The Power of the Turtle

Sunday, February 27th – Gainesville to Holder Mine Campground, Inverness, Florida – Day 20

 The morning featured a tour from Natalie showed us around her beautiful flower garden. There were snapdragons, azalea, eucalyptus, echinacea, a peach tree, roses, scented germaniums and many more plants I’d never heard of. Natalie introduced Charlotte and John to Oggie the Doggie and they spent the next hour walking him around the property. Natalie’s grandchildren had made a secret path through the bush so the kids explored that as well. Natalie was unbelievably nice and generous with her time. We stood around the chatted for a few hours. The scenery was great, the coffee was good and the company was better. 

We are heading to Holder Mine campground. Another national forest about an hour away. I had booked the site and there was a small amount of debate whether it was out of the way and a waste of gas and time. Paradise is not always peaceful. But, it was already booked so off we went. 

We passed by another associated business to the farm we had passed the day before, the Adena golf course. The drive was fairly quick and easy. When we arrived at Holder’s Mine campground. The site was great. There were oak trees with moss scattered around the site to provide shade but also enough room to run around and close to the washroom to boot. We set up quickly and decided to go for a walk. The trail of a recommended local walk, thank you All Trails, led right behind the campsite. On our way out, we saw this massive (1 metre wide, 30 cm high) tunnel in the ground. We were guessing what might have made it. We found out a day later that it was the Gopher Tortoise. The Gopher Tortoise is a keystone species in Florida. This means that it is essential for the survival of the local ecosystems. The turtle creates these 33 foot long burrows that have been known to house up to 350 other species. This protects them from wild fires and predators. 

 We journeyed out through a blackened landscape. A forest fire must have passed through because the ground had been burnt and was free of the dead leaves and branches we had seen previously. Small trees had been killed and were badly damaged. Large trees had the bottom 6 feet of bark blackened. But you could see the shoots of new growth starting to appear all over the ground. The landscape was empty of the birds that were talked about in the description I read. John pushed himself further than previous hikes until I finally carried him for a while. The total hike was a little more than 2 km and during the second half we did some more family trail running which was a lot of fun. Charlotte took it up a notch and did some wind sprints at the end to show us her running. 

 When we got back, Charlotte and John helped me make Jambalaya and mashed potatoes (which seriously extended the process). But dinner was delicious. On the way back from the hike we gathered some wood so we had another campfire complete with marshmellow sandwiches.