Finishing Up in Style

Pictures: Enjoying the warm weather at Ft. Clinch State Park in Fernandina Beach, east coast Florida; drumming circle at sunset in Englewood Florida on the west coast; view from the treetop canopy walk at Myakka State Park, near Englewood; back on the east side of Florida at Indiantown Marina and RV, Ken is in a typical "pose" in front of our trailer; we met up with some of our boating friends who are staying at Indiantown (Cathy and Dean, on the right, staying in a trailer and working on a Habitat project in the town); a campsite in Hobe Sound, east coast, that we got at the last minute was located near the horse corral and we watched the horses being led to the saddling area in the morning; the stretch of beach from Juno to Jupiter on the east coast has 68 Beach Access points with parking and several big public areas--this is one of them; back at Ft. Clinch on our last warm day it seemed fitting to create this sign! (it is also the last town in north coastal Florida -- across the sound is Georgia)
 

This week is our last in Florida and last in warm weather. And the first that we put up a hammock and lazed around in it!  For some reason we never took the time or had the proper posts or whatever....generally our days are full and busy with not as much time for reading or resting as you would think.
This could be the theme of the last month of our getaway -- taking more time, revisiting some places we had been earlier in the winter, and getting to some places we missed on the way down. We also did a little more socializing, visiting a couple from New England who we know from cruising in the Bahamas (they are also traveling in a RV this winter), going to two beach sunset drum circles, one in Englewood and one in Siesta Key where our friend Alicia, from home, is camping. Check out drum circles on-line if you want to see how popular they are on Florida's west coast.
We took a sunset cruise in Punta Gorda one beautiful early evening, and we had the chance to look at a couple of boats for sale in the last two weeks of February, just "window shopping". We re-started a conversation we have had in the last two years about the best way to spend time in Florida. Plan A is having a boat in Florida and living on it -- this plan is inexpensive after you buy the boat as you can anchor for free almost anywhere. But storing the boat in the off season with possible upkeep and repairs could be too costly. Plan B is continuing to haul a trailer down and back. This is less money upfront than a boat but has the fuel charges and overnight charges that add up to quite a lot. Then there is a possible Plan C which would be to trailer down, stay somewhere more permanently and pay a reduced monthly or seasonal fee for camping, and have a small outboard boat that we buy and maybe sell at the end of the season. This could be seen as the compromise plan but of course, none of the plans is perfect which is why we are still discussing them!
Our weather has been perfect for almost a month, and we have gotten back into carrying binoculars with us if we go out for a walk or bikeride. The birds in southern Florida are wonderful. We were able to get back to Hobe Sound on the east coast and then spent a few days in Titusville and Fernandina Beach at county and state parks, both on the ICW (Intracoastal Waterway). We have eaten well, with fresh produce and baked goods from an Amish farmer's market in Sarasota, and great meals out every once and a while.
At this point we are trying to make sure our trailer is winterized tomorrow or the next day, as we head north, which will limit our use of water but will keep the pipes from freezing. We leave our last planned camping site after two days here (also along the ICW at Buck Hall, Marion National Forest in South Carolina) tomorrow and hope to time the next 950+ miles home so that we don't hit any storms.

Notes: Due to cold weather in northern Florida and the Southern states it was a challenging winter to find warm campsites in popular Southern Florida campgrounds. We had to scramble several times to find a space for the night (or nights). We saw wonderful wildlife but did not get good nature photos (we'll have to work on our technique), Traveling in a trailer and moving quite often as we did this winter was not conducive to meeting other campers that we could get to know and stay in touch with; there are many friendly campers but we made only a few new friends -- except at our Habitat build -- which is different from our experience with other people while boating.

Winter in the South CAN be Cold

Pictures: Ft. DeSoto Park Pier at sunset with Ken; our beach along the backside of several campsites at Ft. DeSoto Park; our campsite in Myakka State Forest; levees in Morgan City, Louisiana that are also the entrances to two residential streets; finding someone to play with at one of our late afternoon gatherings (Heidi, with Arkansas residents Jack and Mary); one of our Habitat houses at the beginning of our two weeks with some of the work crew outside; Bill from New York, with his batter for beignets, cooking for us at a Saturday morning gathering; street performers on Bourbon St. in New Orleans (the female clarinet player was awesome!); Mel from Ohio with Wayne, one of our construction supervisors, on one of the colder mornings at the work site

Final picture: this morning, Gulf of Mexico on the left, at Grayton Beach State Park

