Florida is truly the sunshine state – hot sun, hot pavement, hot weather, hot everything. Not that we are complaining, we can assure you of that. For those of you who aren’t experiencing the heat or sun – sorry!
We left the border of GA/FL and headed down the Atlantic side of the state and stayed for 3 nights at the Wickham State Park campground in Melbourne, FL, which was awesome. They had lots of hiking trails, biking trails, a dog park, lots of geocaches and lots of wild animals. We spent much of our time hiking and geocaching. We did take a bike ride during the middle of the day which wasn’t too smart as it was hot, hot, hot!! We have found that state, town and county parks are the best as they tend to have large RV sites with full hook ups as well as great trails and dog parks. Codey very much enjoys that! The pictures show some of the wild life we encountered while on our bike ride. Nothing scary, just really cool!
From Melbourne we headed to Naples, FL and stated at the Club Naples RV Resort. This is the first “resort type” campground we stayed in. Needless to say, it wasn’t what we were used too. The resort had an activities director, a large pool, tennis courts, pickle ball courts, shuffle board and horseshoes! While we were there the park continually filled up with “snowbirders”. It was obvious that these folks knew each other and had been snowbirding together for years. We definitely felt like outsiders. However, everyone was very nice! While in Naples we spent a good bit of time with our friends Tracy and Stephanie who moved here from Northern Virginia in 2014. It was great to visit with them and they are great tour guides. We did a good bit of geocaching (of course) (Jane has wounds to prove it – the hazards of caching) and found an awesome dog park on the beach in Bonita Springs. Codey was in his element and so much that we visited this dog park twice once we found out about it.
After leaving the dog beach Codey was exhausted but he had a blast! The pictures are of him riding back to the campground in the truck. Now you can all see how exhausted he was!!
Not only did we visit with Tracy and Stephanie, we also re-connected with friends Deb and Michelle. We met these lovely ladies while on a cruise in 1998 and remained friends since! They live in Cape Cod area but have purchased a home in Ft. Myers. They just happen to be here on a weeks vacation during the same time we were here! It was great to see them in the flesh as opposed to on Facebook!!
We have to tell you a funny that happened while here. When we go hiking and geocaching, Codey goes with us. There are times when he lays down while we are hunting for the cache. Therefore he lays in all kinds of terrain including the woods and the forest. That being said, he will often times get little bug bites on his belly and around his man stuff. Well, he was itching quite a bit and Jane asked Jeanne to get the cortisone cream (which we’ve used on him before and it works beautifully). She came back with the tube of what we thought was cortisone. Needless to say, Codey’s “peepee” smelled minty fresh for a few days. Jeanne had grabbed a tube of crest toothpaste and we didn’t notice until we had nearly rubbed it all in. Bless his heart! He didn’t seem to mind as he continued to lick it off until we could get the real cortisone on! LOL!! We laughed so hard we thought we’d bust!!
We left Naples and are now in Dunnellon, FL in Rainbow Springs State Park campground. As mentioned before we love state park campground. We have taken hikes, done some geocaching, and went swimming in the river. The river looks like the waters in the Caribbean – crystal clear to the bottom – just spectacular.
A highlight of this trip was meeting up with Jane’s childhood friend Janet and her husband Mark. They live close to Orlando and met up half way to have lunch and re-connect. It was awesome to see them.
We are now in Jacksonville, FL at a local Starbucks (using their wifi so we can get this done and published) waiting for some work to be done on the RV. We are getting an awning installed over the slide out. We find this necessary because when acorns hit the top of it it sounds like gun fire and to hear that in the middle of the night isn’t pleasant!!
We head to Top Sail Preserve on the panhandle of FL from here. Until next time Codey says “hi” from on top of “his” picnic table….
JBs Joyful Journey 