August 8, 2010 by LadyCC.

This weekend the CurbCrusher gang headed out to the beach at Sebastian Inlet SP. It was about a 2 hour drive for us and luckily we had good weather which is not always a guarantee in August in FL.

We arrived in the park which has several entrances and set up in site #14 which was just across from the channel.  We only had the road to the boat ramp/picnic area between us and the water. The site consisted of a gravel base, shared water between sites#13 & #14, 30A power,a combo fire ring/grill and a picnic table. We had the end site so no one was on our curb side which gave us a little more privacy. The breeze off the channel was nice since it was so hot and there were few bugs at the campsite.

After setting up we loaded the bike stroller with all the goods needed for the beach and rode our bikes to the beach. We found out there are no bike racks and there is no rinse off at the beach entry from the office area. Later we found the shower but it was behind the Fishing Museum nowhere near the beach area. We wheeled our stuff out and set up on the beach. There was a lot of wind that afternoon and the waves were fierce. So were the no-see-ums. We waded out into the water and just a step beyond my waist I hit deeper water that was over my head. There seemed to be a steep drop off in that location. Also the beach had a shelf of sand that made it hard to see the water. If you had little ones I would not recommend this section of beach for them to play because the visibility of the water was hard to see from the beach since it was so much lower than the sand. We stayed about an hour an a half and then called it quits to go back and make dinner. First night is always a cookout so we made hamburgers and hot dogs that Preteen Curbcrusher likes. Later we walked around the marina area and near the office to check out the water. The ranger that checked us in said we would be able to see dolphins in the channel and we did as we walked along the water. We also saw wild bunnies in the campground near the bath houses.Then we went inside to watch one of the 2 movies that we brought with us for the weekend.

Saturday morning we are headed to the McLarty Museum down the road about 2 miles. Nowhere did it say on the website or in the paperwork I received that there was a cost to enter but there was a $2 pp charge. They have a movie about the 1715 Plate Voyage of the Spanish Crown that was lost at sea and how people have found some of the treasure including Mel Fisher. The museum is quite small and has an observation area outside of where the treasures have been found scattered on the coast.

After leaving the museum we head to the beach just up the road from it. We liked this section better since it was flatter and there was no drop off in the water. The water was cold to us, especially since we were in it the day before and it seemed warm then. We were only about a mile south of where we were yesterday. We stayed until about 1 pm then went back to the campsite for lunch and rest. CC and I spent our time reading and enjoying the breeze and PTCC napped. About 3 pm we headed over to the Fishing Museum to see what was in there. They have a movie also about cutting the channel and everything you ever wanted to know about fishing. I personally hate fishing, don’t eat fish, so this was not the highlight of my trip.

After the museum we drove over to the marina where they rent kayaks  and motorboats to see what it looked like. Then drove to the  cove area to see if we cold snorkel. It was too shallow and there were not a lot of fish to be seen there. Also a storm was coming in so we headed to the fishing pier to take a look before it got to us. It is a really nice pier but once again fishing doesn’t interest me and I was afraid someone would cast and hook me (it has happened before when I was young I got a hook in my eyelid from someone not paying attention to those around them). It also had the requisite fishy smell. The one good thing was we had a great view of the surfers at the beach north of the jetty. There seemed to be well over 100 that afternoon.We watched them surf for awhile but after the 3rd lightning flash we left to go back to our campsite.

We got dinner together and hung out at the campsite until it got dark then walked around. The night before when we walked it was steamy but since the storm blew in it was very comfortable for walking around. Then back to the RV again and to watch our 2nd movie we brought with us.

One thing I noted was this is a 24 hour park and if you get sites by the channel expect to hear road noise from fisherman coming and going at all hours. Probably not as much a problem if you book sites farther away from the road. Overall park was OK but I would give it a 5/10. Mostly because it is so spread out. There  are 5 entrances we found: a beach side parking lot, McLarty Museum, Camping area/boat launch/fishing museum, Marina rentals, and main picnic area/surfing area/pier. So if you don’t bring a car it would be harder to get around. Especially since the bike paths do not go over the bridge- they stop just before it and it doesn’t seem safe to me to try it even though we saw bicyclists riding on the bridge. We would probably come back just not right away.

