Thursday, February 18, 2016

We are in Cocoa, Florida (not Cocoa Beach!), east of Orlando and near Cape Kennedy.  We’ll be here for 2 weeks, enjoying nice weather and waiting for a satellite launch.

We spent the weekend in Orlando at a hamfest (amateur radio flea market, although they do have some seminars, etc.).  The drive from Orlando to Cocoa was typical interior Florida – untamed scrubby forests

and usually empty grazing fields.

The coasts of Florida are extremely crowded.  One city bleeds into another without breaks.  But not very far in from the coast you can find fields and undeveloped land.  Looking at the landscape and thinking back 50 years, it’s no wonder Walt Disney picked the middle of Florida for his theme park.

Our current location was chosen for it’s closeness to the Kennedy Space Center, but it’s been a pleasant park.  We don’t have a view, except of other trailers, but we seem to have a wifi booster on a pole right next to our back window.  We’ve had the best Internet service we’ve had in the trailer.  If we can’t have a view, we’ll take good Internet.

We’re taking it easy this week, working on some projects and sorting out stuff in the trailer.  Steve’s done some amateur radio work and I’m rearranging storage so that we can get Maria’s car seat out of the truck and stowed under the bed.

I didn’t get a chance to write about our trip to Key West.  We went on Super Bowl Sunday, hoping that might cut the crowds we’d heard about.  We also started early; we’ve learned that we can beat the crowds in most places by going early.  Key West was no exception.  Parking is limited and can be difficult to find, but we had little problem finding a spot near the Little White House.  We weren’t certain what we should see in our one day, but chose to do this first and we are glad we did.

Stepping out of the truck, we were greeted by chickens!  Apparently, they are a Key West icon.  This fellow seemed anxious to pose. 

President Harry Truman was the first President to use the Little White House, but it’s been used by several Presidents as well as other high-ranking government officials.  After his first 18 months in office, Truman was exhausted.  He had only been vice president for about 83 days before President Franklin Roosevelt died.  The war with Germany ended shortly after that, but the war with Japan was raging.  He made the decision to use the atom bomb to end the war and hopefully save millions of soldiers live. 

His doctor ordered rest and the Navy offered the facilities at Key West. The building that housed the commandant was available, it was secure and the weather was lovely.  Truman continued to visit throughout his presidency. 

The house was used by the Navy and others until 1974, when the Navy closed that part of the base.  A developer bought the unused part of the base and developed a gated residential community, signing the Little White House over to the state of Florida and helping in its restoration.  It’s still available for government use, as needed. 

We couldn’t take pictures inside the house and it was difficult to get a picture of the outside.

Strolling through the gated community around the Little White House was quite pleasant.  Trees shade the streets and the only pedestrian traffic is dog walkers and tourists headed for the Little White House.  The least expensive single family dwelling in the gated community is $1,150,000.  You can get a condo for under $600,000.  Without an ocean view. 

We had a nice lunch at a restaurant with an outside patio.

The weather was fine for me.  Steve wore his jacket, as there was a good breeze.  We watched the world go by.  And the conch train, which pulled tourists around town.

The bar on the second floor in the picture advertised itself as a clothing optional bar.  We did not check it out.

As we walked around town, we found the original Margaritaville Café.  We didn’t check out the café, but did hit the store next door, where Steve found a polo shirt!  White, of course.

After wandering around for a while, we called it a day and headed for home.  Before settling in for the Super Bowl, we went down to the dock to catch the sunset.

It was a nice ending to a good day.

Deb

Deb

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

We are at John Prince Park Campground in Palm Beach County, Florida.  This is my view as I type this post.

These ducks just floated past.

We spent 2 nights at Trail Lakes Campground in the Everglades.  We enjoyed lunch in Everglades City, sitting out on a covered deck watching airboat tours come and go.

And Steve enjoying a milkshake.

Then we were going to spend 2 nights at Long Pine Key Campground in the Everglades National Park before heading for the Keys.  They don’t take reservations at Long Pine Key, but since there are no utilities at your site, they rarely fill up.  We’ve stayed there on our two other trips to the Everglades and had our choice of spots.  However, this time they were full.  We could have gone on to the Flamingo campground, but it’s an hour further into the park and usually sites with utilities are booked up.  So after some hunting on the Internet and a few telephone calls, we found a spot in Florida City for two nights.  It had a laundry and was close to both a Walmart and a Sonny’s BBQ place.

It’s always hard to tell the nature of the RV parks before hand.  We check reviews on line and don’t go any place not fairly well rated.  But you still don’t know what you are going to get.  The vegetation at this place was a little overrun, but it had been raining a lot lately.  The parking spots were grass, which can be nice, with cement pads for the picnic tables at each site.  Sometimes you get the reverse.

I’m usually behind the wheel when we park, as Steve gives much better directions and I’ve trained myself to do what he tells me (when parking).  So he went in to register at the park and I got in the driver’s seat.  As we got closer to our site, he got out to direct me.  We passed a group enjoying some beverages and I was cheered for driving.  “You go girl!” and “Way to go!” were heard!  I suspect alcohol was involved.  I’ve gotten several compliments lately for driving and backing up.  But backing up is usually a two-person job and you have to find the combination that works for you.

When I first started reading RV blogs and comments on forums, there were a number of comments about two ladies who were traveling together.  If they had to back into a site, they walked around the campground until they found someone who would do it for them!  I haven’t read about them lately, so either they are no longer traveling, or have figured out how to park.

