Withlacoochee Park

I visited Withlacoochee Park in Dade City, Florida in March 2015. It was hot, humid, and covered in flies, but other than that it was pretty cool.

​There are several large parking lots, picnic shelters, two playgrounds, and a canoe launch. The good playground has plastic drums and metal “bowls” built into it, just in case your children aren’t loud enough already. Much of the structure has hornets growing on it, just in case your children like to pet animals. Also, the highest point of the structure, from which two covered slides attach (very slippery and fun, I might add), can only be accessed by a short ladder through a tight hole in the floor – I assume to keep fat kids and grown-ups out, because nobody wants either of them around.

​There are long trails looping around the park, but the flies wore me out before I could explore them all. I did climb the observation tower and traverse one swamp boardwalk while I was there though. I saw several interesting things. I saw some very red Christmas lichen, which is usually pink around here. I saw a rather large owl at a close distance that stared at me long enough for me to wave, but not long enough for me to take its picture or get an autograph. I also saw a tiny tan skink, a very large burrowing turtle, and a tiny grey-and-black toad. I found a leaf that looked as if it had been bitten by a cookie-cutter shark – which is very unlikely this far inland. I also took a picture of a cluster of two species of lichen on the forest floor that I meant to be the cover picture for this report. It was the best picture I took, but it somehow must have fallen out of my phone because it didn’t make it home. I'm very silly.