A fossil fuel fueled travel blog
After saying goodbye to family and Sand Pond, we headed west once again. In no particular hurry, but also having nothing nearby that we wanted to do, we drove. The rest of the panhandle, across that tiny bit of Alabama and on into Louisiana. We parked for the night in a Walmart on the outskirts…
When we left The Villages for good, we headed north and had a couple of days to enjoy before we met up with my brother Dan, sister-in-law Amie and niece Audrey in Santa Rosa Beach during their spring break. This meant we headed to Tate’s Hell. The Apalachicola National Forest and its surrounding area had…
On the most perfect days ever, we finally paddled out to Shell Key. Luckily, we had scoped the whole situation out when we were camping at Fort DeSoto a while ago. We would drop the boards and all our gear at a nice put-in north of the park and then drop the truck and trailer…
We enjoyed our time in the Ocala National Forest, but wanted to be able to get down to the Gulf coast before we left Florida. Finally the weather warmed up enough to make us want to spend time out on the boards, so we headed down. We had hoped to do the whole paddle board/…
We wound up returning to Hopkins Prairie a few times over the next few weeks. It really was a lovely campground, cheap, and Ocala seemed to have a lot to offer. We tried a few different sites at the campground and were happy with all, although the one next to the pit toilets offered a…
We finally planned a Florida excursion a little closer to our temporary home – the Ocala National Forest. I have to say that my expectations were not incredibly high. All of the trail recommendations had warned of wet conditions and mosquitoes aplenty. We had also been warned of homeless people living in the forest, but…
After a couple of work days for Mike and time for me to do some chores and help his parents a bit, we headed south again. This time we went down to the west to a campground in Big Cypress National Preserve. Burns Lake Campground was pretty bare bones – a row of places to…
When we started looking at getting out and about in the trailer, I started stressing out. On this adventure up until now, we had been camping pretty much out of season, but here in Florida, we were in the midst of the busy season. I started looking and had a hard time finding any decent…
We came to Florida thinking that we would spend the lower end of a few weeks supporting Mike’s parents through some health issues and then head out for short stints around Florida. Well… best laid plans. Mike’s parents live in The Villages and it is a little like living in Disney World, but grown up….
When we planned our trip, we thought that we would be spending about half of our time in Scarlet and the other half tent camping. Scarlet was just so comfortable and we were able to take her more off-the-beaten-path places than we thought we would be able to so most of our nights have been…