back door to join its cousins and we both grabbed our shower gear and fresh clothes and went to get cleaned up for dinner. We did sleep good that night, and I remembered to post a note to myself...Remember the hair dryer for the next trip!