A Brief Snowbird Adventure - Lessons From the Road

I’d like to extend a round of applause to all of you bloggers who somehow manage to post while on the road.  I truly can’t imagine how you do it.  I’ve often written posts ahead of time and set them to publish on future dates, but I’ve haven’t yet managed to draft and publish a post while we’ve been on the road and on the run.  This time, I went so far as to put my notes and photos on my laptop – and that’s as far as I got.  So, no post for the past three weeks and a well-deserved tip of my hat to those of you who are both road warriors and road writers.

Last year, Alan and I sold the second of two rental properties we owned.  For the first time since we had both escaped the workforce, we were truly free from responsibilities.  Winter travel had always been problematic for a variety of reasons, and this new-found freedom allowed us to enjoy the festivities of the Christmas season in both Pigeon Forge and Nashville, Tennessee, early in December.  Just recently, it also allowed us to escape the cold winter weather that plagues our area of the northeast.  In happy anticipation of wearing shorts and t-shirts, we set out to visit Alan’s brother and sister-in-law, Tom and Joan, in Florida.  We tacked on a few days in Savannah, Georgia, and a few more days on Chincoteague Island in Virginia, and we were looking forward to our first adventure as snowbirds.  Wow!  Did we learn a lot!

"Locking In" a Good Time at Ortona South - an Army Corps of Engineers Campground

This post represents another installment in The Big Switcheroo series – tales from last spring’s epic journey from the northeast to the Florida Keys and back – involving family, friends and an extraordinary range of adventures.

I commented in my last post how much Alan and I enjoyed the slow pace of our relaxing visit with Alan’s brother and sister-in-law, Tom and Joan, at their home near the Gulf Coast of Florida.  That wonderfully slow pace would continue as we worked our way down to the Florida Keys, and that made us happy campers, indeed.

When our all-too-short family visit was concluded, we pointed our truck toward the east and headed for our next destination – Ortona South, the Army Corps of Engineers (COE) campground located at the Ortona Lock on Florida’s Okeechobee Waterway.

We were drawn to this campground for a couple of reasons.  The first is that we’re big fans of COE campgrounds due to the well-designed facilities and the low cost of camping.  The second is that, as boaters, we love campsites on lakes and waterways, even if we don’t have our kayaks or power boat with us.  At the Ortona South Campground, our site was right on the Okeechobee Waterway.  But what was more interesting than the fact that we were on the Waterway is what was in it!

A Rendezvous in Daytona Beach

This post represents another installment in The Big Switcheroo series – tales from last spring’s epic journey from the northeast to the Florida Keys and back – involving family, friends and an extraordinary range of adventures.

Throughout the entirety of our marriage, Alan and I have maintained a constantly evolving Travel Bucket List.  When travel was restricted by our employment and the need to plan around an allotted number of vacation days, we added additional items to that list much more frequently than we checked any off.  Alan and I (happily) share the same tastes in travel, and our adventures over the course of 40+ years together have been eclectic, to say the least.  While we have certainly traveled to many places for many reasons, National and State Parks have always represented the majority of entries on that Bucket List, sharing space with tourism hot spots like Myrtle Beach, Disney World, Virginia Beach, Pigeon Forge, Alaska, Hawaii and the Gulf Coast of Florida, as well as quieter, less popular vacation destinations.  As time went on, more and more of the “must see” National Parks were checked off the Bucket List, so that by the end of 2017, the first full year that both of us were retired from the workforce, the scope of our travel plans widened to the point where the focus was not so much, “What’s the next National Park?,” but more like “Where shall we go next and what shall we do along the way?”  Suddenly, the possibilities seemed endless.

Our Spring Travel Plans Went Right Out the Window

I feel awful.  Right after I posted a reminder to sign up for email delivery of new blog posts from Reflections Around the Campfire, I read that several other blogs were having problems with their Feedburner email subscriptions.  If you recently signed up for email delivery and are having any issues receiving new posts, please try unsubscribing and/or signing up again.  I do apologize for any trouble you are having.  That being said, my last post was published on January 30th, so if you haven’t received any new notices since then, it’s me, not you.  Life has been a bit hectic around here lately . . .

Around this time last year, Alan and I took a look at our camping map of the United States.  When the kids were young, we had printed off a basic map and started coloring in the states in which we had camped with colored pencils.  It’s not fancy and it’s not the type we would put up on the travel trailer; it’s just a simple map on cardstock that lives in one of our travel binders.  A good look at our camping map made it obvious that we really needed to make a concerted effort to visit some of our southern states, so we decided to make a loop through that area of the country, focusing mainly on the states between Florida and Texas.  Then I started planning our itinerary.