Howdy y’all,

I am alive! Alive with a good quarter of my usual energy levels, alive with no pains or suffering, but hampered by what is (in melodramatic moments) starting to feel like a never-ending leak of vital forces. The reason for my malaise is tangentially connected to today’s blog post, which I am finally forcing myself to type up while laying horizontally on the couch, because even sitting up for too long feels like a drag. But, as I do, I digress.

It had been a long while since I’d been camping. My youngest, who just recently turned one, had not yet been, and my oldest had been camping only twice: once with me on what was ultimately a nearly hilariously disastrous trip (that maybe I will talk about in another post, when I have the stamina to write and edit for a couple of hours) when he was about one-and-a-half or so, and a second time with my husband and myself in the Everglades when I was in the start of my second trimester of pregnancy with my youngest. (The latter trip had its challenges, but nothing that would warrant a storytelling post.) I would like for us to camp regularly and want(ed) to practice so as to move towards… you know… being one of those families that does camp. Regularly.

I also wanted to visit another Florida State Park-enclosed spring, but didn’t want to risk having to wait hours waiting for entrance with two antsy boys and one husband or, worse yet, being turned away AFTER travelling two and a half hours at 5 am with aforementioned family members.

So I had scoured the Florida State Parks reservation page day after day for a couple of weeks, filtering for the properties that offered swimming AND camping. (Interestingly, some of the State Parks that offer camping and also allow you to swim are not beach parks OR spring parks, but LAKE parks. LAKES. I was tempted to brave one but wouldn’t feel quite right either letting my children go into the dark, murky water with me or denying them the chance to swim on a scalding hot day when Mommy is.) It took some number of days for a spot to open up at a park that offered what I sought, but when I saw the open spot at Wekiwa Springs for a night only a couple of days into the future, I asked my camping-hesitant husband if we could do it. He agreed as long as it would not rain. The forecast looked good, so I jumped.* We booked a tent/RV site for a single night, aiming to accomplish both the camping goal and the spring-swimming goal in one fell swoop.

The two or so days before the trip passed, and I could have checked my camping gear at any point. But why, I thought, should I have to? It was all safe and secure in my brother’s shed. The last time I’d used my tent it had been dry and, furthermore, I was fairly sure I’d dried it and cleaned it out further when we’d returned from our last trip. No, no: it would be best to leave all the gear collection to the day of the trip. Then I could simply gather it all together, stop at the store for some food and ice to fill the cooler, pickup the children from daycare, and make it to Wekiwa at, say, 6 pm?

(That didn’t happen.)

We ended up digging around in my brother’s shed for longer than estimated, and thus had to get the children from school before we went shopping. That, of course, made shopping with take longer, too. By the time we were on the road, our ETA was close to 7:30 pm. At least there would still be a bit of light to setup the tent! But wait: the children couldn’t wait until 8 or later to eat. So we had to make a quick stop for a fast food children’s dinner en route… Pushing the GPS’s estimate of our arrival at Wekiwa closer to 8 pm. Oh well. It was to be expected when you are me and plan as I plan.

The drive to Wekiwa from the Tampa Bay area was great. We went through several towns I’d never seen or heard of before, and they were beautiful. They also had some great names: Howey-in-the-Hills. Astatula. Groveland. Each was lush, filled with lakes, and actually had some soft hills here and there to dot the landscape. I didn’t realize such picturesque places were so near, relatively speaking, to my home. I will try to pass through them again next time I take the slow (that is, non-I-4) route to Orlando.

Clouds began to gather at some point on our drive, and it did rain a bit, but the sky cleared before we paused the car at the Wekiwa Springs entrance kiosk. The friendly ranger gave us a park map that my son later obsessed over, told us where to find the firewood we paid him for, and provided a quick verbal run down of how to find our site. We thanked him, grabbed our two bundles, and headed straight for where we were to overnight–jumping into the springs would have to wait for tomorrow. (Alas, because it was still in the high-80s and incredibly humid–again, at 8 pm.)