Photos are on Flickr.

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July 24, 2010 by steve.

Well, home for a little less than a month, and we’re already headed out for a weekend trip to Rainbow Springs State Park just west of Ocala, Florida. After our long trip out west, we’ve decided to try and spend the next few months close to home with short drives. Of course if feels weird to hook everything up and head out for a two hour drive. For some reason it feels like I should be driving for six to eight hours before stopping. Also, since it’s summer, we’ve decided to try and visit springs and beaches until Halloween.

Rainbow Springs State Park is separated into three sections. There is the spring head, the campground and the tubing area. You are only actually at the springs at the spring head, which is the source of the Rainbow River which runs by the campground and the tubing area. As a camper, you get access to all three areas, but you have drive to the tubing area and the spring head.

The spring head is located near the intersection of FL-40 and US-41. It was originally a tourist attraction until the mid-70’s. So there are walking trails that take you by the old zoo area and by a number a man made waterfalls that were featured in the gardens. You can also swim in the springs, nice cool refreshing water at 72 degrees F. The water is very clear, and a great place to swim on a hot day. The only drawback is that the access to the swim area is off a large dock platform, and you can’t really stand up in the water once you get in. So there is a large crowd of people trying to hang onto the dock. If you move away from the dock, the crowd thins out, but you have to tread water or swim.

The tubing Area is located about a mile and a quarter south of the campground entrance to the park. For day visitors that want to tube, they park at the tubing area and take a tram up to the campground river access. If you are staying the campground, you can tube down and take the tram back (the tram has a fee that is not covered by park admission or camping fees), or you can do what CurbCrusher gang did: I drove down to the tubing area first thing in the morning and parked the toad and rode a bike back to the campground. There is not a lot else to the tram area other than the parking lot and a boardwalk that leads to the river. Tubing on the river is pleasant as the entire Rainbow River is an idle zone for power boats, so there is not a lot of worrying about getting run over.

The campground is located along the Rainbow River between the head springs and the tubing area. It is at most a quarter mile walk from the campground to the river bank. At the river bank, there is a marked off area for swimming and a tube/canoe/kayak launch point. The tram from the tubing area drops folks off close to the river bank, so there are not a lot non-campers wandering around the campground. The campsites are full hookup with 30 and 50 amp, water and sewer. There are two or three pull-thru sites and most sites wide and of good length. There is very (VERY) little shade in this campground, and on hot days you can hear every single air conditioning unit running all day long as the rigs sit in the sun. The bathhouses are fairly new and clean and comfortable. There is a store/office, a game room and a small pool that are available at the campground. You can also rent canoes, kayaks and tubes from a concessionaire located by the river bank.

We had a great weekend at Rainbow Springs. We tubed the river on Saturday morning, a trip that took about two or two and a half hours. The rest of the time we relaxed and enjoyed the company of our fellow Florida Pop Up Camper club folks that showed up. We did take some time to head up the head spring and enjoy the gardens and the spring water for a couple of hours. We also found it very refreshing and relaxing to just sit in the river near the campground and enjoy the cool water. Pictures, as always, are in our Flickr account.

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June 16, 2010 by steve.

Well, almost 60 days and we are all still here and blessed to have had a great family experience traveling around the country. Today was a day to enjoy the Cloudland Canyon State Park in north-west Georgia. We visited this park back in September 2007, during one of the worst droughts in modern times. Of course what is Cloudland Canyon known for? Its waterfalls. And what do waterfalls need to survive? Rain.

