Playing Tourist

During the last couple of months in Florida, we really didn’t play tourist very much. We spent most of our time just enjoying life at the RV park and participating in many of their weekly activities. We enjoyed the daily exercise with the Walk Fit program on most weekday mornings and spent time walking Trent around the park so he got some exercise too. We also joined in on game nights a few times a week and enjoyed many of the potluck meals as well as Taco Tuesdays. Participation was a great way to get to know our neighbors and make friends at our winter home.

We managed to check out some of the local restaurants, sometimes just the 2 of us and sometimes with friends and family. When we are in one place for a long time, we tend to eat at home most of the time but we did get out and about once or twice a week. There are quite a few restaurants at Brownwood Square, one of The Villages near us. We still haven’t tried all of them so we will have to check out the rest next winter.

Even though we spent most of our time around the campground or over in Inverness where Aunt Tish lives, we did get out to play tourist a few times. We visited a couple State Parks and local parks in some of the towns near us. I know that I have written past blog posts about visiting Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park. It is one of our favorite parks and a great place to spend a nice day. We finally managed to find time to visit the park in February on a beautiful sunny day.

The ranger talk about the manatees and you can see one of the rescues in the water behind her.

Our first stop in the park was the ranger talk about manatees and then we got to see them feeding the rescue manatees that live in the park. The ranger talk was very informative and we learned a bit about manatees. This park is a wildlife refuge for many rescued animals and provides them with a comfortable home for life. One of my favorites is the hippo but I enjoy seeing all of the animals in this park. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

the hippo shares his birthday month with tim and also turned 65 this year.

In March, I took my friend Nancy out to celebrate her birthday and she wanted to go to a state park. We chose to go to Silver Springs State Park and ride the glass bottom boat. I had always wanted to do this since we started going to Florida for the winter but hadn’t found the time to go. I remember my Mom talking about it years ago and how much she enjoyed that park. I have to say this is a wonderful state park with many walking trails and a great place to kayak in addition to taking a ride on the glass bottom boat.

it looked like a great place to kayak although you need to watch out for the alligators!

i was glad we were on the boat when we saw this guy

Whitney and Ian decided to make a trip to Disney in March and wanted us to join them for a visit while they were there. They had a very busy week scheduled visiting all of the parks so we decided to join them at Disney Springs on their first day there before they started the park hopping. We found a hotel at Disney Springs with availability and a somewhat decent price (that’s relative these days!). We decided to head down early afternoon so we could get checked in and then walk over to Disney Springs.

As we were planning that little trip, we learned that our niece Jenny and her boyfriend Dan were coming down to Florida that same week. They visited Dan’s Mom and Aunt near Wildwood so were not far from us. We were able to get together with them on Sunday for a visit and had a nice dinner out at a local sports pub. They headed to Disney the same day we were driving down and we were all able to meet up at Disney Springs for dinner. It was great to be able to have a family visit.

By the second week in April, Florida was starting to get a bit too hot so we got ready to make our way back north for the summer. We ended up traveling up to Pennsylvania fairly quickly with mostly overnight stops so we didn’t play tourist too much on our way back. We managed to stop at 2 nice Harvest Host sites, a pub in Georgia and a winery/brewery in Virginia that we highly enjoyed. I will say these stops are always wonderful but we probably spend more money at them than when we stop at campgrounds.

our stop in Georgia at the pub. we were the only ones stopped for the night and had a great sunset to enjoy after our dinner.

the winery we stopped at in virginia. They had a huge parking lot and a couple other rvs joined us that night.

We also stopped for 2 nights at Camp Pedro at South of the Border. If you have ever traveled south or north on I-95 over the years, I am sure you have seen the miles billboards advertising this tourist “trap” stop just as you enter South Carolina. It is definitiely an eclectic roadside stop and worth a quick visit if you have never stopped there. The campground is quite nice with large drive through sites and even though there is a bit of road noise, it is a good place to stop for the night.

We also spent one night at a Cracker Barrel. Last year when we stopped at Cracker Barrel, we would see a couple other RVs pull in for the night but never very many. This time the RV parking in the back got very packed and there were some that parked out in the front lot along the outside as well. I only caught a few of them in the pictures. I would guess that there were at least 10 RVs there that night; the most I have seen at Cracker Barrel. It is always a great stop - good food for a decent price and very accommodating for RVers to spend the night.

A week on the road brought us to Gettysburg for a 4 day weekend over Easter. I will cover that stop and our stop in Hershey, PA in the next blog post.

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