Florida

17 April –

A beautiful morning. Val did some laundry and we published the blog before driving a short distance to a local authority camp at Newport on the banks of the St Marks River. It was a nice shaded camp and we walked down to the river and watched boats fishing the muddy waters.

18 April –

Back to normal sleep patterns thank goodness. Chrissy and David (Paul’s brother, Craig’s in-laws) emailed us to say they had passed thru Tallahassee going west on the

same day we had being going south. What a coincidence! We are heading east and then south down into the Florida peninsula. Our side of the road is deserted but going in the other direction are hundreds of huge RVs. These are the “snow birders” going north back to their homes in the northern states and Canada. We turned out to the coast to Horseshoe Bay. The town camping area was right on the bay overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. It was a fishing/tourist town set on a series of man-made canals but it seems that it did not quite take off and was a bit run down. We cycled around the town before settling down to enjoy the great views from our site.

19 April –

Another beautiful morning still and warm. We headed back up to the main road and south to the Manatee Springs State Park. We are keen to see a Manatee. They are a huge aquatic mammal which feed on river weed. They come to these springs in the winter as the waters are warmer. Unfortunately we are too late to see them as they left 3 weeks ago. After setting up on a nice shady site we walked down to the spring and to our and the rangers surprise there were two Manatee feeding close to the shore. What a site! After lunch we went back to the spring.

The Manatee were gone but we enjoyed a snorkel in the clear warm water. We saw many large blue fish and but were less impressed by a water snake. It was a great afternoon sitting in the sun and enjoying the snorkelling.

 

Back at our site a big woodpecker with a bright red head was working noisily at a dead tree outside our door. A deer wandered thru our site and to top the wild life experience for the day an armadillo also strolled thru. After dinner we joined the couple next door at their camp fire. Bob, Tracey and Shelby the dog had been on the road for 2 years in a beautifully restored 1950s bus. The engine was very unusual. A V8 diesel 2 stroke! It had an equally unusual sound.

  

                                             

20 April –

After saying goodbye to Bob and Tracey we followed a boardwalk long the spring to where it joined the Suwannee River. (a song by Steven Foster for our really old readers) The trees have a huge root system because they spend most of their time underwater. Back on the road heading south.

We are heading as far south as you can go in the US to the Florida Keys where we have State parks booked in two weeks time. We stopped for the night at a small camp in the Withlacoochee State Forest. The camp took a bit of finding but we had a nice site overlooking a lake. We took a nice 4 mile walk along the river.

21 April –

Back on the road using the I-75 to bypass Tampa. We stopped at a Walmart for supplies and a DVD reader/writer for our computer and a Scrabble Set (to replace the stolen stuff). We also found a liquor store for whiskey and bourbon. All stocked up! Our camp was the Little Manatee River State Park. Another nice camp and a short nature walk where we saw a big turtle.

22 April –

A short drive of 70 miles inland to a pre booked State Park at Highlands Hammock. We are now in the centre of the peninsula equidistant from the west and east coastlines. Our drive was on straight fast roads with many orange plantations. This State Park was a CCC (Civilian Construction Corps) camp. These were introduced during the great depression, run like the army, to give employment to married men. We had some thunder and a little rain in the evening. As it is a Friday night the camp filled up with locals for the weekend. A few “first night in camp” celebrations went on well into the night.

23 April –

                                                                      

It was hot in the night. We spent a lazy morning in camp and rode our bikes on a 6 mile loop track around the park in the afternoon. There were also a couple of walks thru the swamps on boardwalks. The forest is more like jungle here. The wild life count was: deer, an armadillo, herons, an owl and a water moccasin (large venomous snake). Several times we heard crashing and splashing which we thought would be alligators. As we had bought some firewood we lit a great fire and cooked dinner over it.

24 April –

Back on the straight fast roads with more orange plantations towards the coast. Our plan was to see the beaches in the Naples/Fort Myers area. We had identified some RV parks close to the beaches but we hit a 2 lane traffic jam (obviously the rest of Florida must have had the same beach plan.) We spied one of our RV parks and with a bit of hand waving managed to cross a couple of lanes and turn in. The camp is set on the waterways all around this area and we have a great site backed onto one. We abandoned the beach idea and settled for a couple of swims in the pool. We’ll try the beach thing tomorrow as the beaches are on our route south. As we have internet we will publish this blog.

Christchurch > Atlanta

13 April –

Well here we go again for our last trip to the USA. Nicola and Pique (their new pup) drove us to the airport for the first of the three flights to Atlanta, where Ernie is resting up waiting for us. The flight from Auckland to L.A. was a bit bumpy but not too bad considering we were in “zoo” class. The queue at customs was horrendous taking an hour for us to clear. The customs officer said we meet again! What a surprise. He had processed us before. He recognised his stamp. Quite a fluke when you think of the 1000s of custom guys working at LAX. We had time for a meal before our 4 hour flight to Atlanta. (no free meals on this flight.) Atlanta Airport is huge with a train running between the gates and the baggage pickup. A free shuttle took us to the Motel 6 (a cheap chain which we had used before). It was 1.00 am when we eventually got to bed - 22 hours after leaving Christchurch. A bit of a long day.

14 April –

Out of the hotel at 9.30am and breakfast at Subway. Did not realise they served breaky. A taxi took us to the storage place where Ernie was. As soon as the taxi dropped us off we realised there was a problem. The passenger’s lock had been forced out either with a screw driver or a small crow bar. Bugger!! Inside there appeared to be no damage or anything missing. Perhaps someone disturbed the #$$%*%s before they got inside. The battery was flat so I used the emergency start button on the dash to get us going. (this puts the house battery across the crank battery.) At the office we complained loud and long but with no result other than an apology. On the road and a stop at Walmart for a huge stock up and on to AT&T to get our cell phone going. Still no joy with the battery but the emergency system works fine. We travelled about 60 miles to a Georgia State Park where we booked in for the night. I decided to check out the battery which is still flat and to my surprise found that it was disconnected. I did not remember doing this before we left last year. Next problem was that I could not find my tool kit. This resulted in a full search of the RV to find a few funny things missing. Those bastards must have got inside after all!  On the missing list was: The power inverter (only good for making NZ power), the scrabble set (missing letters and just about worn out), my tool kit, and our portable DVD player (only good for NZ DVDs.) They also tried to steal the battery! All very bizarre! Nothing else was touched including the booze (that would have been serious!) and no nasty surprise in our bed! Thank God! We decided that we had been very very lucky.

15 April –

It is quite cool and drizzling so we decided to head south for 160 miles using the I-75. We had a stop at Walmart again to replace some of the stolen items. The missing power inverter meant that my haircutter is useless[VM1]  so we added that to the list. The DVD player will be a problem as they only sell region 1 players which do not play NZ region 4 DVDs. We replaced everything except the DVD player and the scrabble set for less than US$30. There is minor panel damage which we will have to fix shortly. We are now in another Georgia State Park near the Florida border. Seem to be dead dog tired going to bed but then cannot get to sleep. We will settle into the new time zone hopefully.

16 April –

It rained again in the night so we headed further south into Florida, thru the city of Tallahassee and into sunshine and warmer temperatures. It is the weekend and the State Park we had planned on was full so we continued on and found an RV park on a bay on the Gulf of Mexico. It is a bit expensive but we are backed right onto the water. We have not had any exercise so off loaded the bikes and rode a short ride to the main beach looking out into the Gulf. We had a chat to the couple next door who had been in Florida for some time and they gave some great tips.  We have really good internet so will publish this blog. We also spent some time booking weekend accommodation for the next few weeks. We both slept better during the night.

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 [VM1]