But we got backed in, although we had to use our 4-wheel drive due to the ruts in the grass/mud from previous occupants.  The park turned out to be a friendly one, with a few long-term, year-round residents, a number of seasonal residents, and a fair number of transients, like us.  With 10 washers and dryers, getting the laundry done worked out well and we were able to get stocked up at Walmart. 

The night before we were to leave and head for the Keys, a big storm came through.  It rained hard all night with lots of wind.  We happened to be parked under a tree with some kind of berries that squished when you stepped on them.  But they had a hard enough shell that it sounded like acorns hitting our roof all night.  Steve of course had taken out his hearing aids and slept like a baby.

The next morning the wind was still strong.  Strong enough that Steve was a bit worried about being on the 7-mile bridge with the trailer.  Since I hadn’t slept much, I was all for staying another night if we could.  Steve checked, we could stay, so I went back to bed.  I think all the berries had been blown off the tree by that point.

So we were one day late heading for the Florida Keys, but it was a good decision.  There wasn’t much wind and we had blue skies.

This is what much of the drive along the Keys looked like:

Sometimes you could see the ocean, which seemed to have several colors.  It was hard to capture in a photo, but maybe you can see it here.

Most of the time, the view was more like this.

Or just like driving through a small beach town, with lots of souvenir shops.

For much of the way, there was a second bridge paralleling the road bridge.

Frequently, these had been made into fishing bridges, but not always.  I suspect these are the previous bridge and the supports might be used again when the current bridge needs replaced.

Camping spaces are notoriously hard to come by on the Keys and since we hadn’t booked 6 months out, I wasn’t sure what our RV park would be like.  We were pleasantly surprised.  While we didn’t have an ocean view, it was a nice wide site, and a pull thru (drive in/drive out) with no backing up required.  The weather made it even nicer.  After we got parked, we walked over to the pool side café and had lunch. 

The pool:

The café:

The resort also has dock space for your boat!  It’s not a luxury resort; no spa and not manicured, landscape sites, but seems very nice.  It was also about the most expensive park we’ve stayed in, but we expected that on the Keys.

And while it’s expensive on a nightly basis, it’s not bad on a yearly basis.  The yearly rent for an internal site is just over $11,000, utilities included.  (Ocean sites are about $20,000).  Which is why many of the sites have had improvements.

This site had a large class A motor home, a thatched roof deck almost as large and a paver patio.  If they don’t stay here all year, I bet they still rent it year round.

The Keys don’t all have beaches.  The shores look more like a lake shore or have mangrove trees with their roots in the water.  There is a small beach at the resort, but for a good beach, you’d need to drive to the state park about 5 miles away.

Walking is a common sport among RVers.  Early morning is the preferred time and you’ll see lots of people out walking.  But any time of day you’ll find walkers and especially dog walkers, out and about.

This is already long and I haven’t yet talked about Key West.  I think I’ll close now and try and get a Key West post done tomorrow.

Deb

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

We are at the Big Cypress National Preserve, which borders on the Everglades National Park.  We’re parked at Trail Lakes Campground, which reminds me of old Florida.  Here’s a shot out our back window, as dusk settled in.

Our side window looks right into the Everglades landscape.  It’s basically a prairie growing in water.

We stopped at one of my favorite restaurants on our way, Joanie’s Blue Crab Café.  Nothing fancy, but if they have blue crabs, it’s the best.

Steve says the crab cakes are great, too!

Birds are plentiful down here and one of the reasons we came back.  This egret (I think) was at the rear of our campsite this morning.

Steve went on a photo safari this morning and came back with some good shots.  The water was quite high, so heading under this bridge was an experience!

There are orchids in the everglades, but this is the only one in bloom that he saw:

A little fog created a great picture:

We remember these birds from our first trip to the Everglades: the anhinga.

And I think this is the female:

And the mighty osprey, once on the endangered species list with the bald eagle:

And the last wildlife sighting – a turtle (we haven’t figured out what he’s doing with his leg).

We left Plano January 5, after celebrating Maria’s third birthday.

We stopped several places on our way to Orlando, including Meaher State Park on Mobile Bay, where we caught this great sunset:

We were at Disney for over a week, helping Olga with Maria while Natasha attended a conference.  It’s always fun to watch Maria interact with the characters.

After Disney, we spent a few days near the Villages, visiting with Steve’s Uncle Eep and our friends Joy and Sam.

We stayed on a horse farm that’s quite an operation.  The centerpiece of the farm was a carriage museum.  They do horse training and boarding and hold many various competitions and shows.  I think they specialized in training carriage horses.  They had a nice restaurant on site where we had lunch one day.  The place changed hand in 2011 and I think the new owner is working on maximizing profits.  They have a wedding venue and have recently installed RV spaces to accommodate event attendees.  Since there were no events that weekend, we were able to get a place there.  It’s sometimes difficult to get a place near the Villages.

From there, we headed for the LazyDays RV Park, near Tampa.  The leader of the Alaska tour, Spike, holds a rally there each year for past and future tour attendees.  About 12 people from our tour where there and it was fun to see them again.

LazyDays is a huge place, incorporating not only an RV park, but a large RV dealership.  Luckily, they didn’t have anything that tempted us.  They have 123 service bays and couldn’t fit us in until the end of February!  We got the work done elsewhere.

I’ll close with two pictures I haven’t had a chance to post.
Like grandfather, like granddaughter.  My two nerds:

And one of sweet Maria,

So long for now. 

Deb