Archive for Places to go
December 30, 2006 at 12:34 pm · Filed under Places to go
We’ve parked in the day use area of Henderson Beach State Park while we wait for our campsite to open up. It’s actually so nice here next to the roaring surf that we wouldn’t mind just boondocking here for a few days if we could.
It’s sort of a New England beach day, with overcast skies, a bit of fog, temperatures in the upper 60s, and a breeze. It may not sound ideal but it’s really nice. The white sand and sea oats are gorgeous, and we’ve opened every window on the Airstream to let the salt breeze blow through. Eleanor is relaxing with a book, Emma is drawing, and I’m just poking around … it’s a nice way to spend Saturday.
We’ll be here all week, doing some exploring along the beach and in Destin. I’m curious about the telescope right next to us. Perhaps some local organization opens it up for public viewing? I’ll check it out and see if we can get inside.
Some friends are coming here to join us in the next few days, so we’ll do a little “pre-rally” stuff. At the end of the week we’ll migrate over to nearby Topsail Hill State Park for an Airstream rally. Anyone who is coming to the rally a little early, consider dropping in and visiting with us!
December 7, 2006 at 9:48 am · Filed under Places to go
You can’t get into Bahia Honda State Park very easily. This place is so popular that it often books up 11 months in advance. We tried a couple of months ago to get a spot here for this week, but it was impossible.
Then last week Brad tipped me off that a few sites had last-minute cancellations this week. I immediately got onto reserveamerica.com and found one site available for two days. Miracle! So we cancelled the rest of our stay at John Pennekamp State Park and headed about 65 miles further down the Keys.
(If you need to cancel or modify a reservation that you’ve made with ReserveAmerica, wait to do it at the campground. This avoids a $10 change fee that you’ll get if you do it by phone in advance.)
The Keys are basically one road all the way down, Rt 1, “Overseas Highway”. Instead of using addresses, most places indicate location by Mile Marker. We went from about MM 102 to MM 37.5. Before we left, we had breakfast at the Hideout restaurant, which is a very homey small place near the park next to “Jules Verne Undersea Lodge” (ideal if you would like to spend your vacation in a bubble under water). The Hideout doesn’t look like much but it’s friendly, local, and the back porch has a nice view.
As we were packing up at Pennekamp, a very large iguana wandered by the campsite. This one was a good two feet long in body with a two foot striped tail. Iguanas are not natural here — but some pets were probably set free years ago and now you can see them thriving on the Keys. This guy was a monster.
We also met John and Thelma, the campground volunteers at Pennekamp. They gave us some good advice on travel to Mexico and have helped to lower Eleanor’s suspicions of it. She now concedes that a trip with a few other people (a mini-caravan) would be OK. I’m starting some serious planning …
Along the way at MM 77, you can feed the tarpon at Robbie’s. But the brown pelicans are aggressive there and the experience can be, um, challenging.
Brad and Mary are parked just down the row from us. We took a sunset walk up to the old Flagler Bridge, a leftover from the railroad that first connected the Keys back in 1912, and then returned to their Airstream for a superb Thai dinner that Brad and Mary whipped up for us. We contributed Key Lime Pie for dessert, of course.
December 5, 2006 at 8:45 am · Filed under Places to go
Chokoloskee Island is one of the “Ten Thousand Islands” that make up the lower Everglades and provide a delight for kayakers and fishermen. To say that this area is abundant in wildlife is a serious understatement: everywhere you look or listen you can find them, and the photographic opportunities are superb. My 200 mm lens really got a workout.
Many more photos on the Flickr album!
Everglades City is a piece of “old Florida” that is probably going to disappear in a few years. Already we can see the condos and “vacation villas” showing up and displacing the older residences. The town doesn’t look like much at first, but digging in you’ll find a numerous small restaurants and cafes, fantastic boating, fishing, sight-seeing opportunities, and great scenic vantage points from unexpected locations.
On our way out, we stopped at City Seafood on Begonia Street to pick up something interesting for lunch. This turned out to be some large grouper sandwiches and a bunch of steamed spiced shrimp. $6.95 for each item, and everything was terrific.
