Carrabelle, FL

Camped at: Sunset Isle RV Resort and Marina

Dates of stay: Nov 1 - 19, 2021

We got lucky here….found out about a private rental through a group on Facebook, and we ended up staying for nearly three weeks in this lovely waterfront community. It’s a small sleepy fishing village, located among Florida’s “Forgotten Coast” - little development, small town feel, and beautiful areas to walk, hike and fish. We really “settled in” here, and even started to get to know the locals. We discovered Carabelle Junction, the ONLY coffee cafe in the area and enjoyed many a morning coffee here. Owen and I secured a non-resident library card at the library, and frequented that place for good internet and movie rentals. Not bad for $10. We discovered the local seafood market and found some of the best musket dip for lunch! But one of the biggest highlights was befriending Don and Karen England, who were kind enough to extend their hospitality during our stay there. Don even took us out fishing one day, and we caught multiple, beautiful Redfish - which proved to be the best dinner we’ve had on this trip so far.

We also went to the lighthouse in town a couple of times, which is a focal point of this area. One our first trip, I ran into Linda - a local yogi teacher who was starting up classes there. I was fortunate enough to take in one of her classes while in the area, and that added to the “localness” of our trip.

We also did some great hikes in this area - one of them, through Tate’s Hell State Forest - had it’s own little version of hell for Laurie - nearly stepping on a five foot black snake, curled up in the path!!

We also discovered a couple of local festivals - the Seafood Festival in Apalachicola, and the Musket Festival in Sopchoppy. Apalachicola is an amazing little town - basically a bigger Carabelle - but the food and shopping is better. I also found a great little Farmer’s market near Bee Inspired Too, which is a great little shop that I fell in love with. We also loved The Apalach Outfitters store! Most fun of all was the Chocolate Shop - good coffee, and massive amounts of desserts to choose from. The Grateful Dead inspired interior coupled with the bread and chocolate vibe definitely channeled my brother for me.

We spent Veterans Day at the local WW2 museum, as this part of the country - the Carabelle beach in particular - was used as a training group for the D-Day invasion! So much deep history here, and it was great to be able to really experience this and take it in. We also ventured out to St. George’s Island for the day, but the red tides had somewhat of an impact on the air quality, so we didn’t spend too much time here.

Overall, we loved the quietness and sleepiness of the area. At our RV park, we also got to know Fran - a local woman from the area, who had lots of stories to share with us.

We are pretty sure we’ll be back along the Forgotten Coast someday, and hope to find it untouched when we do!

Bell, FL

Stayed at: Hart Springs campground

Dates of stay: Oct 29 - Nov 1, 2021

The very best way to understand what we did at this stop is to watch Owen’s awesome video on Ginnie Springs and also watch Tom’s video on Facebook

The springs at our campsite were actually flooded, but we still enjoyed hiking around that area and checking it out. We “celebrated” Halloween here - but that mainly consisted of eating Reese’s peanut butter cups and playing Halloween themed Kahoots!

Sarasota/Bradenton, FL

More visits!

• Spent a great couple of days with John and Carol Freund, at their beautiful canal side home. Also finally had my first lobster roll here, which was so notable I had to mention it.

• Also had the opportunity to visit my friend Kimberly, who had moved from MN to Sarasota.

• Stayed at the Lake Manatee State Park, and basically slept there but otherwise, busy visiting.

Naples, FL

Stayed at: Collier Seminole State Park

Dates of stay: Oct 23 - 26, 2021

Drove all the way from the Florida Keys (actually, I drove the rig out of the Keys!) and we traveled the Tamiami highway through the Everglades to our next stop - that was really interesting. On the way, we stopped at a National Historic Park stop, and learned that they had just done a Burmese Python hunt (they are invasive) and captured 900 of them - eeekkkk!!!! Also saw a big gator hanging out in the waters here.

Quick stop through Naples to see Tom’s Aunt Joyce and her friend John, and we also saw Ericka and Bill Nelson in Cape Coral.

Didn’t spend too much time at our campsite here, but there was some very interesting history about the origins of Collier, who had financed the last stretch of Tamiami Hwy - on the condition they would name a county after him. He didn’t get a county, but he did get a state park - and the highway was finished.

