The Everglades to Alabama

Written by Emily

Everglades National Park, FL

January 14 – 19, 2024

I took a couple of days off work after the MLK public holiday so we could explore Everglades National Park. We stayed at the Flamingo Campground in the national park for three nights which is a very spacious and well equipped campground for national park standards (the NPS campgrounds are usually pretty rustic). The sites have electricity and there is a dump station for water and waste.

We definitely knew we were in the sub-tropical wetlands as soon as we pulled into the campground. Before we got out of the car there were a few hundred mosquitoes clinging to windscreen, tucking in their napkins and banging on the glass with their cutlery. They are serious down here and it is only winter! I can’t imagine what they’re like in the summer. The mozzie repellent held its own – just – and we had to sticky-tape a few gaps in the fly screen on the trailer to keep the marauding hoard at bay!

We will admit to not doing any trail walking here. You do need to be better prepared than we were with proper boots, long walking pants and probably a face & shoulder net. But we enjoyed seeing the landscape and the birdlife from the road and the waterways. I took a back-country boat tour from the Flamingo Marina which was a great way to see the park – lots of crocodiles, birds and mangroves. No alligators down here, it is too salty. Three types of mangroves – black, white and red.

I was slightly anxious about all the tourists kayaking in the river – the same river where we were spotting all the crocodiles. The rangers on the boat assured me the crocodiles here are a much ‘gentler’ cousin of the Australian crocodile and not apt to attack humans… I’ll stay on the big motorboat thanks!

The Guy Bradley Visitor Center at Flamingo is really outstanding. They have lots of information about the indigenous people that originally inhabited this area, as well as the first European settlers, and the more recent development and management of the Okeechobee Basin and waterways in Florida. There was a great big shady area underneath the visitor center that looks over Florida Bay and we spent some lazy hours hanging out, reading a book and watching the pelicans fish.

We spent the next couple of nights up at Midway Campground – just outside the northern national park boarder and located in Big Cypress National Preserve. It’s a little campground with the campsites arranged around a pond that is reportedly home to a few alligators (although we didn’t see any while we were there).

This end of the Everglades is quite different to the southern Flamingo area, and I’m glad we stayed in both areas. The northern end has lots of tall Cypress forests that break up the wetlands and intersect with man-made drains and water catchments. Plenty of alligators too – you can see them basking in the water drains on the side of the road. I was so happy to finally see some alligators! We had been in their territory since we were in South Carolina – about three months now – and we had not seen a single damn alligator!

Just to make sure we saw a few more alligators we went on an air-boat tour of the Everglades mangroves and grasslands. It’s just as fun as everyone says it is, and we saw a bunch of alligators.

Camping next door to us at Midway Campground was Judy Bailey – in her mid-eighties and had been living on the road for 11 years! She keeps a blog that details all her travels and which would be the envy of most bloggers or seasoned travelers the world over. I particularly liked her business card!

Fort Myers, FL

January 19 – 21, 2024

We spent a couple of nights in Fort Myers after leaving the Everglades. It was our first HipCamp – basically Airbnb for RVs – where people rent out their yards and driveways and paddocks for you to park your RV.

We stayed in a pretty central area of Fort Myers in the backyard of a couple who had about three acres – a hold out amongst all the new developments in that area. It was really pleasant and a cute little place to park for a couple of nights with very easy access to Sanibel Island. The HipCamp choice was made out of slight desperation as I hadn’t locked in a campsite for these particular dates far enough in advance and therefore a decent parking spot in southern Florida in the middle of winter was nowhere to be found. But we were very happy with our little HipCamp and we’ll definitely do it again.

We spent most of Saturday out on Sanibel Island. The island was absolutely hammered by Hurricane Ian in September 2022, and is still recovering, but was still a very pleasant day out. We found a beach to take the dogs on and a bird sanctuary for some walking and bird watching. We saw some pink spoonbills here as well as lots of pelicans.

