Neglect or Lazyness..Finally Posted an Update .

 

Sculptures at Brownwood Village of The Villages

I'll try to briefly summarize this year's snowbird travels.  We departed Virginia after a nice Thanksgiving dinner with family and friends.

I can hardly believe it's been over six months since my last post.  We've been hanging around Florida for the entire Winter deciding not to do any long-range travel.  I could seem to get started on a blog post. It seemed like there was nothing very interesting to write about.  Trying to catch up on things may make this a long post.  We are currently camped at the Three Flags Thousand Trails RV Resort at Wildwood, FL.  This is our third visit to the Wildwood park.  Although not close to either Florida coast, the shops at the nearby Villages make this place Ina's paradise (e.g., Coach, Chicos, TJMax, Home Goods, etc.).

We spent a week visiting my mother, sister and brother-in-law who live near Shiloh, NC (a few miles from Elizabeth City).

 Following mostly US 17 we traveled south toward Charleston, SC stopping for a couple of days at the Air Force recreation center at Kure Beach, NC (near Fort Fisher State Recreation Area).  The small park at Kure Beach was about 200 yards from the Atlantic beach on the east with access to the Cape Fear River on the west side of the park.   This military facility would make a really nice summer vacation destination.  After spending a couple of nights there we took the ferry across the river to South Port, NC.

A few hours later we pulled in to the FamCamp at Joint Base Charleston, SC.  We stayed 11 days at Charleston The campground is small but offers full hook-up sites on concrete pads with both shady and open sites.

Although the location is convenient to tour downtown Charleston we only visited the downtown area once strolling the many shops and the old market (touristy location).

Daughter Suzanne, Son-In_law, John and family stopped for an overnight visit while enroute to a Christmas stay in Orlando.  After a nice breakfast at a nearby Crackerbarrel, John and family went on to visit Son Danial and Monica in Orlando.







We left Charleston on Dec 22nd.  After a short drive south, we checked in for a two week stay at the Navy campground at the May Port Naval  Base, Jacksonville.

 The May Port is a really pretty park with many sites facing the main channel entrance to Jacksonville harbor. We had stayed here during the 2013 Christmas holiday.  This year we reserved a site one row back from the water front.

 In addition to the view of shipping in the channel there is a nice beach for Barney to run on.

We took the car down to Orlando to enjoy Christmas dinner with the whole family. 

The following week Daniel drove up from Orlando and we enjoyed some fishing from the rock jetty at the campground.  Got bites but no fish.

After New Years, we left Jacksonville for about a three hour drive south to the Orlando Thousand Trails park near Clermont, FL.  The next day Daniel and I tested out his new kayaks on Lake Conway.  As it was my first try at kayaking I had my doubts about  how comfortable the small boat would be.  I was impressed at the comfort.  Much better than the canoe we had previously had.  Daniel gave me his old kayak which have yet to put in the water. After testing the smaller old kayak, I may want to upgrade to a lager one.

While at the Orlando park Daniel, and Monica went with us to the annual Tampa RV show.

After two weeks at the Thousand Trails park we moved to a spot at an Bill Fredericks RV Park, an Orlando City park. 

 This park is a hidden gem with low priced, shaded, concrete full hook-up site.   We had been told abut Bill Frederick by a couple we met at a  Blue Ridge park a two years ago.  Early reservations generally are needed to get into this park.  Upon arrival, Ina immediately wanted to schedule a return visit.  We were lucky and snagged a cancellation and will be returning for a week's stay in February.

 During our stay at Bill Frederick, Daniel and I made a kayaking trip to the E.G. Simmons park at Tampa bay.  This time we had better luck hooking a several of bonnethead shark, a skate, and a too small to keep cobia.  We didn't keep the sharks judging them to be too small.  One large fish, a probable shark, broke Daniel's 80lb test line. 

One of the fish I failed to land jumped so many times that we think it could have been a small tarpon.  

About half-mile into Tampa Bay

We moved north to Wildwood on  Jan 26th.  We'll stay here for the two weeks allowed by our Thousand Trails membership and then return to Bill Frederick park for the required week out of the Thousand Trails system.