The day after Christmas we hit the road, heading to Orlando, for a rendezvous with the entire Barnes clan to celebrate Bill’s parents 60th anniversary. Everyone was supposed to arrive on the 28th, so that gave us three days to drive the 1,150 miles. It was exhausting and not fun, but we pushed through, driving extra slow over the crappy Louisiana roads this time. On the 28th, our ETA was 1pm, but as luck would have it, there was a serious accident on 75 near Gainesville, that caused a two-hour delay and put us in Friday afternoon traffic, so it was after 5pm by the time we got to the RV park and after 6pm before we made it to the Airbnb house where the fourteen of us were to spend the next week together.
Bill, ever the planner and expert at finding the best option, found us a house that was amazing! It had six bedrooms and each one had an ensuite bathroom. The decorations were very glamorous and beautiful, with some themed bedrooms like Mickey Mouse, Star Wars, and Paris. There was a theater, a game room, pool with spa, and a dining table that seated all fourteen of us. Our only complaints were that the pool was too warm and some of the lovely decorations were glued down onto the table so we could not move them. The house was in a great little community with a fantastic pool, a nice gym, and a pond with small alligators sunning themselves on the banks. See the house here.
We had perfect weather, sunny and in the lower 80’s, and really enjoyed playing games, watching movies, cooking and hanging out by the pool. The house was big enough to accommodate us all together comfortably while providing some private space for everybody when they needed it. We took turns cooking and had a fun in house, dress up New Year’s Eve party. Everybody but us went to Disney and Universal at least one day (we are saving that for when our grandkids come to visit in March). A bunch of us ventured out to an escape room one day, where we escaped with fifteen minutes to spare (and just missed a spot on their top 10 list). It was nice to see everyone and a good time was had by all.
While most of the clan flew or drove back to cold Canada, we picked up the RV and drove to Miami where we were staying for the rest of January. Bill’s parents came along to stay with us for a few days. This was only the second time we have ever had anyone come visit, so we were really glad it worked out. Our campground was officially in the city of Miami, but it was still an hour drive to get to the South Beach area where we went to do one of our city walks. It was a cool area and we enjoyed it, but it was not nearly as glamorous as it appears to be on TV shows. The rest of their visit we spent playing games, lounging by the pool or playing the mini golf course at the campground.
On our own again we visited the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, where we saw lots of lizards, turtles, birds, and what we thought was a big alligator basking in the sun on the edge of a large pond. We saw him from across the pond, but eventually found ourselves on the same side and Bill sneaked up to within about 10 feet of him to take some pictures. A few days later, we took a two-hour private airboat ride in the everglades. We opted not to do the bigger group airboat since we wanted to be sure we could take pictures. I had always wanted to try air boating and it was fun zipping through the tall grass and making sharp sliding turns. We saw ten or so alligators, not counting babies, lots of birds and an otter. Our guide was great and shared lots of info about the everglades and its wildlife, including how to tell the difference between gators and crocs (crocs have all their teeth showing even when their mouths are closed). He also mentioned that Crocs are extremely aggressive and much more powerful than gators, and can actually jump all the way into the airboat. Fortunately, they rarely see them in the glades and wisely stay away from them when they do. As it turns out…the gator we saw at the botanical garden was actually a crocodile. Bill is lucky that croc wasn’t hungry! (or maybe he just doesn’t like the taste of Canadians)
Since we were already in Miami, we booked a dive trip to Bonaire. Normally that trip means a flight through Miami along with an overnight stay given the timing of flights from Dallas. This plan was much more attractive but we did get a little worried about the Government shut down causing problems with our flights. Fortunately, the shut-down was resolved a couple of days before we left and our trip was not affected. The weather in Bonaire was perfect and the diving was great (as usual, this being our 4th visit). We didn’t see anything we had not seen before, but still enjoyed hunting for the things we knew were there (turtles, octopi and large tarpon are always fun).
Bonaire is a mostly un/under-developed island. They have a decent grocery store but the typical cruddy, tourist shops fill the downtown area, otherwise it is all dive “resorts”. I think this is where the derogatory term “dive” comes from when describing a hotel or restaurant of less than stellar quality. Unfortunately, that’s pretty much what you get when you go most places with good diving. Fortunately, AirBnB is now available on most of these islands. We chose a condo this time (which wasn’t as nice as the house we rented on our 3rd visit as Dessa pointed out). Don’t get me wrong, Bonaire does have some nice hotels on the island, if you don’t mind paying $400 a night (although Dessa would like them, I do mind).