Our site was near to the restroom, which was, by the way, well-maintained and clean. I got straight to work on the tent as my husband setup the cooking gear and we both tried to keep the baby calm and the little guy within sight/site (get it???). I opened the tent bag for my beloved Coleman I’d had for nearly a decade. The rain fly seemed fine. The tent itself had been neatly placed back inside (thanks, past us!). All the tent poles were to be found within their little nylon bag. But…

MOLD. Mold had spread over every part of the tent, excluding the floor. Brownish mold. Blackish mold. Greyish mold. Mold making intriguing splotches on the mesh of the tent-top and on the walls. Mold, making my tent look like I’d left the tent out for a few months in our current swampy sweaty air. Mold that I was tempted to transport immediately to the dumpster (along with its host, my poor tent), but doing so would leave us lodging-less. I did a few google searches: IS MOLD ON A TENT REALLY THAT BAD? I found enough people saying that we’d survive a night. I kept our sleeping pads and blankets and bags from the walls and decided to grin and bear it for the night, and then maybe try to clean it at home…

With the tent up, I tried to take some pictures, but light was fading fast and thus they’re pretty bad. You can see them, anyways.

You can see there’s a very clear camp area covered with gravel. There was a hookup site for RVs, as well (as you probably guessed–since it was a tent or RV site…). This campground, from what I saw, didn’t really border true “woods,” so my son and I scrounged around for tiny branches in the scrub nearby to cook our Dandies marshmallows on later that evening.

Meanwhile, my husband had our dinner going.

Like always, baby shoveled in food, no problem.

Like always, older child picked at food, staring at something else rather than his food (on this occasion, it was the fire).

My husband I planned to get the children to sleep in the tent, one at a time: little one first, then elder. This was at best wishful thinking, as both of my kids require quiet, darkness, and no stimulation to fall asleep. (And my youngest still cries himself to bed for a few minutes every night at home, with all of the above in place…) But the lights, the sounds, the difference in setting–those weren’t what really made the whole plan implode. It was THE HEAT. Instead of baby laying down in a nice 76 degree room, I was trying to coax him to stay still in a sticky, thick-aired 85 degrees. The poor bub would not relax. Eventually I had to have my older son come in and put on his pajamas, too, and he also began to complain of the heat. My husband opted to sleep in the car with the air on for a while. A couple of hours passed, and the children remained awake… and progressively more angry.

So, my husband took them on a long, long car ride through the park, hoping to get them to sleep (and then transport them to the tent). Before they could rest, though, the nighttime ranger told him to cease and desist. (Fair enough.) We tried again. More crying. I wished away the hours before we could just enjoy our time swimming in a spring the next day. I could shush the baby for a few minutes, but then he’d startle himself awake and cry more. My husband took the children a second time and (I think???) took them on a drive outside the park. I slept a bit. At some point, the children were returned, and for about two hours there was peace and calm. Then the very beginning of dawn broke the baby awoke, my nose and sinuses were congested from (I assumed) the mold, and I put all my energy into getting everyone up and ready and getting us out and into the spring.

Unfortunately, this required getting out of the tent JUST as the no-see-ums rose from their slumber. We were inundated. The baby. The oldest. My Husband. Me. Applying bug spray helped a bit, but the damage was done. We all had little purple-red dots on all our exposed skin. Again, I longed to be done and swimming. I sniffled. My son sniffled. My husband even began to sniffle. The mold. We ate breakfast in a hurry. I decided to throw away my dear friend, my long-suffering tent. We packed the camping chairs and the cooler away, threw on our bathing suits, and drove to the other end of the park to wash away the nights’ woes.

We spotted some deer along the way.

At the parking lot for the spring, a horde of people were already disembarking from parked cars, and our car was in a long line of people seeking the next open spot. Thankfully, there were still plenty, though I’m sure they filled up fast.