We started the day with a visit to both the falls, which are creatively named Waterfall #1 and Waterfall #2 on the hiking map. The waterfalls are at the end of about a half-mile trail, straight down. I’m not sure why they post a distance on the trail, the distance is not important. What is key to surviving the trail is the fact that there are more than 400 stairs on the trail. They are both very pretty sights, and worth the stair climbing. One nice thing about this trip is that both waterfalls were active. On our last trip they were little more than drips. Once we get the pictures posted, I’ll post some comparisons in the blog.

Following the waterfall hike, we headed back to the RV for lunch and a nap (at least CurbCrusher napped, Lady and Little CurbCrusher played on the computer and sat outside and read.). The nap was important as we needed to be rested for our trip to the Canyon Grill located a couple of miles from the park. Truth be known, this is the real reason for our stop in Cloudland Canyon. On our last trip we discovered the Canyon Grill, and had such a great meal, we knew we wanted to come back some day.

The Canyon Grill opens at five in the afternoon Wednesday through Sunday, so we showed up at the door around five-fifteen so that we wouldn’t look too eager. Once again we had a great meal, Little CurbCrusher enjoyed the chicken strip appetizer and a sweet potato, Lady CurbCrusher ordered the ground fillet, and I had the pork tenderloin. As with our first trip, I can’t say enough good about the food, the portions, the value and the service that you get at the Canyon Grill. We sampled the deserts, Lady CurbCrusher had the short cake with strawberries and pecans, while I had the amaretto brownie sundae and Little CurbCrusher went for the vanilla bean ice cream. Everything is homemade, and Little CurbCrusher said the ice cream was better than Blue Bell (our gold standard (actually homemade ice cream of the kind cranked out on Aunt Pansy’s porch at family holidays is the gold standard, but sadly that doesn’t happen anymore and I’ve replaced that with Blue Bell)). I was not thrilled with the amaretto brownie, but that’s because I really don’t like the taste of amaretto, however it was the only chocolate option on the desert list. But if you put enough ice cream on the brownie before eating it, it kills the amaretto taste, and you just get the two best taste: homemade vanilla ice cream and chocolate.

Back at the campsite, we sat around fat and happy. We started a small fire in the ring to complete our last night of “real” camping. If we stop tomorrow night, it will be more of a place to sleep, not camp. This is the second time we’ve been to Cloudland Canyon, and I hope it’s not our last. This is a great park and a great place to be. I took one last walk around the camping loop after dusk, and the fireflies light the sides of the road like beacons, and it is just a peaceful, easy feeling (hmmm. That sounds familiar for some reason :-)). The only negative thing about this park is that it is so far from home, and that you pretty much have to drive through Atlanta on I-75 to get here. I think we may try running down US-27 and then over to Tifton tomorrow to see if that drive is any better.

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June 16, 2010 by steve.

Well Lady CurbCrusher tired of writing every day, and we’re only a couple of days from home. So it looks like I’ll have to take over the day to day blog for the last couple of days of the trip. We’re still on a limited bandwidth wi-fi, so no pictures until we get back home.

We woke up in Jellystone Mammoth Cave, not only the worst RV parking (yes even worse than the Walmart parking lot back in Winslow) on this trip, but the most over-priced and overrated also. Imagine if you’re going to build an RV park, so you find a nice steep hill. Then when placing the RV sites you have a choice, you could put them parallel to slope of the hill, so that one side would be up and the other low, or you could put them perpendicular to the slope of the hill so that the front would be lower than the back. Or, you do what the Jellystone people did and put them on about a 45 degree angle to the slope of the hill so that there is no way in Hades that anyone will be able to level their RV. Then you have a choice where to put the sewer outlet, you could put it on the downhill side, since stuff flows downhill, or like our site geniuses at Jellystone have done you put it on the uphill side. The site was so unlevel, that even after moving the RV around on the site, we could not dump gray water from the tank, because the site tilted the motorhome away from the dump valve. I guess this is what happens when you let a cartoon bear design an RV park. All in all I was terribly disappointed in Jellystone. I’ve seen Jellystone campgrounds next to the roads I’ve traveled on for a long time, and always thought the concept was a great one, leveraging the most famous cartoon bear and his cartoon National Park with a campground. So I was really happy to be staying in a Jellystone campground, even a the premium price that Jellystone Mammoth Cave charged. As noted the sites were awful, there is no other way to describe it, and the atmosphere and environment were not much better. The campground was dirty, the sites close together. Our advice to you echos what we kept hearing in Yosemite and Yellowstone on this trip: STAY AWAY FROM THE BEARS. Yogi just can’t pull off a campground.

