Biscayne National Park & the Florida Keys - The End of the Road

This post represents the final 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.

A quick recap for those of you who might be wondering why this three week, whirlwind tour was called The Big Switcheroo:  In 2018, we had planned a spring 2019 loop tour of the southern states in the eastern half of the country.  Alan and I were hoping to add a decent number of states to the map (in the column at the right) that indicates in which states we’ve camped.  On Christmas Day, 2018, we found out that our vacation plans ensured we would be out of town when our son Ryan’s longtime girlfriend, Anya, graduated with her Master’s Degree in mid-May of 2019.  In January of 2019, we decided to switch our 2019 vacation plans with those we had scheduled for spring of 2020 and it was off to Florida we went, visiting friends and family all along the way.  With Everglades National Park in our rear view mirror, we pointed the truck toward the Florida Keys.  Luckily, the travel trailer followed behind.

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.