We finally planned a Florida excursion a little closer to our temporary home – the Ocala National Forest. I have to say that my expectations were not incredibly high. All of the trail recommendations had warned of wet conditions and mosquitoes aplenty. We had also been warned of homeless people living in the forest, but all of of these had come from people who spent no time actually in the forest, so we took that information with a grain of salt.
After a couple of stops in Belleview to refill propane and water, we headed toward the Hopkins Prairie Campground, a smaller, amenity-free campground that looked like it was right up our alley. Unfortunately, our long stay in The Villages made us out of practice traversing national forest roads. Our big mistake (and we really should know better) was trusting Google Maps. Google showed us one way into the campground so we headed in. A narrow, scrubby road quickly got even narrower and soon the semi-decent surface changed to deep sugar sand. Pine and scrub oak scratched along the truck and trailer and while Mike told me to just push through, I eventually got a little overwhelmed driving and we got stuck in the sand… going uphill… with no good turn around.
Mike got the truck moving after deflating the tires a bit. Unfortunately, we didn’t take advantage of what we later figured out was the widest turnaround spot near where we got stuck. When I walked ahead on the “road” I saw that a series of posts blocked vehicle access to the campground and while there was a wide area just before that, it was full of very loose sand.
And so our harrowing adventure began. Yes, it just began here. Mike carefully backed the truck and trailer up a little bit at a time, trying to stay on the path, but often having to correct veering off into the brush. There was a lot of back and forth as he backed up a full quarter of a mile before he got to a spot that was just wide enough to get everything turned around. As he backed up, I tried to help direct from the back and keep us from getting too scratched up. It was stressful and took about an hour and a half to get us out of our predicament. Neither of us looked too closely at what was being done to the truck and trailer. We were just grateful to get out!
How the road started 
Getting narrower 
Time to pull in the mirrors 
Where we got stuck
Once we got to a passable road, I headed us south to a more established campground. I could not believe that in the review of the campground , no one had mentioned how terrible the road was! And then. a little down Route 19, Mike saw a sign for Hopkins Prairie Campground and then we came to HOPKINS PRAIRIE ROAD!! This time we dropped the trailer at the head of the road and headed down to find a lovely and totally accessible campground.
We picked a beautiful site under a canopy of sand live oaks dripping in Spanish moss and went to get the trailer, park it, and breathe a sigh of relief. And then we looked at Gaia (our GPS app) like we should have done before we went on any forest roads. The road we had tackled was marked as “closed with basic custodial care” while the real road in was “suitable for passenger cars.” Lesson very, very learned.
Later in the afternoon we walked up to the closed road to both see how close we got to the campground and to recover pieces of the trailer that we had knocked off on the debacle. We got close to the hill that I got stuck in and heard an idling engine. Lo and behold, when we got over the hill, we saw another rig stuck in almost the same place we had been stuck. It was a little longer and, while they had some boards with them to help get through sand, there were deep trenches dug in where they had been stuck.
Oh, the joys of commiseration! Both parties were certainly not happy to have gotten in this situation, but were so happy to find others who had/ were going through the same thing. We hung out with our fellow campers of misfortune for a while and then headed back to our campsite to enjoy a beautiful sunset.
At the campsite, we discovered that we were right next to family members of the stuck crew. They finally made it to the campground 28 hours after getting stuck. They unhooked and turned the trailer by hand, where it was then pulled out by a friend with a sturdier truck.
The rest of the weekend was taken up with soaking up the sun on the prairie, exploring the area a bit both on foot and by car, completing some projects, and making plans for future visits to the area. It really was a fabulous campground once we made it there… and not a single mosquito.
Andrea trimming the dish pan to better fit in the sink.