Before we left the Everglades, Brad and Mary urged us to drop in on the H P Williams Wayside area on the Tamiami Trail. (The Tamiami Trail is also known as Route 41, the two-lane road that stretches from Miami to Naples, and then northward to Tampa.) This is an ideal stop for the Airstreamer, since there’s a parking lot with dedicated spaces for RVs, and superb bird and gator viewing. Bring a long lens or binoculars, but most of the creatures will be within 100 feet of you as you walk the boardwalk.
Now we are in Key Largo at John Pennekamp State Park. I am hoping to go snorkeling today at noon, if conditions are good. The sun is in and out of clouds but the sky is mostly clear and we are enjoying upper 70s while even in Tampa it is 15 degrees colder. The water is a balmy 78 degrees here, and the seas should be reasonably calm, so the only real blotch on the snorkel trip is that there is a “Man O’War” jellyfish warning in the water. Still, the boat trips are going to the reef, so apparently the operators feel conditions are still acceptable. I’ll report on that tomorrow.
December 4, 2006 at 6:46 pm · Filed under Places to go
I-75 is a long ribbon connecting Jackson Center, OH (the home of Airstream) to Florida’s Everglades. Given that this is December and the entire country seems plunged into temperatures best associated with refrigerator compartments, we chose to head south.
Our goal was to get into the Everglades for a quick one-night stopover. We’ve visited the Everglades before in our 1968 Airstream Caravel, but we’ve never been to the Everglades City area, so that became our destination. Coincidentally, in the morning I received an email from Brad and Mary saying that they were staying at Chokoloskee, and we realized it was basically the same place, and for a bonus, there was a campground offering a $17.50 full-hookup rate for holders of the Passport America discount card.
So while Brad and Mary were out riding a National Park Service boat tour, we pulled up next to their spot and set up camp. After six months of emailing each other as we roamed the country, I think they were a bit shocked to find us finally parked ten feet away!
Before Brad and Mary returned, we also got a chance to photograph some brown pelicans at the marina. I’ve uploaded a bunch of nature photos from this stop to our Flickr album, which you can see here.
We hit it off with Brad and Mary, and ended up putting together a fun dinner made up of various “Indian food in a box” packages we both realized we were carrying, and staying up till 11 p.m. yakking. We’ll see them again on Wednesday.
I’ll talk more about Chokoloskee Island, and Everglades City, in Tuesday’s blog, when I catch up. Here’s where we camped (requires Google Earth to view).
November 30, 2006 at 9:13 am · Filed under Places to go
We had a nearly full house under Bert & Janie’s awning yesterday morning. The weather’s nice enough that people all over the park are socializing outside more, and the swimming pool is becoming our regular afternoon destination.
Rich C drops in on Bert & Janie, and Emma checks it out
Last night we went to Tarpon Springs, just northeast of our location, and to the Sponge Docks area of town. In 1905 the Greek sailors began to arrive in Tarpon Springs and collect sponges from the sea bottom. They still do today, and Dodecanese Blvd is now a tourist area filled with everything related to natural sponges that you can imagine.
We were here last April, when things are busier. Last night it was pretty quiet in town, and the shops closed up at 7:30. But that didn’t matter — we were there to meet a bunch of people at Hella’s for dinner: Bert, Janie, Barry, Susan, Brett, and Lori. A reservation for nine is no problem in Tarpon Springs on a weeknight in November.
The food was great: pan-fried calamari, spanakopita (spinach pie), moussaka, gyros, lemon-egg soup, and saganaki (a flaming cheese appetizer). Then we all walked over to the adjacent bakery, picked out a pile of desserts, and sat back down at the table for another half hour. There will be awesome leftovers today.
Eleanor is trying to find the perfect microwave to go on our new countertop. So far this project has consumed three days, in which she has browsed online sites and visited local stores. Every detail has been scrutinized: weight, dimensions, wattage, color, features. I think more analysis went into this than went into the last car we bought. Of course the perfect microwave is a special order since nobody seems to stock it, but even if it has to be ordered, the good news is that we will have a microwave in the trailer, in a week or two.
