Meandering the Country

St. Petersburg February 2 - 13, 2021 So far in our travels, we've covered the Atlantic coast of Florida, central Florida, and Southern Florida. Our first stay on the gulf coast of was at Fort De Soto Park.  The campground offered beautiful waterside sites if you make your reservations early enough.  Our campsite was not waterside, but still was fantastic.  Amazing sunsets were only yards away and there were plenty of live oaks and palm trees around for setting up the hammock.  The campsite was very large and private!  Honestly, we keep forgetting it's winter.  This certainly doesn't feel like the winter I know! Fort De Soto Park has a nice dog park which provided Frankie with lots of activity. It also gave her the opportunity to get good and dirty, which in turn gave us the opportunity to give her a bath several times!  In addition to the campground, the park has historic Fort De Soto at which you can take a self-guided tour, and a ...

We arrived at Flamingo Campground, located at the southern tip of Florida’s mainland.  It is remote – no Wi-Fi, no cell service, TV limited to two Spanish speaking channels!  In addition to this, all of the vegetation is unrecognizable to me!  It appears, we won’t be watching TV or be on our phones, so I’ll have plenty of time to get familiar with this new landscape!  The campground itself is fantastic!  I had pictured heavy brush covering the campground, allowing plenty of hiding places for all things scary.  That picture was quickly erased and replaced with sites that are spacious, cleared of shrubs yet dotted with beautiful shade trees.  The campground is well maintained with electricity at many of the campsites.  I’m completely relieved and ready to go exploring!   Our first full day here we rode our bikes to the marina to see manatees and crocodiles!  We also discovered Wi-Fi is available...

January 22 - 26, 2021 Our next stop was in Pahokee, Florida.  We primarily used the Pahokee Marina and Campground as a staging ground for our adventure next week.  We will be staying at the Flamingo Campground at the very bottom of Everglades National Park .  As we will be pretty remote and services will be very limited, we wanted to ensure we were prepared!   You can probably guess by the name that, while at Pahokee, we were on a body of water!  Specifically, we were camped on the shoreline of Lake Okeechobee.  The lake has an estimated 28,000 alligators.  From our campsite, we enjoyed watching one feed just a few yards out in the water.  It was really entertaining to see this huge alligator floating so close to us!  We also saw native birds along the shoreline.   At the same time, we were able to enjoy the spectacular sunsets Pahokee offers!  The lake is surrounded by the Herbert Hoove...