Once we parked, we all made a mad dash to gather the floaties, snacks, drinks, etc. needed to enjoy a morning in the spring. I could NOT wait to get into the water. I was covered in dirt and grime and sweat and probably mold spores from the night spent in the tent, and I didn’t want the precious little energy reserves I had from the two or so hours I spent actually sleeping to fail me before I’d swam a bit.

The walk from the parking lot to the swimming area was not too long and was, of course, crowded by all the aforementioned people who had had the fortune (or misfortune???) of not spending the night in a hot, moldy tent that ensured effortless entry into the springs come daybreak but of waiting in line outside the gates. This is not a secluded park, but that is aligned with what I was expecting and didn’t subtract, therefore from the experience.

Unfortunately, we did not take many pictures–I’d failed to charge my phone the night before, and I needed it alive to some extent so that I could use it to watch my blood sugar and manage my insulin pump’s medication administration. I do not recall anything of particular interest on the walk to the spring, except that it looked pretty pleasant and that there were wheelchair (or stroller!) accessible paths leading to the restrooms, cafe area, and swimming area.

We got to the water and I wasted no time in herding my children and husband in. Sweet victory. The memory of nighttime faded away, even as my nose simply ceased to function and I had to transition to mouth-breathing. Maybe I have a mold allergy…

When not in the water, we spent a bit of time sitting on the concrete barrier, where my son enjoyed tossing pebbles into the water.

After a few hours, the return drive home began to inspire within me some fear. Neither my husband nor I had slept well in the least, and it was going to take some time to get home. The children had also slept poorly, so they might start to moan, groan, and cry at any moment. For the safety and wellbeing of all, it was time to think about leaving. So I asked my oldest if he was ready to go.

“Not yet,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “Would you like to swim for five more minutes, then go straight home, or go eat something and then leave?”

He chose the food, so we stopped to get a snack at the Cafe. The food was inexpensive. The French fries we ordered were middling, but of course the children cared not.

On the return trip to the car, which was miraculously free of drama from either child, we spotted two animals that, though not rare, are only seen by me several times a year:

first, a lovely green anole, and second, an adorable and stereotypically harried turkey… and behind that turkey… HER LITTLE PULLETS.

My son, for some reason, wanted to scare the latter away by acting like a dinosaur. I reprimanded him and said we didn’t want to scare the poor babies. He wisely stopped and enjoyed watching them walk away.

And that was our trip. The children, blessedly, slept on the ride home, and I struggled to breathe through my nose. I began to feel poorly that evening and took some allergy medication. It helped. The mold, I thought, as I crept off to bed at about 8 pm.

I was not looking forward to explaining to others that I’d made myself sick and risked my children getting sick by failing to check my camping gear like a responsible adult. I did admit this to some people at church the next day…

But I was wrong. I wasn’t suffering from allergies, but my very first-ever case of Covid. And so was my son, who had started sniffling when I had, but never did end up feeling sick or having any symptoms outside of a mild “nose problem” (his words, not mine).

I wasn’t very ill, but I did elect to take the Paxlovid offered to me out of precaution. (Obviously, I have two kids who are going to need me for a while!). Throughout the acute phase of the illness and after, I had not been very ill at any point. No big fever. No big cough. No struggling for breath. I was just EXHAUSTED.

And unfortunately, nearly three weeks later, I am still nearly as exhausted. I get small bursts of normalcy, think I can therefore act normal (go do errands, go on a short walk, etc. etc.), and then get hit by near-debilitating fatigue the next day.

So–that’s it! Wekiwa Springs State Park, our reckless camping trip, a refreshing and wonderful time swimming in the spring, and the mold-poisoning that wasn’t.

*Jumping meant calling the state’s reservation line, as I was not able to make an account with the state parks. It kept saying I already had an account. When I tried to recover the supposed account, however, some other error would be thrown. My dad also experienced the same error, so I think that they need to investigate whether their user database and user interface are working together as they should…