Saturday, February 8, 2003
We shifted our camp north about 80 miles to Rainbow Springs State Park, and along the way stopped off at Dade Battlefield State Park to do the Volksmarch there. Ordinarily we prefer to stay in the parks where we do our walks, but the Dade Battlefield park is quite small and has no campground. It was cloudy and a little drizzly, so it was a good day to do some driving. As it turned out, the drizzle let up while we were doing the walk.

I thought I remembered doing the Dade Battlefield walk previously but Monika didn’t think we had done it. When we got the map for the walk at the Visitors Center, we both agreed that we had done the walk before, probably the last time we were in Florida with our two sons in 1996 or 1997. This walk is divided into two basic parts. The first part winds around the park in an inside loop and then again around the perimeter so you get to see all parts of this rather small park.

The park commemorates the Seminole massacre of Major Dade and his 108 men, who were attempting to march from Fort Brook (present-day Tampa, Florida) to Fort King (present-day Ocala, Florida). If you do this walk, be sure to see the small but very informative museum at the Visitors Center. Carefully read the history of the Second Seminole War and see which side you think was more justified. We both ended up concluding that the Seminole had been cheated, lied to, and were all in all more justified than the Federal Government in its attempt to remove all Indians from their homelands. The Indian Relocation Act of 1834 seemed to me to be nothing more than a nineteenth century version of ethnic cleansing.

In any case, the fact of the matter is that the 108 Army regulars under Major Dade had larger caliber muskets plus a cannon and handily outnumbered the 85 Seminole warriors. The plaques told a story that to me was a prima facie case of command incompetence—altho followed by the Seminole for 5 days and despite the fact that he had passed two bridges burned by the Seminoles, Dade apparently didn’t have a clue that hostiles were in the area. He called in his scouts and flankers and marched in fine military fashion into the middle of an ambush. Thus, altho he outnumbered and outgunned the Seminole, by using surprise and a superior rate of fire the Seminole were able to kill 105 of the 108 soldiers in the day-long battle while losing only 3 warriors. Nevertheless, everything out here is named after the loser--Dade City, etc.

The second part of the walk did a large figure 8 in the streets and a park in the town of Bushnell, Florida, which is essentially across the street from the battlefield. Altho small and plain, the town boasts a large, nicely finished recreation area with at least three baseball fields surrounded by a jogging track—the jogging track is one of the loops in the figure 8 part of the walk.

After the walk we completed our drive to Rainbow Springs State Park campground. This was the only state park on our trip that was not using the reservation system, so we were taking potluck with the “first come, first served” method of site selection. We arrived about 2 p.m. and fortunately there was still one of the outer-rim sites available so we didn’t have to put the tent in the middle of a bunch of RVs. During the night we had Raccoon Encounter III; however, this time Monika had put everything edible under lock and key. The only thing he could play with was the orange, watertight boat box that has our dishes and silverware. Altho he batted it to the ground, he couldn’t open it (it has an odd type of latch). The net result was that altho he disturbed our sleep he didn’t get any food. We felt we had won this round, so the box score so far is Raccoons 2, Holts 1.