We did do an airboat ride back in the Everglades, which was really cool! And of course, Owen took a great video to document it all.

Fiesta Key - Layton, FL

Stayed at: Fiesta Key (Thousand Trails campground)

Dates of stay: Oct. 9 - 23, 2021

Owen’s YouTube video of Florida Keys HERE

We spent two amazing weeks here and still have so much left to see and experience, although we enjoyed a slow pace here - which I think must be the best way to enjoy the Keys anyways. We really liked our campground, which is part of the Thousand Trails family. They led us to a spot that was practically oceanside, and a great place to be able to launch the kayaks. Hot here - which is great, as the pool is amazing and the time at which we visited is not high tourist season so at times, we had the place to ourselves. There is also a great oceanside swim area, from which we saw dolphins swimming just offshore. The campground also has a marina, and we indulged ourselves by imagining how much fun it would be to have a boat to explore the area.

During this trip, I learned about a great feature in Trip Advisor. I’ve used TA for years, but somehow, never knew that you could assign places to go on specific dates within a specific trip. This was a great way to track where we went, what we did, and when. So if you’re interested in knowing about what we’d recommend, check out my Florida Keys plan on Trip Advisor. A lot of these places were heavily influenced by suggestions from my cousin Eric, who is extremely well traveled in this area. Everything he suggested was amazing - from the Turtle Hospital to Hogfish Bar & Grill. And there were plenty of places we didn’t even make it to!

During our time here, we met up with another family who had a boy Owen’s age, so it was great for them to be able to pal around for a week together. They are also a “fulltime” family, and we’ve been meeting more of them as our trip goes on. One family we met here had eleven children - although “only seven” of them were traveling in the RV with them! As they say in the south “Bless their heart.”

Cape Canaveral, FL

Kennedy Space Center - amazing! Spend at least an entire day here, if not two - completely worth it and also take advantage of the free, short tours offered throughout the day. This place has something for all ages.

We took many walks on the ocean - it was steps away from our campground (Jetty Park). Would definitely stay at this campground again and hopefully we would get lucky enough to see a shuttle launch.

WDW (Walt Disney World), Orlando FL

What can we say about Disney that isn’t already on all the travel blogs? However, I will drop a few notes here about Fort Wilderness. This was Owen’s first trip to Disney, so we decided that we wanted to camp at a Disney property and after 2 hours of searching for a five day window back in March, I was lucky to actually find five days at the end of September (NOTHING available for October-November), so we essentially planned our Florida trips around this Disney window! But it all worked out really well. 

Fort Wilderness is - of course, magical - and it better be given the amount you pay for a slab of concrete to park your RV. That said, we loved:

• Not driving anywhere for 5 days (Tom especially appreciated this). Since it’s a Disney property, you can take a boat over to Magic Kingdom, and a bus anywhere else. And if you don’t have your own golf cart like 90% of the campers seemed to have, they run buses throughout Fort Wilderness. Owen had the scheduled memorized within the first couple hours of our arrival.

• The pool WITHOUT the water slide - never busy, and open until 11 p.m.

• Nightly campfires with s’mores and Disney movies - of course.

• We did a 3 day pass (Hollywood Studios, Magic Kingdom and Epcot). We could’ve done a 4th day and done Animal Kingdom but we were glad we didn’t cram it in as we wouldn’t have had time to enjoy Fort Wilderness.

• While they had a couple of restaurants on site, one night they had a bunch of food trucks on site, which was a fun addition.

Our favorite park was Hollywood Studios, and during this time of year, the lines were not bad at all. We did get in line early for the Rise of the Resistance attraction (so, so good) but other wait times were anywhere between no wait (esp. at Epcot) and 30 minutes.

Disney - check!

Jacksonville and St. Augustine, FL

We had a fun time in Jacksonville, FL. We got to see family and we also went south to St. Augustine. I made a great youtube video of Jacksonville and St. Augustine, if you want to watch it click here. We also went to the St. Augustine alligator farm and we got to see them feed the alligators. In St. Augustine we also went to the St. Augustine lighthouse.