Once we got out of the campground, we headed south on I-65. We recovered some ground, the 35 miles from Bowling Green to Cave City, and then headed out of the state of Kentucky. We looped around Nashville on TN-155 and changed over to I-24 headed toward Chattanooga. Somewhere along the way we stopped to fill up and eat lunch. There are some hills to climb in this area, but I pulled up the elevation on the GPS and it seems that highest we got was about 2000 feet. Of course that’s nothing now that we’ve crossed the Big Horns at 9666 feet and the Continental Divide a couple of times at 8000+ feet. Just outside of Chattanooga, we headed south on I-59 for a few miles. We exited at Trenton and headed up GA-136 to the Cloudland Canyon State Park. We visited this park back in September of 2007, enjoyed our stay here and thought this would be a good last stop for our GART.

So here we are a little over 6000 miles and some 55 days into our Great American Road Trip. We’re about 600 miles from home and haven’t decided if that’s a one or a two day trip. When we leave Thursday morning we may very well get about six hours into the trip and decide that it’s time go ahead and get home, or we may just stretch it out one more night. We are one day ahead of our original schedule.

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May 13, 2010 by steve.

Time for the final leg on the first part of our trip. We have to leave Yosemite and head to Salt Lake City. I had been worried about the drive into and out of Yosemite for some time. I’d posted on irv2.com and canvased everyone in the campground about how to leave. The general consensus was that we should go down CA-140 and the to CA-99 and to I-80 to head to Salt Lake City. I ended up choosing to go down CA-120 to exit Yosemite, and had no problems. I actually found driving CA-120 out of Yosemite easier than driving CA-41 into the park. There was a good sized climb to Crane Flats as your leave the park, but the motorhome handled it with no problems. There was a bunch of downhill driving, but the grade brake did the job and kept us in control. The nice part was that CA-120 was wider and had more room on the sides (even a bit of a shoulder) that CA-41 did. The “worst” part, the one that everyone warned me about was Priest Grade just west of Groveland. This grade is steep, and has a number of switch backs, but there seem to be good straights between the switchbacks, so it doesn’t feel as right-left-right-left as CA-41 did on the way in. As we exited Groveland, I let the grade brake work until about half way down the grade. I had a couple of people that had built up behind me, so I pulled into a pull-out and let them pass. Then I manually shifted to 2nd and finished going down the grade.

The mistake I made was at the split of CA-120 and CA-49. I had considered continuing up CA-49 to US-50 to cross the Sierras, but I choose to follow CA-120 to CA-99 then go north to Sacramento to catch I-80 and go over Donner Pass. I think my time to Reno would have been about the same, maybe even a little better if I’d just gone up CA-49. Instead I had the “pleasure” of dealing with city traffic around Sacramento, which was a pain. Much less fun than driving in and out of Yosemite.

We pushed on for a twelve hour day and ended in Elko, Nevada for the night. We stayed at the Double Dice RV Park (our pics), which is a big gravel parking lot with hookups. We were there about 14 hours, so no complaints, we got what we wanted: electricity and water.

We spent another four hours on Mother’s Day driving from Elko to Salt Lake City. There are 410 miles of I-80 in Nevada, and they are a lot of nothing. We came up with two new state “nicknames” for Nevada based on our I-80 experiences: The Bush State and The Prison State. Lady CurbCrusher noted that there are no trees along the interstate, just a lot of bushes. The other thing that is prevalent along I-80 are signs that read “Enter Prison area. Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers. Emergency Stopping Only.” It seemed like about every 60 miles you would see one of these signs. I never realized that Nevada had so many prisons.

