I’ve really been slacking

For the most part the weather has not been the best so we haven’t done to much that’s been note worthy. That and the fact that our cell service has been on the slow side with typically 1 bar trying to get pictures to upload and been a bit of a challenge. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it, at least until I can come up with something better.

SOMETIMES I REALLY HATE COMPUTERS – ENOUGH SAID!!!!

12/28/2022

We put Fort Pickens in the rear view mirror as we made our way to a place called Open Pond Campground, it’s a National Forest CG that is first come available only, no reservations. As the crow flies  it’s only about 90 miles, but we drove a little further along the coast before heading north into Alabama. It’s really not very far from north Florida coast to the Alabama state line. We drove east until we reached Destin Florida, where we turned north, ouch, the toll across the causeway was $4, would have been $8 if we had a trailer, then there was another toll of $1.25 to drive on a 2 lane highway for about 30 miles.

Anyway, 12/29/2022  turned out to be an almost perfect day, the temperature reached 72 fabulous degrees with only the slightest hint of a breeze from time to time. The campground had nice big level sites. We spent most of the day outside, wimpy me had on a long sleeve shirt while Mary had on a short sleeve shirt. We managed to get a couple our projects off the list. One of our projects, that was NOT on the list was to work on the screen door, again, Thats one of the items the dealer is going to fix in February, we had hoped to get it fixed on our way south but couldn’t get scheduled for then. They are going to replace it with a new one, the dealer already had it, along with a part for the awning.

On 12/30/2022 we left Open Pond for St Andrew State Park while the sites are small,  some of the extra small, the van only has a couple of feet to the road, the park is extra clean, when someone pulls out they go in and pick up any small piece of trash, then they pull this rake think around by hand leveling the gravel back out. We’re backed up to the water, but I just assumed we would be on the ocean we’re actually on the bay side, the beach is on the ocean side and while not that far I think I would prefer to drive.

Shortly after we got set up the wind and rain arrived big time.

12/31/2022 the morning was beyond foggy, it was hard to see anything, then the sun burned the fog off so we drove around exploring the park. Well, we tried to explore the park the fog rolled back in and hung around the rest of the day.

We worked our way further south to visit my sister, Also at the last minuet we managed to get two nights down in Myakka River State park, we had to change sites each night but that’s ok. Having been there once when it was flooded, the water was up next to the road, this trip was a little under whelming, much of what we thought was part of a lake was actually prairie. While we managed several gators, many bigger than on our last visit, they were much further away. Also, the park received some damage from one of the recent hurricanes and has only recently reopened, with many parts still closed.

We stopped at a small community park, on the way south and back north, the weather for both stops being on the chilly side and the second stop the wind was blowing so hard you had to really hang on to the doors to keep them from being ripped off the hinges, quit literally. Horseshoe Beach, where there is no beach, only a very shallow bay that had no water in it when the tide is out and the canals are all just deep mud, we seen a guy step into over his knee.

 

The pine cones down here a very large, and burn spectacularly!! I burned a few in the only fire we’ve had this trip, the camp host collected some wood for another camper who decided to leave, so she donated it to us, when I said I would take it I didn’t realize it was all rotted and WET, it didn’t burn worth a darn and I probably would not have even had a fire if the pine cones didn’t burn so well.

Camel Lake Campground is a small campgrounds in the Apalachicola National Forest and had a 1.25 mile trail around the lake, after we walked it a couple of times, one of the camp host asked if we found any of the 11 gnomes he hid along the trail. My foot was bothering me and I didn’t walk again, but Mary went back and found 7 of the 11 he hid. My foot was still bothering me, morning 1/18/2023 she found three more but still didn’t find number 11.

 

random pics & the end