December 17, 2008 by steve.

Well, one last camping trip of the year for the CurbCrushers. Grandmother CurbCrusher (my Dad’s mom) turned 95 the 15th of December and had a party in Pensacola. Since Pensacola is about an eight hour drive from the CurbCrusher homestead in Orlando, we packed up the RV and decided to make a long weekend out of it, and try out the new campground at Blackwater River State Park near Milton, Florida. Not that anyone reads this blog, but back in June we stopped by Blackwater and took a look at the campground while it was under renovation.

We arrived at the park around 2:30 in the afternoon. A sign at the gate said that campers with reservations should go to their site and come back to the ranger station between 3:00 and 5:00. They don’t have enough rangers to do all the work in the park and man the station, so they only spend two hours a day at the station. So we moseyed over to our site and set up. After a while we walked back to the ranger station and checked in. There had been a lot of rain the week before and the Blackwater was high. On the approach to the park, there was probably about two inches of water on the road right after crossing the bridge. By the next morning there was no water on the road, but the trails and boardwalks were very wet, and covered by water in a number places. To get an idea of the water level you can compare this picture from our trip in May to this picture taken at the same point in December.

Campsites - This park gets an A+. I pulled up in front of the campsite, and got out of the motorhome to walk the site before backing in and turned to Lady CurbCrusher and said “This is the nicest campsite we’ve ever had.” The campground road is paved, and the sites have a deep bed of gravel. Our site was huge and full hookup (water, sewer and electricity) along with a grill and a fire ring. Not all the sites were as deep as ours, but even the shallower sites were plenty wide. Our campsite had a small creek running behind it that was very full due to the recent rain. As we sat around the campfire, we were able to listen to the babbling brook, it was like a scene from one of those RV ads.

Stuff To Do - If you just stay in the park there are trails, fishing and swimming when the weather is warm enough. There is a canoe outfitter down the road from the park that will take you upriver with a canoe and let you float down the river. Your about an hour from The National Naval Aviation Museum which I talked about back in January and still think is the best aviation museum I’ve visited. The Gulf Islands National Seashore is nearby and actually stretches along the coast and includes Ft. Barrancas located near the Naval Aviation Museum (Pictures from our visit to these places) .

Overall - The CurbCrushers really enjoyed this park as a matter of fact we wish that Blackwater River State Park was not eight hours away. We definitely want to go back, but then we want to go to a lot places, so it may have to wait. This will probably become the new place to stay when we go to Pensacola to visit family. For $13.26 a night this is a campground that can’t be beat.

Our pictures from the park are here.
I’ve updated the gas mileage summary, and this trip brings our total number of camping nights for 2008 to 44

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December 10, 2008 by steve.

One last endurance event of year. I’ve been talking about running the OUC Half-Marathon for years. About four years ago, Lady CurbCrusher told me to either quit talking or run the darned race. So I quit talking about it until this year. Earlier this year I was talking on the phone with a friend that had started running again about a year ago. He was talking about running the Disney Half-Marathon in January. I suggested that we both run the OUC Half and we signed up.

This was my first long distance running event. I really hate running. But I put a lot of effort into trying to get into shape for this, and was able to survive. The first weekend in November I went and and ran the course by myself and finished in a time of 2 hours and 46 minutes. I used a run-walk-run method that I’d ready about years ago, run a mile walk a minute. That gave me a baseline, and by Thanksgiving I’d decided that I was shooting for a 2:30 time on race day. After the Turkey Trot, I re-thought my race and decided that if I finished under 2:40 I’d be happy.

In the meantime, I talked to some people and they described a different run-walk-run method that had you run x minutes and then walk y based on the mile pace you want to maintain. I read some of this, and at the Highlands Hammock Turkey Trot, I used this method for the race. I was now torn between using something that I knew worked for the long distance on race day (run a mile walk a minute) and trying this new method.