Sarasota, FL

January 21 – February 3, 2024

From Fort Myers we headed to Sarasota, parking up at Sun Outdoors for a couple of weeks. Sun Outdoors Sarasota was an absolute hoot! By far the largest RV park that we had ever stayed in and looked to be probably two or three RV parks that had been bought up and joined together. Clearly one of those parks was a classic mobile home village that came with a lot of long-term residents who spent every afternoon socializing and hosting lawn parties. When they weren’t eating cucumber sandwiches on their lawns, they were in the pool, playing bowls or shuffle board, or in the on-site woodwork studio. I want to live somewhere like this when I retire!

As a prospective place to live, Sarasota was probably nudging the top of the list of everywhere we had been so far. If we ignore the fact we probably couldn’t afford to live here, everything from the city center to the beaches was very pleasant here, including the sociable bunch of oldies in our mobile home park. Anna Maria Island was beautiful and we found the best fish and chips on our travels so far at Kiwi Style Fish & Chips. Yum.

Disney World!

February 3 – 11, 2024

February 5th was my 40th birthday so I did what any proper adult (who is within an hour’s drive of Disney World) would do, and took myself to the Magic Kingdom for my birthday.

We stayed at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Campground. GREAT CAMPGROUND! You can stay here even if you don’t have tickets to Disney and if we’re ever back in this part of the world, we are coming back here. Beautiful big campsites that are pretty private for the most part, the most enormous dog parks we’ve ever come across in a campground, great walking trails and evening entertainment for the kids (Alvin and the Chipmunks hosting campfire singalongs, etc).

We spent a few days visiting the theme parks in between squishing in some work. We have never been to Disney before and had no idea what to expect, but of course we enjoyed ourselves. I think we are in agreement that Hollywood Studios was our favorite, followed by Animal Kingdom, then the Magic Kingdom and then the Epcot. I have a friend from work who raves about the Epcot but I personally don’t see what the fuss is about. It seemed like an opportunity to buy souvenirs from foreign countries without having to actually leave the USA.

My favorite ride was Flight of Passage – I’ve always wanted to ride a dragon and now that dream is fulfilled! And Justin really liked Star Wars Rise of the Resistance. But it’s hard to pick a favorite and everything here is designed to entertain and amuse. So many of the ‘kids’ shows we thoroughly enjoyed as well like the Muppets 3D and the Bugs Life 3D. A thoroughly enjoyable few days to welcome my forties!

Port Richey, FL

February 11 – 27, 2024

We had some administrative items to take care of, that started a bit before we left Disney, and which were going to test our no-fixed-address situation a little bit. Our truck lease was ending in March and we had to get some hail damage repaired before we handed the truck back to Ford and hopefully get ourselves another lease.

Justin had been doing the groundwork with the insurer and assessor etc to get the truck booked in for its repairs and he had found a workshop around the Tampa area. The repair shop was going to keep it for two weeks, which gave us a few days wiggle room for any delays before we had to be on the road heading north to our next stop. The truck needed to be at the workshop a few days before we left Disney, so Justin took it over and came back in a hire car while I did a day of work at the Disney campground. We then needed to find a way to get our trailer off the Disney campsite and over to our next site in Port Richey without our truck.

It turns out that all the usual hire car companies will not hire you a truck that allows you to tow anything. But good old U-Haul came to the rescue with a medium rigid truck that also had a socket for a tow hitch (and conveniently had space to carry all Justin’s tools and other stuff that we needed to take out of the tray of our truck before taking it in for repair). So we hauled out of Disney looking like a bit of a circus but made it over to Port Richey no problems.

We had two weeks booked at Port Richey in Suncoast RV “Resort”. I knew this place was going to be a hole because I’d only booked it a couple of months back and nowhere half-decent in Florida has winter spots open with a couple of months notice. And yep – Suncoast RV at Port Richey was an absolute hole! Oh well, we were due for a shitty spot after so many months of beautiful campsites.

The only enjoyable part of Port Richey was that my cousin Ben came to visit us from Australia. He was on a work trip to Atlanta GA and very kindly went out of his way to come see us for the 24 hours before he needed to be at the work event (anyone who has flown from Australia to the east coast of the USA will know how big an effort it is to go 24 hours out of your way on a trip like that)!

Of course, the workshop repairing the hail damage had put our truck in a corner and not touched it for the first two weeks, so when we called to make arrangements to pick it up it was not nearly ready. They hopped to it with a lot of apologies but we did not leave the shithole in Port Richey as planned and the truck was a full three weeks and two days in that workshop.

