The Last Duel

Slower day today.  Kind of like a day of rest.  Ok, it WAS a day of rest, and we took it easy on purpose. God knew what he was doing when he declared a day of rest once every seven days.  

First thing for today after breakfast was to tune into our church service.  We didn’t take the time to scout out local churches, but the cell signal here was excellent, so streaming our service would work fine.  We’re up to Romans 8, that wildly glorious passage that states ​There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

No condemnation!

We are guiltless because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our past sins--gone.  Our future sins--gone.  Nothing we did, are doing, or will do will undo our salvation, if we know Jesus.

And that’s something to rejoice over.  What a great reminder on a beautiful Sunday morning.

We took a two-mile hike through the woods.  Kind of a curious landscape that the trail follows.  A ridge flanked by a rather deep ditch on each side, straight as an arrow, for nearly the entire mile we walked.  Looked man-made.  Perhaps it’s related to the mining that went on here.  There’s a deep lake next to the campground that was an old phosphate mine.  It filled with rainwater once the mine was abandoned and now is a feature of this area.

When we came in last night, there was a tent set up on our site.  After checking that we had the right night and the right campground, I called the reservation number to confirm it with them. Yep, we’re good.  No idea whose tent it was.

I walked over to the next campsite and asked if they knew anything about it.  “Yeah, that’s one of our group”, he said. “But he won’t be here until tomorrow.” Well, at least we won’t have someone in a tent four feet from the back of our RV.  That’s getting a little close.

This morning the tent owner was getting stuff out of his truck when we returned from our hike.  He apologized profusely about the tent, saying he was part of a big group of backpackers gathering here for some overnight hiking.  He was told by the person who made all the reservations just to set up on site 11, but messed up on the site number.

This was the first time that we have arrived at a reserved campsite and found it occupied.

We made lunch before we left the campground, watching others of this group set up tents and prepare for their backpacking journey.

We stopped in Brooksville to take a bike ride.  The Good Neighbor Trail starts at the 1885 Train Station and goes east for ten miles where it hooks up with the Withlacoochee State Trail.  Interestingly, the Train Station is the site of the last formal duel in the United States.  In 1906, Hugh E. “Pete” Brown, a train conductor, and George W. Bailey, a lumber dealer, faced off in a duel on the train platform.  Bailey was upset because the train was late.  He did not survive the duel.

Railroad Rage.

We rode this bike route with an eye on the darkening skies.  The forecast called for rain this afternoon.

At 8 miles out we checked the weather as it was really getting dark.  It predicted rain starting in two minutes.  So we turned around, cranked up the power on our electric bikes and raced back towards town.

We got very wet, but made it back to the RV.  We drove to a nearby Walmart to pick up groceries as that’s the thing to do when it rains.

Now we’re camped out in the equestrian campground at Cypress Creek Preserve, which is just north of Tampa.  An equestrian campground where there are no horses.  There’s no evidence of recent horse activity, there are no hitching posts, it appears to be equestrian in name only.  There are two other campers besides ourselves and the closest thing to a horse is a large dog belonging to one of the other campers.

But it’s a rather nice camping area and quiet.  Hard to believe that all the busy-ness that Florida has to offer is just a few miles away.

Tomorrow we’ll engage in that busy-ness in an attempt to go to Clearwater.  That should be better on a Monday than a Sunday.