I finally compromised. I used the run a mile walk a minute method for the first 10 miles. That leaves 3.1 miles or a 5K. I switched to the run-walk-run running for four minutes, and walking for a minute. The 4-1 ration is supposed to be used for a 8:30 mile, but for a 5k on fresh legs it produces more a 9:15 for me. After 10 miles it produced more of an 11:30 pace, but that was good enough for a finish of 2:29:10, 50 seconds under two and half hours. Yay!! I was ecstatic, I broke two and half hours and still felt great afterwards.

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December 2, 2008 by steve.

The second of two November camping trips was a trip to spend Thanksgiving at Highlands Hammock State Park near Sebring, Florida. It takes about 2 hours to drive from Orlando to Sebring, and the CurbCrusher clan made the trip on the Wednesday prior to the holiday. Over the past few years we’ve tried to make a Thanksgiving camping trip to a park within a couple of hours drive of home, making the trip on Thanksgiving morning. When doing some research for the trip, Lady CurbCrusher discovered there was a Turkey Trot 5K race on Thanksgiving morning at Highlands Hammock, so we went down on Wednesday and ran 3.1 miles Thursday morning before partaking of turkey and dressing.

We last visited Highlands Hammock in December 2007 and most of the basics about the park are the same so I won’t rehash it all here, you can follow the link and read the review. One thing that we didn’t remember fully is how smoky this park is. It seems that all the smoke from the campfires just rises up into the trees and stays there. It just hangs around makes the air thick. We definitely did better on site selection this time around, selecting site 52, which was on a corner near the playground. It was much less ambiguous about where the site was, and it was definitely easier to get in and out of. New pictures of the park and our site are here.

We did some new things this trip to Highlands Hammock

Turkey Trot - As noted above, we did the Turkey Trot race put on by the Friends of Highlands Hammock. Not a lot to say about this except that is was cold. The thermometer said it was 37.7 degrees when we woke up. After running about a mile it started to warm up, but I think we all had on three layers of clothes. Lady CurbCrusher ran and finished in 38:58, Little CurbCrusher ran the race in 34:25 and I ran the race in 29:50.

Henscratch Winery - Lady CurbCrusher picked up a “Winery’s of Florida” brochure somewhere. She’s been looking at it every time we go camping looking for places to visit. The Henscratch Farms Vineyard and Winery is located about five to ten miles from the park, and to be honest I really wasn’t looking forward to the visit. This is primarily because I don’t drink wine, and winery’s have always seemed like stuffy places to me, full of people that always seem to be a bit too impressed with themselves. Have no fear, Henscratch is more farm than winery. The focal point of the visit is the “fruit stand” like gift shop and souvenir stand. There is a self guided tour that takes you around the vineyard, wine making room and other farm stops like the duck pond and hydroponic strawberry fields. Henscratch offers pick your own strawberries during December and January, and beans and peas in the summer. When you go in the store to start your tour, they’ll give you a cup of Cheerios. This isn’t a snack, at least not for you. True to the name, Henscratch, there are a bunch of chickens to be found all around the farm. You get the option of tossing Cheerios to the chickens as you walk around the farm on your tour, and if you run out, just go back in and ask for more. I think this was the highlight of Little CurbCrusher’s trip. Pictures from our trip Henscratch are here.

Lake June-in-Winter Scrub State Park - This park is located between Sebring and Lake Placid. It is an “honor system” park as there is no ranger station. There is not much here, a parking area, a small trail and a wide swath of land that leads to the lake. There is a pavilion and latrine, but that’s about it. We took some pictures and they pretty much show you all there is to see of the park.

Lake Jackson Fitness Trail - As you drive to Highland Hammock State Park you will turn from US 27 west towards the park. On the east side of US 27 is a big lake, Lake Jackson. There is a fitness trail (sidewalk) that runs all the way around the lake. On the north side of the lake is a local park, Veterans Park. We drove there with the bikes on the car and then rode the 9 miles around the lake. About a third of the ride is boring, you are along US 27, but the rest is pleasant as you wander along downtown Sebring and the neighborhoods on the east side of Lake Jackson. We had a great ride and even took some pictures.

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