(January 14) We haven't been north of Naples on the Florida west coast yet, so it's time to explore. We drove up to Little Manatee River State Park for 3 nights (near Bradenton). This was a nice small park with very friendly people and a river for canoeing, although we didn't get on the river, but watched others go out. Alligators, history, and ice cream socials were other highlights at this park. Campers at a site nearby gave us tickets for a very big camper/RV show in Tampa so we did that one day. We also drove to a great free park in Palmetto, Emerson Point Preserve, that featured coastal views and very large shell mounds (middens).
Myakka State Park was recommended (a little south of Bradenton and Sarasota) but we couldn't get reservations so we opted for Myakka State Forest, closer to Port Charlotte.  This turned out to be a good stop for us, as the rates were less and our side trips from there to Port Charlotte and Englewood on the coast were very interesting. We rambled one day down to the end of a long street in Port Charlotte and got to an empty lot on a corner with two sides of the property bounded by the west coast Florida intracoastal waterway. Before too long several of the locals had found us checking out the property and we stayed for quite a while chatting and daydreaming about what it would be like to live there. The state forest had good biking and hiking trails and had an area for horse trailers with additional trails for riding. There are no connections for water or electricity there but for 3 nights we managed well with our own water tanks and batteries, and set up our solar panel we brought to supplement the batteries.
From some notes I had taken before we started our trip we found Ft. DeSoto County Park near St. Petersburg. This is some park! Right on the water, with large paved driveways for each site, a camp store with great ice cream, a rec hall with a fire going day and night -- it has started getting cooler as we have headed north -- and great bike trails and fishing opportunities. The nightly rates here are a little higher than we have been paying, but it was such a treat to have all these amenities (plus a laundry at the washroom) that we extended our two nights into three.
After two short and manageable days driving we stopped at the Florida end of the Gulf Islands National Seashore near Pensacola. It was chilly there but we got to walk on the beach at sunrise, observe nearby nests with large birds standing in them -- some type of heron, possibly Great Blues but we have never seen them standing in nests before -- and take bike rides and walks through the dunes. The sand here is as white as snow, and looks like snow drifts along the road. We spent a day at the Pensacola National Naval Aviation Museum, full of planes, helicopters, three IMAX theaters and lots of naval history.
Our grand finale for this part of our trip started with setting up in Schiever, Louisiana on January 26 for our two-week Habitat Care-A-Vanners project. We camped with the other members of the project in a trailer park surrounded by drainage ditches--this is bayou country -- and we worked in nearby Thibodaux, Louisiana. Our soon-to-be-friends for these two weeks include a couple from Ontario, a family with two children, a single 80+ year-old man who bakes bread and beignets (Cajun doughnuts) for us several times, and retired nurses, a pastor, teachers and an airplane pilot. We have good cooks and good musicians so our off-time was spent gathering for "happy hours" and pot-lucks and music jams.
Unfortunately we had very cold weather, so much so that two-and-a-half of the first three days we spent back at our RVs waiting for the icy rain to subside. Most other days started out in the 30s with wind-chill much lower. We worked on two new houses mainly, with side trips to several other houses that are being re-habbed to be resold. There were issues with getting materials due to the bad weather so our group of 17 sometimes was farmed out to the Habitat Restore to help there, or to making bunkbeds for a large group of college students coming in a month. At the end of the two weeks we had gotten doors and windows in both new houses, porch decking and railings were built, one house was insulated, several other projects such as installing soffits were accomplished.
Outside of the Habitat work we got in a trip to New Orleans on a nice Saturday between the two weeks. We took a ferry from across the Mississippi to the center of the city, avoiding parking in the city, and walked with several from our group to lunch at Central Grocery (a line out the door there) and explored the Jackson Square area and vicinity. The Riverwalk back and forth from the ferry was less crowded than the city and gave us views of all the ship traffic in the river. Other outings were to catch the music of one of our supervisors who plays sax and keyboard with a small group at a local club, a night of cajun music (small accordion, fiddle, guitar and a triangle) at the Thibodaux Acadian Cultural Center, and a group dinner-out at a local restaurant for our last night.
We were somewhat disappointed not to meet more of the local people, and we got tired of the loud trains going by at all hours, the dirty drainage ditches and the large amount of trash everywhere, but all-in-all it was a chance to help out, work with some great people and see a new part of the country. There are other sites for Care-A-Vanners and we may try another next year, maybe in a warmer climate!
It was an easy decision to go back to Florida for our next 4 weeks. We need weather where we can take off our down jackets and long-johns!

