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Florida Keys

December 17, 2014 Drew

Beautiful, sunny, relaxed, good times… We’ve finally made it to the Florida Keys! We have had a really nice set of days here, and are definitely reluctant to move on.

A fellow RV’er we met further north suggested this campground because it is in an excellent location, has friendly people, and is a great value – he wasn’t lying, this place is awesome! We have a really nice, shaded spot. The ocean is only a few steps away, and the pool is even closer than that.

We spent a day in Key West; did a little sightseeing, and a lot of eating and drinking. We saw Fort Zachary Taylor, we had some $1 Yuengling drafts and ate some fish for lunch, we wandered Duval Street, we ate a lobster roll, we found the Southern Most Point in the continental US, we missed the Hemingway house by 5 minutes (oops), we ate some more fish for dinner and had an amazing slice of Key Lime pie, and finally capped everything off getting drunk while singing Karoke with a drag queen. I’m not sure what else we could have thrown in there to have a better time except maybe meeting Bill Murray on the street… because who doesn’t want to meet Bill Murray on the street.

We watched this chicken cross the road… Noelle wanted to ask him why, but he wasn’t having any of that.

After the adventures in Key West, we proceeded to sit on our butts for the next three days. It wasn’t all fun and games though – Noelle made me work at the pool – it’s a tough life.

I know this post is a bit happy-go-lucky, but we have really had a good time this week. We’ve been to a few places so far on our little journey, and plan to see a few more. I can only hope that we will have more weeks as blissful as this one!

So we’ve gone as far south (in the continental US) that we can… I guess we will just have to see how far north we can go too. Onward!

Florida, Road Trip

Coral Castle

December 12, 2014 Drew

We stopped at the Coral Castle, as we continue to head down to the Florida Keys. Overall impression… Meh. We also had a bit of an incident at Walmart!

The Coral Castle is located right off highway 1, and is the first “attraction” we’ve been to in South Florida. At $15 each, the entrance fee to this place is steep – especially given the lack of anything to actually look at besides a few rocks here and there.

Don’t get me wrong, the little Latvian American dude name Ed who built this crazy little place did some good work… but just not $15 dollars good. In fact, he actually knew what his work was worth, and charged people 10¢ to check it out.

I’m no math expert, but everyone knows that 10 cents in the 40’s to $15 today is about a 7.5% annual rate of inflation – sounds like someone got a little greedy over the years!

So after being ripped off at the Coral Castle, we headed over to spend the night at Walmart. Everything looked good when we arrived around 4PM. A couple other rigs were already there, and we settled in nicely.

Bam! All of a sudden something rocked the camper hard. Noelle and I ran out as fast as we could. We were both worried it might be a hit and run situation. Outside, we saw a car wedged up against the spare tire on the back of the camper. The lady inside was kind of leaning over and shaking.

I’m freaking out – Noelle calls 911, I try to knock on the window to see if the lady will wake up. I could see that she was breathing, but she wouldn’t respond. Meanwhile, her car was still running, and was scratching further along the tire.

The police arrived, the lady eventually woke up, and they took her to the hospital. They said she might have had a diabetic seizure. The camper appears undamaged except for a torn tire cover – whew! If she had hit any other part of the camper, there would have been damage – if we hadn’t been there, she might have driven out onto the street or hit somebody.

After all that excitement, we decided to skip the whole Walmart thing and headed to a campground for the night. Another exciting day on the road!

Florida, Road Trip

The Campground Shuffle

December 11, 2014 Drew

We’ve had a pretty easygoing week in Port St. Lucie, and are looking forward to heading down to the Keys soon. We spent another great day at the beach, and enjoyed a few more days of our work/ camp lifestyle.

This post is going to be a bit of a reflection on our experience in finding and staying with the various campgrounds we have come across so far. In short: they are a random mess of prices, amenities, attitudes, and ambiance.

Take the current location; a bona fide “RV Resort.” We found this place via Passport America (they provide a 50% discount at participating campgrounds, many times with seasonal restrictions or a max number of applicable nights). The description read something like “Large Sites, Beautiful grounds, Pool & Clubhouse, WIFI, etc…” The Tripadvisor reviews were decent; most said something like “Great campground.”

This campground has the highest undiscounted rate of any that we have stayed at yet – it has also been one of the worst. The place is well manicured, the RV pads are level concrete, the bathrooms are clean… the sites are also tiny, the RV’s are only a couple feet apart. The “management” has a list of rules and regulations six pages long, and signs posted everywhere reminding guests to flush the toilets and only use the wifi for “1 hour for email.” I don’t even know what that means!