We reached the goal of the Pony Express RV Resort (our pics) in Salt Lake City on Mother’s Day afternoon. Lady CurbCrusher had to ride for a while, but we were early enough to go out had have a dinner and relax for a while. That completes about 3700 miles of our Great American Road Trip. Just over half of the 6600 miles that we think we are going to travel. We are also headed back to the east. We spent so much time headed west, that I tried to get on I-80 west in Sacramento. Lady CurbCrusher pointed out that I wanted I-80 EAST, and I wanted to argue until I realized that as usual, she was right.

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May 2, 2010 by steve.

We woke early and headed to the Petrified Forest National Park. A great park that you drive through with lots of stops. It wanders through part of the Painted Desert, which has some beautiful views. The park is about 20 miles east of the Holbrook KOA.

After visiting the park we headed to Holbrook to hook up and head west, to the Grand Canyon, about 180 miles away. We got back to Holbrook, hooked up the car, unhoooked the utilities and headed out. We hit the road about 10:30am on Wednesday. We planned a shopping stop in Winslow, Az which has a Walmart that is easily accessible from I-40.

We arrived in Winslow about 11:30am and hit the Walmart. We got an ice-cream cake for Little CurbCrusher’s birthday which was the following day, and she was planning on waking up on her birthday in the Grand Canyon. We headed back out on the frontage road and found that I-40 was closed due to high-winds and limited visibility. There are apparently no alternate routes from Winslow to Flagstaff, so we headed to a nearby Texaco and filled up with petrol, the parked in the northwest corner of the Walmart parking lot. And there we would stay
until 6:40 am the next morning. The winds blew all night long and the dust was thick. The parking lot filled up with 18 wheelers, other RV’s and cars just looking for a place to park. By nightfall, just about all the flat areas around the exit were packed with semis.

After a night of being buffeted by winds that were reported at 35 - 50 mph, with gust to 70, we woke to the sound of trucks pulling out of the parking lot. We ate breakfast, had Little CurbCrusher open her gifts, and then hit the road. After making about 15 miles west on I-40 traffic came to a complete standstill. We sat still for about an hour to an hour and a half until the traffic started moving again. It is times like these that it is nice to be travelling in a motorhome. At least we had all our facilities with us. The winds were still blowing at around 30 mph, so the 50 some odd miles that we had to drive on I-40 were tiring.

We exited I-40 at MM 201 and headed up US-89. We did this for two reasons, one was to approach the Grand Canyon from the east entrance, and the other was to stop and visit the Wupatki National Monument. If we had been smart, and not following the GPS we would have driven by the Sunset Crater NP also. As you head up US-89 (a very nice road to drive by the way), you get to a sign that says turn right to go to Sunset Crater NP and Waptuki. If you look at a map, it shows that this road is a loop (approx 35 miles) and it appears that Wupatki is
right next to the north end of the loop. Actually, Wupatki is 13 miles in from the North end of the loop, which means that if you follow the sign (and not the GPS) you get two parks for the price of one.

We toured and photographed Wupatki and finally departed and headed up US-89 to AZ-64 and turned west. As soon as we did this, we encountered snow. I checked the outside temperature and it was 30 degrees F. We had not expected this. The snow was intermittent, and after a while we came to the NP entrance station. We continued the drive along the south rim until we reached the Grand Canyon Village and it’s full hook up RV park, Trailer Village. We checked in and pulled into our site around 12:30. Our 180 mile trip from Holbrook had taken approximately 14 hours. If we keep this rate of speed up we may never finish this trip.

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April 27, 2010 by steve.

Well, no entry for a day or two from me, too much driving. It turned out the trains near the campground in Vicksburg did not bother me, so I awoke refreshed and we headed out of Vicksburg on Monday morning with a goal of making it to the Grand Canyon by Wednesday. That’s over 1400 miles and we seem to have been averaging about 50 mph on the road, so that’s 28 hours of driving. Yay!