Land-cruising for a Change

Pictures (all in Florida): Several of the close-up manatees in the impossibly clear water at Blue Spring State Park; Tammy and Mike at the Beislers wonderful house; Heidi and Ken canoeing in the mangroves at the Everglades National Park with a group tour; our new Massachusetts decal (our site this day is at the Corps of Engineers locks on the east end of Lake Okechobee), inside Trapper Nelson's cabin in the Jupiter area; the Great Horned owl in Haines City; it still gets dark early in Florida in December!, Marblehead High 1963 classmates at a mini-reunion near Naples (Susie "Wigg", Scott Stephens, Ken)

Starting on December 8th (2013) we are camping our way down the east coast and across to Louisiana to maybe Texas and back. A new chapter of the "cruising" adventures has started. We are not camping in a tent, not roughing it; we have a second-hand travel trailer that has all the basics plus air-conditioning, a queen-sized bed and an "almost" regular refrigerator.
But weather is threatening. We have left Duxbury on the 8th knowing that a storm is approaching from the south and will meet us somewhere in mid-afternoon. It's not better if we wait, since the next day is sure to be snowing at home and we don't want to leave in a snowstorm.  We are fine until midway down New Jersey at about 2 pm, The driving deteriorates quickly and we decide to pull into a rest area and see if we can stay there until the snow lets up, or until the next morning. It seems to be a good choice, as there is a restaurant here, and snow plows, and we didn't have to go far at all from the highway! It turned out OK, and we left the next morning, and we just had to put up with the plows all night, noisily scraping the parking lot to earn their money. First lesson learned: highway rest areas can be a noisy choice for a night's stop.
In the next three days we get to North Carolina, staying overnight at a state park, then South Carolina and a one-night stay at Buck Hall in Francis Marion National Forest on the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), and finally in St. Augustine at Anastasia State Park. This park is on the ocean and we are able to walk on the beach in mild weather. There is another state park in St. Augustine, Faver-Dykes, that we stay at also. So far camping in a trailer is finding us dealing with campfire smoke but otherwise is pleasant and our campsites are lined with lush tropical foliage. We are mostly eating meals in the trailer, but we had a nice dinner out in St. Augustine.
Our next reservations are for Jonathan Dickinson State Park in Hobe Sound after one night at the locks at the east end of Lake Okeechobee in Central Florida. We made reservations back home in November and so far the choices we made have worked out well. We have friends near Hobe Sound that we are visiting while in the area, and we do our Christmas shopping and mailing of packages in the village. This is a favorite stop for us, as the ICW runs through here, the ocean beach is close and easy to access, and the village is easy to walk around.
We signed on for a boat tour up a river in the park that takes us to the Trapper Nelson compound, a 1940-60s outpost for hunting, camping and trading. The tour includes good comments on the environmental and natural features of the area. Our camping skills so far are honed by talking with the rangers, watching other campers, and by good old-fashioned trial and error. Here we also added the large decal to our trailer that we had ordered back home but didn't have time to affix until now due to weather and travel. (See it in one of our pictures.)
For Christmas we are moving to Blue Springs State Park north of Orlando. It is near to Sally and Joe Beisler who are hosting a Christmas day dinner and where our daughter and her significant other Mike (Sally's son) are staying. It was so nice to have a comfortable, friendly group to celebrate Christmas with.  With the extended Beisler family we also explored a zoo and ate at a German restaurant complete with German alpine-music entertainment.
Blue Springs is a great stop, as every day we are there are more manatees at the spring and the spring run (the connection between the spring and the St. Johns River).  The water here is crystal clear and there is a perfect boardwalk along the run. On our last day the count is 119 manatees.
We stayed at another state park in the area before moving to Haines City, near Disneyworld. We celebrated New Years Eve with Canadian boating friends who are staying there, in a fifth-wheel  travel trailer. Since then we have spent five days in the Everglades National Park and another 5 days in Naples, Florida. Highlights of those two stays are: having a Great Horned owl above us for 3 days in a tree in Haines City, canoeing in the mangroves in the Everglades, plus seeing crocodiles and alligators up-close-and-personal, and visiting with Marblehead friends in Naples.
More lessons learned, since we are newbies at this camping thing: making reservations is a good idea (weekends especially tend to be fully booked at the state parks), last minute stops can be rewarding (we went to a county park in Palm Beach County--Prince Park--and it was quite a find), bug spray is mandatory (all parks south of St. Augustine), and if we don't have a sewer connection at the campground, we don't stay too long (or we need to empty our tanks mid-week). Our experiences with our TV and antenna are not spectacular, and so far we have only found 2 Spanish channels, in the Everglades Nat. Park and none in other parks. But we enjoy listening to music in the evening and reading or playing a game or two.
Hopefully we will update this report another two times, as we plan to be gone until March 8th or so. Until next time, happy New Year!