Florida 

October 19-29, 2023

Our visit to Florida was part of a 5-week, 3,695-mile trip throughout the southeast, including one-night stays in Virginia and Maryland, and more extensive stays in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. This blog post describes our time in Florida. Our stays in Florida included St. Augustine, Key Largo, and Orlando, with quick stops to visit with family and friends in Davie and Atlantic Beach. The highlights of our trip to Florida were visiting with friends and family, and seeing a lot of wildlife, including a pileated woodpecker, hawks, osprey, gopher turtles, lizards, snakes, manatee, great blue herons, snowy egrets, all sorts of ducks and waterfowl, and LOTS of alligators!

Leaving Eatonton, Georgia, we made the 5 ½ hour drive to Camp St. Augustine, a campground situated next to fishing lake a few miles outside of downtown St. Augustine, Florida. Per the website, the campground was supposed to sit on a 20-acre plantation with a pool, bathhouse, and cabins and RVs to rent. We found very little of those amenities to be real. The location was convenient. And the site we had (1) was covered on the ground by crushed seashells and shaded by trees dripping with Spanish moss. The site was located next to a fishing lake, but there were none of the other amenities promised online. The campground host also warned us not to go into the lake as someone had spotted an alligator. Perhaps on a positive note, because there was no shower at the campsite, we took the opportunity to try our outdoor shower for the first time which worked really well. And an unexpected amenity was a free washer and dryer that we were happy to use.

In a prior leg of our trip, we noticed that the black tank lever leaked when dumping, and there was a freshwater leak near the gray tank. We decided to find a mobile RV repair person in Florida, and after searching online, we called Kevin at Road Runner RV Repair. Kevin drove out to the campsite the evening we arrived but was unable to fix the leak because he did not have the necessary tools to lift up the van. He was very nice and did not charge us for coming to the site! Concerned about the leaks, we read online that the problem might be caused by the water pressure coming into the van being too strong. We realized that we actually had two water regulators with us, and after attaching one to the spigot, the freshwater leak disappeared. However, we knew we still needed to get a new lever for the black tank.

The next day we rode our bikes into St. Augustine. The history of the town and the preserved houses and streets are very interesting and pretty. However, the stores are geared to tourists, looking more like streets in Disney World than part of an authentic, historical town. A highlight of our visit was eating lunch at Sprout Kitchen, a local vegan restaurant and finding vegan ice cream at Mayday Ice Cream. Looking to get out of the tourist section of town, we rode our bikes to Anastasia Island to the state park, a beautiful area lined with quiet residential streets that end at a beach. We regretted not having looked at the the state park campground as the whole island and area were really worthwhile visiting.

From St. Augustine we headed to Jonathan Dickinson State Park, not realizing we were arriving during Fire Fest, the busiest day in the park. We found our site and rode our bikes the four miles to join the Fire Fest festivities. During out stay, we also hiked the green trail where we saw a pileated woodpecker sharing a branch with a hawk. The trail was nice but much of the path was sandy and the weather was very hot. A highlight of our stay was kayaking on the Loxahatchee River. One of rangers told us where to kayak to see the most wildlife so we headed out that way. Kayaking through the maze of mangroves was amazing, with the company of birds and alligators lurking in the water.

From Jonathan Dickinson, we headed to Davie, FL for a quick visit with family. After a delicious and enormous vegan lunch and a really nice time catching up, we headed down to John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park. Setting up camp at the site we had selected, we realized that our new backyard was a swamp that smelled of sulfur. The hot, humid weather and the no-see-ums (biting gnats) that could pass through all mesh, made our visit challenging. But because we could not open our windows or sit much outside in our screened tent, we used our air conditioner for the first time, which was loud but otherwise worked well. And we were visited by a family of ibis and one very large iguana.

Key Largo does not have a downtown, and the weather was hot and humid inland and very windy near the beach, which encouraged us to look for fun activities to do in the area. In addition to walking through the wooded trails in the park, we visited the Keys’ Meads distillery. We also took a 2-hour manatee eco-tour from Captain Sterling’s Everglades Tourthrough the Everglades National Park. Captain Tony was great, sharing the history of the area and showing us wildlife in the area. By far the highlight was seeing five manatee eating in the bay, including a mother and her calf. Walking back to the campground, we stopped and bought a smoothie from a local produce stand, as well as a cacao pod. Having listened to the Obsessions: Wild Chocolate podcast, we wanted to taste raw cacao. The lack of pulp and bitter flavor of the seeds made tasting raw cacao an interesting yet less tasty experience than expected.

Before leaving Key Largo, we filled the propane tank at Holiday RV. We only needed 2 gallons and were pleased that our propane can last a long time, using only about two gallons in four weeks of travel. Then we drove to Orlando to stay with friends and fix our black tank lever. Our friends recommended Robert Muller with The Bus Stop Luxury Coach Sales and Service who fixed the lever and charged us about half of what we expected to pay.

Because we had no desire to visit anything Disney-related while in Orlando, and because we are interested in environmental success stories, our friends took us to the Apopka Wildlife Trail  which was amazing and definitely a high point of the visit! We saw alligators swimming, basking in the sun on side of the road, and walking and lounging in the tall grasses. We also saw a multitude of great blue herons and other water birds. The success story of this wildlife reclamation project was really inspiring.

We also spent some time in downtown Orlando, driving through the business area, walking around Lake Eola where we say lots of waterfowl and turtles, and stopping by Pulse which is now a memorial to those who were murdered on June 12, 2016. Orlando is a very welcoming city with pride flags displayed around town. Leaving Orlando, we headed toward Charleston, SC, stopping to visit with friends in Atlantic Beach along the way, which was a great way to end our stay in Florida.