In breaking this up, I decided that I wanted to try and get to Amarillo, Tx on Monday night, that would get about 700 miles out of the way. So we headed across I-20 through Louisiana and into Texas. Lady CurbCrusher was adamant about wanting to skip the stacked freeways in Dallas, so we headed up US-69 around Tyler to Greenville, then across US-380 to Decatur where we caught US-287 and headed up to Amarillo. The worst part of this drive was from Greenville to Decatur. It was a lot of stop lights, and some of the worst drivers I’ve had to drive amongst in a long time. I wish we weren’t on such a tight schedule though. There was a jet-way graveyard along US-69 that I would have liked to stop and photograph, and along US-380 there was a WWII POW Camp sign that I would have liked to follow. Once we turned onto US-287 the ride was nice. There is little traffic and it is a four lane road. There are also a number of picnic areas, some are just that but two or three are really nice rest stops that rival any state welcome station. The only thing is that there are signs “Beware of rattlesnakes.”

We arrived at the Amarillo West RV Park around 11 pm. This is mostly an overnight kind of place. The roads are dirt and the sites are gravel with water, electric and sewer. There appeared to be cable, but we didn’t hook it up. If you show up after closing you look for an empty spot and park, which is what we did.

We woke up and visited the Cadillac Ranch, which is only a mile down the road. Came back, hooked up and went on our way.

Day two of the push was to try and get to Holbrook, Az. This puts us in a spot to go visit the Petrified Forest National Park in the morning before heading over to the Grand Canyon. We made it in about 9 hours and covered approximately 500 miles from Amarillo. The drive across New Mexico is fairly desolate, but it the hills and mountains are beautiful to look at while driving.

We’ve ended up at the Holbrook KOA. A large gravel parking lot with campsites marked out. Some trees, and full hookup, so no complaints there. Wireless is a bonus. There is a pool and playground although it is a bit cold for the pool right now. Little CurbCrusher had a good half hour or so on the playground, which was probably a relief for her after being cooped up in the RV the past two days.

That sums up the trip to date. We’ve done about 2000 of the 6600 miles we plan for the trip.

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April 23, 2010 by steve.

Ok, big trip for the CurbCrusher gang. It is our Great American Road Trip (GART), and we got started today. Actually Lady and Little CurbCrusher started on Wednesday by taking the Saturn (our toad) and heading to Tallahassee for 4-H day at the Capitol. I brought the motor home up and met them at a rest area on I-10, and we continued on over to Pensacola. Since this is the parts from which I originate, we’ve got a family reunion to attend. We’re staying at the Pensacola RV Park which is located just off I-10 until Sunday morning when we head further west.

The folks here at the Pensacola RV Park seem friendly. We are in a good sized pull-thru site with plenty of room for the car and the motorhome, and we are in one of the smaller ones. It appears that there are 51 sites here that are full hook up with water, electric (30 and 50 amp) and sewer. Twenty of the sites are back ins with the rest being full hook up.

So about 450 miles of the trip down, and about 6150 to go.

Steve

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March 25, 2010 by steve.

Well another month and another trip. This time we went only about 20 miles south of February’s trip to Myakka River State Park. Since we had done most of the attractions in the area the previous month, this was a great month to just camp and stay in the park.
Myakka is a park that has a bunch to do. There is the opportunity to ride on the “world’s largest airboat,” and a tram tour. There are a number of trails for hiking or biking, and ranger led talks. Perhaps my favorite thing was the Canopy Walk, a suspension bridge between two towers that is up in the tree canopy. I liked this so much I went back and did it a second and third time.