Back in Miami, we attended a festival and classic car parade in the South Beach area, and went to explore Everglades National Park. Cars were lined up along the road into the park waiting to take turns getting in as cars left, so we parked out on the highway and rode our bicycles. The park had a fifteen-mile loop road that you could walk or bike or take their shuttle for $12 a person. Before we even officially got into the park, there were gators, huge Great Blue Herons, and snow-white egrets along the side of the driveway. The loop road was one way and not even wide enough for two cars and the canal was only ten feet from the road with all the alligators laying in the grass between the road and the canal. The signs said stay 15 feet away from them, but there wasn’t even that much room. The gators were everywhere! At first, we were pretty wary, but after the first dozen we got used to them. I would guess we saw 50 gators on the first half of the loop. It was amazing and we highly recommend it.
The weather in Miami was great, 70’s and 80’s everyday with lots of sunshine and almost no rain. It was big news when the temperature dropped below 70 (they even showed people in coats on the news). Crazy! Also, crazy bad was the traffic, it was terrible in every direction, all day long and we were thirty miles from downtown Miami. They claim the population in this area is less than half a million people, so not sure why they have such awful traffic, but take my word for it, it was bad.
For February, we moved to Fort Myers on the Gulf Coast, population 87,000. We booked the whole month in Pioneer Village, which was an average quality RV park but we got a much lower than average site. Bill says it’s because we only book for one month rather than for the whole winter. It was a very active park, with constant activities and the pool was always packed. Bill and I were the young hotties at the pool (well Dessa at least was a Hottie, I was just younger), where they often had a DJ and sometimes free beer (for Dessa) and hot dogs (for me). Several of the older ladies (who were well past their best buy date), would get up and dance. One in particular liked to do her dirty dancing and grinding near Bill. We played shuffle board, not very well and went to a casino night that was lots of fun. It was a catered event, where they gave us each $20,000 worth of chips, 2 drink tickets, and 5 prize drawing tickets all for free. I played blackjack all night while Bill floated around to various tables (we both made money but didn’t win any of the prizes at the end of the night). And there were lots of other activities that we did not participate in. All in all, a good time.
Fort Myers was a nice change of pace and we may have finally learned to slow down and chill out. Spending a month in one place took all the pressure off to push to see and do everything. I spent time on a paint by number canvas I got for Christmas, reading, and doing killer Sudoku’s, while Bill played Xbox and games on his iPad. We saw every movie at the local AMC with our A-list membership and started converting old family videos to digital, a project that will take months. Across the street from our RV park was a property with a Bald Eagle nest that constantly had people watching. They have a live stream of the two baby eagles born at the end of December and their very protective mother. The website has a very interesting detailed history of the eagles that have been nesting in these particular trees since 2006.
We weren’t lazy every day, nearby (a 45-minute drive) Sanibel Island is famous for shelling. Although we got there at about 8am, lots of people were already leaving with bags full of shells. I guess we arrived too late, because the shells we found were not great (we might have been late but just getting Dessa up before 7am to arrive when we did was challenging, arriving earlier would have been a real feat). The Darling National Wildlife Refuge is also on Sanibel Island so we dropped by for some biking and to check out the birds. A little closer to our campground, we went hiking at Lovers Key State Park, where we saw our first manatees (and a gopher turtle that was surprisingly fast at diving into his hole). Another afternoon we decided to canoe at Manatee Park where we saw zero manatees but did enjoy looking at all the waterfront homes and a few birds.
Several Major League teams hold their spring training camps in Florida and we got tickets to see the Red Sox play the Twins at Jet Blue Park, which is an exact mini replica of Fenway Park in Boston. It holds ten thousand fans as opposed to the thirty-seven thousand fan capacity in Boston. It was awesome to see major league teams in a smaller venue for a lot less money.
Preparing for next year, we spent some time checking out several other RV parks in the area, trying to figure out where we might want to stay. We definitely want to come back to Florida and now know why this is such a snow bird destination. There must be thousands of parks in Florida and we have learned that we want a site with a concrete pad and not too many trees overhead, so we can get satellite TV. We saw some parks that were beautiful but also cost a small fortune (up to $4000 a month). Plus, the good parks are harder to get into if you only want to book one month as opposed to the whole winter season (three months). I’m not sure I’m ready to stay anywhere for three solid months and definitely not here at Pioneer Village.