November 3, 2006 at 8:25 am · Filed under Places to go
Yesterday we bid adieu to our new friends, Steve, Misty, and Brianna. We spent a lot of time with them in the past few days, and it was great. We had an enormous amount in common, just as we did when we met Bobby, Danine, and Elise in Virginia. We may see them again tonight if they drop in on Ft Wilderness, or maybe as we pass by their home on the Florida panhandle in December.
Ft Wilderness is one of the nicest commercial campgrounds you can visit — it’s Disney, after all. From check-in to check-out, the experience is superb and convenient. It’s not overly “Disnified” with little Mickeys hanging from every tree, but there are free movies and sing-alongs every night, along with a full page of other amenities and programs.
Our friend Brett, and his sister Lori, pulled in a few hours after we did. Lori flew in from Colorado and they are parked right next to us in Brett’s Argosy 28 motorhome. The plan is to spend all day together chowing down at the EPCOT Food & Wine Festival (and riding plenty of rides, as Emma has reminded us).
Halloween dogs, from St Augustine. Click for larger
My latest bedside reading comes courtesy of Bobby (of Virginia), who gave me a couple of books he’d recently read. I just finished “The Professor and the Madman“, which is a fascinating account of the life of the major contributor to the original Oxford English Dictionary — who just happened to be insane and committed for life to a facility in England for having murdered someone. It’s also an interesting account of how the Oxford English Dictionary was made. It might sound like hearing about paint drying, but actually it is quite good. The creation of the OED (the first ever comprehensive English dictionary) was a massive project that took about 80 years and was done with 19th century technology. Reading it, I am reminded of how relatively easy it is to produce an 80 page magazine using computers …
October 28, 2006 at 9:49 am · Filed under Maintenance, Places to go
Ahhhh…. Florida warmth. We zipped down I-95 yesterday and made superb time, arriving in St. Augustine early enough to buy a few necessary supplies at Camping World before arriving at the state park.
Florida greeted us the best way possible: with a warm front. In South Carolina and even half of Georgia, it was running about 66 degrees outside. But the frontal boundary was draped along Florida’s border, so as soon as we arrived the temperature became a balmy 80 degrees and the skies were clear blue. As Emma first stepped out of the car she inhaled deeply and said, “It smells like Florida!” And it felt like summer all over again.
Off with the blue jeans and on with the shorts! Tuck the shoes into the cubby and break out the sandals! Hide that fleece! We’re in Florida now! Let the weekend commence!
But first that stop at Camping World. Maybe you’re wondering what we bought. I bought a new sewer hose with a new fitting. The old one was beginning to leak a tiny bit at the fitting and my philosophy of sewer hoses is that you don’t mess around with marginal ones. Not worth it. I also bought another roll-up white water hose, 50 feet in length, because we’ve been courtesy parking so much lately. We’ve found that 35 feet of hose is not nearly enough to reach most people’s hose outlets.
We also got a new in-line water filter for the hose, since we accidentally left the last one in Jackson Center last August at the Terra Port. And, we shopped for a new shower head but didn’t find what we wanted. Our current shower head is plugging up due to hard water deposits in the jets and we have not been able to get it cleaned out despite several attempts.
Anastasia State Park is a really nice spot right along St Augustine Beach. The sand is white and the beach is broad and beautiful. (We were last here with our Argosy in March 2005.) The campsites are nicely secluded in among oak, palmetto, and mangrove, and very shady. No solar power here, but every state park in Florida has water and 30-amp electric at a minimum.
We were warned that the park was likely to be full this weekend. After all, this is peak camping season in Florida. But still we didn’t bother calling ahead for a reservation. There are multiple commercial campgrounds along Rt A1A that would have been suitable, and we’re happy to wing it. Sure enough, when we pulled in there was a prominent sign saying “CAMPGROUND IS FULL”.
We’ve learned not to take those signs entirely seriously. A big smile for the park ranger will often open up a site that was “taken”. This time, there had been a cancellation only a few minutes before we arrived, so we got that. Our record in this regard is just about perfect — I can’t recall a time we’ve been turned away from a full campground.
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