The worst part: the plumbing in the bathhouse barely functions; the toilets don’t flush right, and the water in the shower fluctuates wildly between scalding hot and freezing cold. Keep in mind the full rate at this place is as much as a decent hotel!

But this little parking lot calls itself a “RV Resort”, and has somehow convinced a number of real people to write decent reviews and ratings… WTF! This experience highlights what we have seen so far – price doesn’t indicate quality, and people can be real dumb.

So far the worst site has been the most expensive. On the flipside, the cheapest site was one of the best so far. That little campground had a beautiful setting, best bathhouse, awesome clubhouse, and great people. It felt a little like I was leaving home when we moved on! It looks like finding a good campground involves a mixture of research, trial and error, and a bit of good luck. It’s always an adventure with each new site, and hopefully we get some of that luck in the Keys!

Florida, Road Trip

Orion Launch!

December 5, 2014 Drew

We’re staying at a great campground this week situated right across from the Canaveral AFB. We saw the launch of the first Orion space vehicle, and it was awesome!

We got up at the crack of dawn on Thursday to watch the launch. You could just barely see the big Delta IV Heavy rocket across the lagoon – we set up our chairs and settled in for the view. The lagoon area is beautiful; the sunrise was amazing. While we waited, we saw a bunch of dolphins swim by, I saw a manatee or two, and the pelicans were fishing for the mullet that would periodically jump out of the water.

First we heard that a boat was delaying the launch… then the wind put it on hold again. The sun continued to rise, and we continued to wait. We heard that a valve issue was causing problems. At this point, I’m thinking how hard can this be? I mean, I got a 50 year old VW bus running with no valve issues… it’s not like this is rocket science… OK maybe it is.

They scrubbed the launch for Thursday morning, but we were back Friday. At 7:05AM, a bright light and a big cloud of smoke appeared. The rocket almost just sat there for a second, then accelerated up into the sky. It disappeared into the low hanging clouds within seconds – Noelle and I kind of glanced at each other with the same thought… that was it? We waited around two days to see a little bit of light take three seconds to disappear from view?

Then the sound hit us. It started as a low rumble, and crescendoed into a full blown roar. We couldn’t see the rocket anymore, but we felt that rumble all the way through our feet for what seemed like a long time. It slowly faded, the vibrations eased, and silenced ensued.

Well it wasn’t really silence because the nice lady with that lovely harsh, grating voice kept asking the little kid that was with her if he could hear the rocket. I’m sure if the kid was old enough to talk he would have said something like “Yes lady, I hear the damn rocket! It’s shaking my little boots off, now shut the hell up and just enjoy the experience!”

Here are my feeble attempts to take pictures – my lens is too small, my iso is too high, my skills are non-exsistent…

The launch was cool, and I’m really glad we were here to see it. I also broke out my fishing pole for the first time. I went to a bait shop just down the road, and got some great advice from the lady running the place. She got me some frozen mullet as bait, some hooks, and some 20lb line. I was honestly a little scared to catch some monster that my little cheap push button rod and reel couldn’t handle, but it all worked out. I caught a few big catfish, and some sea trout – success! Now I just need to graduate up to cleaning and eating them!

Florida, Road Trip

Walmart

December 2, 2014 Drew

We can officially cross “sleeping in a Walmart parking lot” off that big bucket full of lists we are carrying around with us – Success! We also ate a decent BBQ lunch at the Daytona Pig Stand – Yumm!

We’re headed further south into Florida, and in an attempt to keep the costs down a little, I’m trying out a strategy of dry camping (read: sleeping like a hobo) between campsite stays. Today, we headed for a Love’s truckstop down the road a bit, but found that it truly was a truckstop with overnight parking meant only for truckers or people who can’t hear very well. The noise of an entire parking lot of idling trucks was deafening, so we made the decision to head a little further down the road to Walmart.

It is fairly well known that Walmart has an unwritten rule that allows RV’rs to park overnight. Actually they had a written rule on the sign right outside the spot we picked that said in big letters “No Overnight Parking”. But screw that noise, we’re staying! A few more rigs joined us by the end of the evening – they parked right next to us too which was weird given the massive expanse of empty parking lot they had to work with.

When we first arrived, we naturally went in to do some shopping. There’s just… so many deals! We might have bought another boogie board, and some chips, and maybe even a deadbolt kit that I want to eventually install on the door… We went back an hour or so later. Noelle may have tried on some clothes including a t-shirt with wolves howling at a moon with Santa and his reindeer silhouetted like ET… We may have bought some Subway, and then returned a few hours later to buy some bread and some paper towels…

All in all, this “free” night at Wally World has cost us more than a night at a hotel! “It’s simple economics son; I don’t understand it at all, but… God I love it!”