Our original plan was to move to Daytona for March, but Alex and Ashlee decided to come visit for a week, so we changed our plans to go back to Orlando to meet them. We were so excited to have them come, we went toy shopping and we got our spare room (also known as the garage for the motorcycles when we are on the road) as well equipped as we could for our four guests. After a grueling eleven-hundred-mile drive for our three and five-year-old grandsons, Maverick and Hunter, they finally arrived. We had a good time just hanging out at the RV park, playing in the kiddie pool and on the mini golf course, and watching the deer that came into the park each night to feed on corn put out by one of the residents.
Bill chose Universal’s Islands of Adventure for our theme park day since it has a super hero themed section and the most rides for under 5’s. We spent an exciting eleven hours at the park (many of them in lines of course) and both boys were great, no melt downs at all. Creative games and in a pinch video games on phones in the lines kept them happy all day. It was a bit cooler and overcast, but no rain, so a perfectly great day! We were all exhausted the next day, and everyone took recovery naps.
For our beach day, we all piled into their Jeep, with me in the back (also known as the trunk) with all the gear and drove 90 minutes to Cocoa Beach. Bill rented an umbrella and we packed a picnic lunch for our day in the sun. In spite of the 70-degree ocean temp, Hunter loved the water and wore Bill out jumping and playing in the waves. He came out shivering, but happy. (being Canadian, 70 was considered warm water when I was growing up). The giant bag of sand toys was put to work building a sand castle and Hunter made many trips to the water’s edge to bring back buckets of water. Burying themselves and their toys seemed to be the favorite activity, so I am sure we left some treasure behind (but fortunately, neither boy). Eventually we were all trying to escape the sun and decided to call it a day. Before we knew it, it was time for them to leave for their long drive home. Hopefully they felt it was worth the effort and they will come visit us again.
The morning they left we packed up and drove to Daytona for the final weekend of Daytona’s Bike Week. Bike Week claims to be the World’s Largest Motorcycle Event, with over 500,000 in attendance. It’s a bogus claim though, since Sturgis had 739,000 in attendance in 2015 when we were there. We spent Saturday checking out the Daytona Speedway where all the vendors were set up; then running over to Cackleberry Campground where they had mechanical bull riding, dirt racing, bands and tons of state fair type food. Our final stop was a bar called the Broken Spoke, to see Miss Intent, a Pink cover band (which was good) and Hairball, an 80’s cover band (which wasn’t). Bike Week was fun and I would do it again next year but we have already discussed not bringing the motorcycles back to Florida (of course we don’t actually need to have the bikes to visit the event) since we didn’t find any really good rides here (defined as curving and scenic). I guess we have been spoiled by the beauty and roads of the mountains.
The following Monday, the weather turned cool (into the 50’ and 60’s with a fair amount of rain in the forecast for the rest of the week). Added to a really crappy site (probably our worst ever), we decided to leave Daytona early and head home. That is one of the nice things about this lifestyle, we can change our plans anytime we want.
Pensacola was on the way home so we stopped at a lovely little RV park where our site backed up to the Indian Bayou Water Way. There was a fishing pier and canoes for anyone that wanted to use them. It was the prettiest spot we had all winter, looking out at the trees and the grasses growing out of the water, with fog in the morning and a pelican that hung out on the pier every morning. For our last day in Florida, we went to lunch at The Oar House, sitting outside overlooking the marina and had a fried fish and shrimp fiesta and a fantastic key lime pie. The Pensacola Lighthouse was on the nearby Naval Air Station base and we were able to climb to the top to look across the Gulf Coast. Finally, we drove across the bridges to the Pensacola Gulf Beach Pier that stretches 1500 feet out into the gulf. The shore here along the gulf is beautiful with super fine white sand and very blue water. This is where my family went every year for vacation when I was a kid, but this is the first time I‘ve been back in almost forty years. While my father passed away almost twenty years ago, I finally had the chance to spread his ashes in the place he loved to be most in the world… fishing in the gulf. It was a great last day.
It took us another two days to meander our way back to Dallas but we were happy to be home and to see the family again. We stayed in Dallas through the end of May, dropping any plans for a trip to Europe. Bill had messed up his shoulder (getting old sucks) so we needed to stay in town to get him fixed up. We thought he would need surgery and then time for recovery but fortunately the recommendation was just therapy and it looks like it worked.
We’re back on the road again heading towards Calgary and then the Pacific North West.
You can see all our Florida pictures and a couple of videos HERE.
You can our Bonaire dive pictures and a short video HERE.