Canopy Walk

Like most central and south Florida parks the wildlife that you see on the trails and tours is birds and gators. But in Myakka there are big gators to see. There is a long walkway that reaches into the lake that is referred to as the Birdwalk. I was curious as to why it was called the Birdwalk, since it looked like a pier. It seems that this spring the water is exceptionally high in the lake, so the Birdwalk is a pier that looks over water about four feet deep at its end. In normal years the Birdwalk is more like an elevated walkway through a marshy wetland that is a rookery for numerous wading birds.

There are two camping loops at Myakka located a couple of miles apart. The loops are dirt roads, and the campsites are also with water and electricity. There are a number of small campsites, so finding sites big enough for a rig over 25 feet is a bit of a challenge. Most of the sites are very close together with little privacy, but there are some that have some foliage around them. I haven’t posted a campground map yet, but the campsite “inventory” pictures of the loop we were in are on flickr. The park ranger said they are building a new campground loop up near the entrance that will be “big rig” friendly and have full hookup. Once the new loop is completed toward the end of the summer (yes this summer they say), they plan to go in a “re-arrange” the sites in the other loops. No one was real clear on what “re-arrange” meant, but it seems that they are going to remove some of the smaller sites and try and enlarge the remaining sites.

Overall we had a great long weekend at Myakka. This was a bit of an extended trip, with a departure from home on Thursday and a return on Sunday. Myakka is a relaxing and self contained park that is a pleasure to just set up camp and walk/bike around without leaving. Pictures of the stuff we did at Myakka are here.

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February 17, 2010 by steve.

The CurbCrusher clan headed south for President’s Day Weekend. It’s been way too cold this winter in Central Florida, but the 150 miles or so that we went south didn’t help a whole lot. We spent the weekend at Lake Manatee State Park located just east of Bradenton, Florida. The park is a great place to relax, and is near some cool stuff to do.

The park itself is fairly large, and Lake Manatee is a good size lake. There is a boat ramp which allows folks with boats of less than 20 horsepower to launch and wander the lake. Further around the lake is a day use area that has a playground, restroom and a number of pavilions. A short walk on a trail will take you to the campground.

The campground has sixty sites with some having a look at the lake. The roads in the campground are paved, and most of the sites are good sized and have vegetation between them giving you the feeling of privacy. All the sites have water and electricity, and there is a dump station on the park exit. We arrived in the middle of a day long rain event and noted that a number of sites retained water through noon the next day. The sites on the interior of the loop seemed to be the worst having pooled water that took the better part of the day to drain completely.

I don’t have the campground map and pictures up at my campground map site yet, but I do have the pictures of about half the campsites on flickr. Interestingly enough, this is the first campground where I’ve been hassled about taking pictures of the sites. Lady CurbCrusher and I were walking around taking site pictures. A lady walking around the loop came up to us and asked what we were doing. I explained that I took pictures of the sites so that we could remind ourselves what the sites looked like. She looked at us strangely and wandered off. A couple of minutes later a ranger pulled up and asked us what we were doing. I explained it to him, and also mentioned that I don’t take pictures of sites with people outside unless I chat with the folks first. He told me that he couldn’t stop me from taking pictures, since there was nothing wrong with it, but that we had “freaked out” some other campers. So we stopped taking pictures, unless the site was totally empty. Hopefully I’ll get the campground map scanned and posted soon.

Stuff to Do - Other than hanging around the park, there are some other things to do in the area. We visited the De Soto National Monument, which is located near where Hernando De Soto came ashore in the New World to make his fortune. There is a great Junior Ranger program at his park, and the “living history” demonstration we saw on 16th century weapons was one of the best demonstrations of that type that I think we’ve seen. There is a picturesque walk along the water, and if it hadn’t been cold and windy we would have enjoyed it much more. Also nearby is the Gamble Plantation Historic State Park, which has a 19th century home that at one point was the southernmost home on the mainland. In the mid 1850’s the folks that lived here had to go to St. Marks (on the Gulf just south of Tallahassee) for their mail. There is a tour that last about an hour, and the ranger did a great job interpreting the site.

Follow these links to our photos of Lake Manatee, De Soto National Monument, and Gamble Plantation.

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