Carrabelle Beach, FL

February 27 – March 3, 2024

Because the truck repairs were delayed, we were three days delayed leaving Port Richey and I ended up having to travel to Wisconsin for work before we pulled out. Which left poor old Justin to wrangle the truck out of the workshop and do the two-day trek to Carrabelle Beach by himself. He was fine of course.

We originally had one week booked at Carrabelle Beach RV Resort, although only ended up staying four nights after leaving Port Richey a bit late. It’s a cute little RV campground directly across the road from Carrabelle Beach. We were tucked away in site 130 in a part of the park which was separate to the main park but provided a lot of privacy and nice back-drop onto the bushland.

I missed most of Carrabelle Beach because I was still away in Wisconsin for work and flew back into Tallahassee on the Friday night before we pulled out on Sunday. But Justin enjoyed the week there and we both agreed that this “forgotten coast of Florida” is somewhere we’d like to come back to. The township of Carrabelle is sleepy and dated – not a strip mall or Hilton Hotel in sight! But a very pleasant change from the hustle and bustle of southern Florida.

Santa Rosa Beach, FL

March 3 – 16, 2024

Back to the state parks! Our last stay in Florida was at Topsail Hill Preserve State Park on Santa Rosa Beach. Fabulous state park and campground. Our site was a bit more exposed than what we would have liked (was on a main road with lots of foot traffic) but we had loads of space and enjoyed the company of some lovely neighbors during our stay here.

The state park has lots of great walking trails and access to beautiful Santa Rosa beach. This part of the Gulf Coast made us realize why so many Americans prefer to holiday on the Gulf rather than the Atlantic side. The beaches really are quite beautiful and calm, and while there is clearly a lot of development going on all around this part of Florida it’s still less frenetic than Miami and other parts of southern Florida.

We did finally complete our administrative duties here and get the truck turned in to Ford and a new lease signed. Seems we can be residents of Michigan and still do all these types of things remote… except getting the license plate switched over. Justin will need to take a trip back to Kalamazoo to present himself in person to the Secretary of State to do that. But the team at Gary Smith Ford were very helpful and got all the paperwork organized and sent up to Kalamazoo for us.

The new truck is a hybrid and we are looking forward to testing out the built-in 2.4kW PowerBoost generator. We should be able to power the trailer from this vehicle which will be super-handy for boondocking trips!

After four and a half months in Florida, we were excited to be moving on, but also very grateful for our time in the sunshine state and it certainly delivered what we were looking for… a snow-free winter! Thanks Florida!

Spanish Fort, AL

March 16 – 30, 2024

Our next stop for two weeks was Meaher State Park in Spanish Fort, Alabama. It is located near the city of Mobile, but the state park itself is hidden in a little archipelago of islands in Mobile Bay, looking out to the Gulf of Mexico. It’s a small state park but has a very unique position and we loved it.

Our campsite – site 61 – was fabulous as it was so large it felt like we had half a football field to ourselves. Great view out to the water and easy ten minute run down the highway into Mobile.

We found a great Oyster bar in Mobile – Wintzell’s Oyster House. Beautiful oysters, good price, and classic old place that had been around for decades. I was very tempted to have a crack at the oyster-eating competition but restrained myself.

We took a day trip down to Gulf Shores to have a look, via a little town for lunch called Bon Secour – very cute! We had a good lunch at the Tin Top Deli in Bon Secour which had a garden full of Australian bottle brush! Random!

Gulf Shores looked like a nice beach, but it was also crawling with young people on Spring Break! And not children… they were mostly something-teens driving around in jacked up trucks and playing obscenely loud music.

On a separate day out we visited Dauphin Island to the south of Mobile Bay. This part of the world played a large role in the American civil war and Fort Gaines on Dauphin Island guards the entrance to Mobile Bay, along with Fort Morgan over on the Gulf Shores peninsula. Sadly, this part of the world was very badly impacted by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico back in 2010 which decimated the natural environment and killed tourism in the area for many years, and Dauphin Island looks a bit like it’s still recovering from that.