Let's Just Go Somewhere: Extended stay in the Wilderness

Our next “reserved” destination was Port St. Joe, Florida, but we didn’t have to be there until March 18^th. Hmmm… where to go next? Do we go up the east coast towards St. Augustine and then back across to the gulf? I had not been to St. Augustine since I was a little girl and Chuck had never been there. Or do we head back down to Tampa so Melissa can go to the RV driving school at Lazy Days? Or do we go towards Manatee Springs and Crystal River and then back up the gulf towards Port St. Joe?

So many places to go and so much to see and do. And then trying to decide on campgrounds at all these places. Which ones have sewer? Which ones have 50 amp? Which ones will accommodate a big rig? How far off the path is it? Does it have a lot of shade? How close together are the sites? What are the reviews? How expensive is it? Oh my goodness! All the information is great but can also be overwhelming!

LET’S JUST GO SOMEWHERE!!!!!!

I have camped off and on just about all of my life. And for three summers when I was in my pre-teens, my mom and dad would save up all of their vacation and we would take off out west in a station wagon and a pop-up camper for three weeks. All we had for direction and to help us decide where to go were maps from AAA and a Woodall’s campground directory. Surely, with all the information available to us now we can figure out where we want to go next!

We tossed out the idea of going to the driving school because Melissa could not get in to a course and it was not a “hands-on” driving class. We decided not to go to St. Augustine because then we would be back-tracking towards where we had already been and back-tracking is something we try to avoid. So we decided we would go towards Manatee Springs, Crystal River and up the gulf coast and even made reservations at a couple of places.

Unfortunately, I still had quite a bit of work I needed to do. We decided to just stay at Wilderness RV Park since it was such a nice park and so reasonably priced for another week and then take a more direct route to Port St. Joe.

Besides working a lot of hours over the next week (I thought I had retired?), we went to a couple of “meet and greets” that the park hosted had where they would provide the main course and the RVers would bring the sides, drinks and desserts. The food was fabulous and it gave us a chance to meet a lot more people staying in the campground.

This was one of our neighbors, "Little Al":

Fortunately, Little Al was not invited to the meet and greet.

And of course, while we were there, we made many trips to Wal-Mart. I mean you can’t go RVing without going to Wal-Mart, right? How do you like this RV?