Made it! Passed the big billboard denying evolution and commenced camping at Fort Clinch last Monday. Chilly but bright. Would like to be on Amelia Island sometime for the Concours de Elegance car show (usually mid March), although I doubt there's much mingling of the campground crowd over there at The Ritz.
Went southwest on Rt.4 towards Tampa on Wed. Realized that in 6 years of doing this, we've generally hugged the perimeter, or crossed in the South. So, pretty good that this was our first drive through of Orlando... I think we've almost recovered from all those trips there with the kids, the last of which was in 2003.
The route allowed us to stop at Blue Spring State Park, which is a winter sanctuary for Manatees. They close the spring and the run to the St. John River to all scuba, swimming and tubing from Nov. -March to accommodate them, so while it was awesome to see 200 Manatees lolling, I would say that if you want to actually swim with them, and be on the water in a tube or kayak,then I would recommend Crystal River, or Rainbow Springs. Super campground though,(and the first one we've encountered in Florida with bear warnings) and a good amount of options nearby in Orange City,Deland, and Debary. Including a BEEF O"BRADY"S, which we passed up in favor of SWAMP HOUSE RIVER FRONT GRILL, with the adjunct HAPPY SNAPPER TIKI BAR. Yep, we've arrived.
Got to our present location last Friday: a Hillsborough County Park, with its own little swimming spring (nothing of the magnitude of it's more northern neighbors). Gorgeous campground. Utterly empty. And not one damn thing to do anywhere nearby.
That was actually not a problem however, since we were actually just parking the trailer and making a beeline to nephew Josh's house in Tampa , 20 miles west, for the weekend. ( Totally sweet bonus: the guy who checked us in was math challenged enough to compute 5 days @ $24/day to equal $90)
Josh had urged us to show up on Friday, citing something called GASPARILLA going on in his neighborhood on Sat. Last time through Tampa we'd attended a crafts fair of the same title, which I assumed he was referring to. Um, crafts fair? No. More like full blown Mardi Gras, with a pirate theme,starting in the morning with a boat parade wherein wall to wall boats with crews in pirate garb crowd the harbor throwing beads to all of us gathered along the seawall, shooting t-shirts out of air cannons and getting pelted with marshmallows and water balloons in return.THOUSANDS of boats.No discernible rules of navigation. Pole dancers on decks "entertaining".Holy smokes!
Beat a retreat to the house to spend the afternoon watching THRONGS of people in various stages of inebriation walking down to Bayshore Drive ( a block away) to attend the land parade. The kids set up a lemonade stand and made a ton o'cash. Fun interactions. Got to see one overdone girl hauled away by paramedics from the (utter stranger's) porch she had deposited herself upon.
Sunday brought kayaking in the bay with Josh, Jen and all 3 kids.Awesome to be back on the water.
And of course, the best Superbowl ever.
Tomorrow we head to Fort DeSoto for 2 weeks, via the towns of Picnic, Balm, and Fort Lonesome. Can't wait.
Have lots of pics, will post as soon as we can figure out how to get them onto this blog.
