Welcome to Troy Springs

The springs when the river is down — The springs when the river was down

We made it to Troy Springs State Park just fine. We have worked a couple of hours opening and closing the front gate and cleaning the bathrooms once. Then we are off the the next several days. It’s pretty quiet around here as the river is still pretty high and our park ranger, Tina, cannot open the springs up to swimming and diving until the water recedes enough. 🙁 That is both good and bad. Good because we don’t have many visitors so we don’t have to do much in the way of cleaning and bad because we are not getting many visitors to the park so the park is not making much money. We are catching up on some cleaning, posting to our social media pages and writing articles. Hopefully, I will have enough time to add some of our craft items that we have made over the last several weeks on to our online store pages.

This park has two residential park host sites. One is located directly behind the ranger’s office next to the springs area and the other is located on the back of the property in front of the barn. When the park ranger told us we could use the camp site next to the barn I was picturing one of those big red buildings with hay, farm equipment and stuff. Well, it turns out this property had a large horse barn on it when it was purchased by the state. It is in great shape and the park personnel and volunteers have kept it really nice. Sadly, the park cannot allow horses in the park. Which is a great shame as it would bring in more money for this park. They have to get some kind of property easement agreement from one of the local private land owners that are between this park and the Ruth Springs Suwannee River Water Management land area.

Of course, this park also has Boy Scout troops primitive camping all through the summer. The horse barn has a bathhouse inside so that we can use the shower when there are no troops camping in the back part of the property. The previous volunteers helped Tina get a lot of downed trees cut up to use as firewood. When my grand daughter comes to visit for the summer we can have a fire in the fire pit to roast marshmallows…yum….

The park does not have a washer or dryer set up even though there is a space with plumbing already set up for one in the ranger’s office building. Apparently, the sewer system has to be inspected before they can put in another washer/dryer. The park ranger also needs her own bathroom in this building. A shower in there would be nice too especially for the volunteer staying in that site. Luckily, my brother lives a few miles down the road in O’Brien and he is letting us use his washer and dryer. That is a bummer because we really need to wash and dry all of our bedding again. Mom is saving quarters once again. Yes, it is all about not having enough money in the budget to get it set up again. Our ranger has agreed to allow us to use her big refrigerator in the office. It will be a big help and save on trips to the grocery store in the future.

We are trying to stay on budget here because we have to fill the RV up with gas before the end of August in anticipation of our next assignment at St. Sebastian River Preserve State Park beginning September 1st. That is about 250 miles away if we go down I-75 then the Florida Turnpike for most of the trip down. I don’t believe we will go down that way because the turnpike is a toll road. Can you imagine the cost of driving two vehicles almost 200 miles on the toll road?!?! I will be looking for alternative routes. They will, no doubt, take much longer and end up taking us almost all day to get there.

We hope you will come over to the Florida Folk Festival this Memorial Day Weekend and stop by our Southern Women Crafts vendor’s booth. Our book, “Insiders Guide to Campground Hosting in Florida Parks”, will be available for sale at Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center Gift Shop and I will be answering questions and autographing copies of the book for anyone whomever wants me to. We have added the event to our calendar with a link to the festival site.

We have taken a couple of pictures of our new place and will take quite a bit more over the next several months.

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VISIT OUR VENDORS BOOTH “SOUTHERN WOMEN CRAFTS” AT THIS YEAR’S FLORIDA FOLK FESTIVAL

Florida Folk Festival
https://www.floridastateparks.org/folkfest/tickets
Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park
11016 Lillian Saunders Drive/ US HWY 41 North
White Springs, FL 32096
(386) 397-4331