One last RV/Camping entry for 2009. The weekend before Christmas, we took the motor home to Lake Kissimmee State Park near Lake Wales, Florida. This was the next to last place we camped in the fifth-wheel back in December of 2006, and it is located in a fairly isolated part of Central Florida, so it is a pleasant place to wander to for the weekend.

The campground is a typical state park campground, lots of good sized sites, with most being fairly roomy so that you don’t have to get to know your neighbors too well. There is water and 30 amp service with dump station on site. The road in to and in the campground is paved, but the sites are dirt. One of the great things about this park is that there are a number of lovely old live oaks throughout the campground. You do not have to try hard to get a site with a great big old tree behind it. If you have kids the best thing about this is that it gives you a great natural play set located in your site.

This is a big park, it is over two miles from the front gate to the campground, and a bit further back to the day use area. The day use area has a boat ramp, and a couple of floating docks so that you can tie up your boats if you wish. The canal from the boat launch to the lake usually has a couple of good size gators hanging around, we only saw one on this trip, but on past trips to the park we’ve seen half a dozen big gators drop into the water when boats were coming back to the ramp. There is other wildlife that roams the park including deer and wild turkeys. As noted, this park is in the middle of nowhere, cell service is intermittent to non-existence. There is also an 1870s Cow Camp at this park. It is staffed with a re-enactor that plays the role of a Cracker Cow Boy and will talk to you about cows without ears, cattle drives and the “current” President “Useless S Grant” In the couple of trips that we’ve made here, I’ve only seen the volunteer break character once, for the most part they are pretty good about behaving like they are in the 1870s. Pictures of our trip are on flickr.

This wrapped up our trips for the year. We spent a total of 42 nights in the motor home this year, bringing us to a total of 117 nights in the RV since we acquired it in April of 2007. We’ll try and top that next year.