First we start with zipping up I-75 to SR 50 just east of Brooksville. It’s not real exciting and we always try to avoid interstates but there’s no other way that’s not a slow go because of sprawled little towns and their traffic lights. Zephyrhills is one of the worst with traffic and construction and no particular town, just congestion.

So up I-75 we go. Just when it gets painfully boring we drop off onto SR 50 and head east across the Green Swamp. Yes there’s swamp and also uplands, horse farms, a sawmill, a limerock mine; we pass through Ridge Manor, Lacoochee, Mascotte and Groveland. To the east the towns are migrant-farmworker Hispanic-majority towns. They appear to have mostly recovered from the economic devastation we saw a couple of years ago but there’s still a lot of for-rent signs and empty storefronts.

In Groveland we head north on SR 19 through Tavares, Eustis and Umatilla. Old-line old-time Florida towns that grew up along the railroads but the railroads were short-lived unlike Atlantic Coast Line and Seaboard.

A little past Altoona the roadside scenery gets really different; there’s pretty much nothing but pine trees and white sand ridges; we’ve entered the southern Ocala National Forest. This area is the eastern side of the Ocala Ridge, the ancient spine of Florida, and the sand we see and the ridges we drive over were once big sand dunes long before there was such a thing as a human being.

For the third time in a row I missed the turn on CR 445A so we went a little  bit out of the way but eventually turned east on SR 40; in due time we came to Astor Park and then Astor, where we turned off to Astor Landing.

It was an interesting little jaunt; we got from North Tampa to close to the east coast without encountering any significant city traffic; in fact once we got off I-75 we encountered hardly any traffic at all. And that’s just the way we like it.

The next installment will be Astor to St. Augustine; we’ll once again avoid interstates, cities and traffic. Stay tuned.