Feb 19-22 Beginning the Home Stretch

Sunset over the 'Glades

Friday February 19th was the first day of the trip back home. Our goal now is to arrive in Ben Lomond no later th an the first of April. Of course we want to see some sights along the way: New Orleans around Marti Gras, Graceland, the Clinton Presidential Library, the Grand Canyon come immediately to mind, and I’m sure there will be others as we come across the country. We are talking with Liz and Stef about meeting up with them in San Diego sometime in March. My main concern is to avoid any serious weather. It is still winter in most of this country even though we hardly realize it here in Florida. It been mostly shorts and T-shirt weather for us since the first of the year. Those cold days in Jacksonville around Christmas are a distant memory


After being in one place for so long it is kind of hard to get our heads around travelling most days. We left the Keys two days early to give ourselves plenty of time to get to New Orleans by the 26th of Feb. We don’t have a lot of plans traveling up the west coast of Florida other than stopping to eat some Apalachicola oysters and spend some time on the “sugar” white sand beaches in the “Red Neck” Riviera.

Our first nights stop was at the Chokoloskee Island Park at the northwest end of the Everglades. On the map it looked to be interesting being almost right in the park, it turned out to be a very busy place. Fishermen, fisherwomen, boaters, and kayakers were coming and going in a constant stream. Our narrow site was right across from the boat ramp so we were in the thick of it. Boats were being launched and retrieved all afternoon with trucks and trailers lined up awaiting their turns. I was lucky enough to back the trailer into our site during a lull in the traffic. So much for the quiet, peaceful gaze across the mangroves. It turn out to be a popular spot for snowbirds from upstate New York who were into fishing of course. There was also some kind of kayak event going on so I’m sure that added to the festivities as well.



The next day we drove up through Naples, Fort Myers and stopped in Venice. Not a long drive, but we did have another GPS adventure, not a major miss direction but we did get a tour of some Venice neighborhoods. Many of these RV parks claim to be in cities or towns that are popular destinations, but in fact are not really in the city limits. So when you type in an address, but with the wrong city the GPS cannot find it. So we had a unexpected tour of a few miles until we confirmed the exact location with the park staff.



The next day we left the “retirement towns” and headed into the more hardscrabble regions, miles and miles of swamp land giving way to pine forests. We stayed at the KOA in Perry Florida, an inland mill town. In the KOA literature it mentioned that if you should smell something that might make you think of rotten garbage or sewage, not to worry, it’s not coming from your trailer, but it is the “smell of money” coming from the paper pulp mill which is the main employer for the people of Perry. Needless to say, we moved on the next morning.

White "sugar" sand

We drove west to the coast and stopped for lunch at Apalachicola, famous for its oysters. A historic old town not unlike a lot of the towns on the Oregon coast, a place that has seen better days but is hanging on by catering to the tourist dollar. We had a a great oyster lunch at the local bar and grill. We ended up the day in Mexico Beach, a town 3 miles long, started by developers in the 50s to take advantage of its beautiful beach coastline. They developed the town to allow no big high rise building and chain stores or restaurants. It is all pretty much down home here, and mostly caters to a southern crowd. The southern drawls here are thick. Lots beach houses, a few condos, a nice little fishing harbor and pier for those without a boat. A half a dozen eateries, one grocery and a few T-shirt shops and that’s about it. Just west of here is Tyndall Airforce Base and you can see and most definitely hear the jet fighters scream across the sky.

Snowbirds on the beach