Two Hams on the Road

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