2017 Finale!
Like any finale, this one will be a bit longer and have more content!
We had no idea that Florida would be so much fun to visit. It’s notoriously hard to live in a van there because it’s so appealing, even RV parks don’t allow you to stay unless you’re a registered RV (which we definitely aren’t). Plenty of people still do it, but they have to make extra effort to stay under the radar. Little did we know, this is mostly for just the coastal cities, and there’s an entire interior to explore.
We started out right up north on the coast and visited Canaveral National Seashore; cool place but not dog friendly. Then to the interior to check out some of the national forests and hunting grounds. Surprisingly, this was where we had two black bears climb on the front of the van at night!
During much of our driving, we had been listening to the whole of the Harry Potter series on tape. I’d never read them, and we had a goal to catch me up so that I could really appreciate Harry Potter World at Universal Studios. We dropped the dog off for a day and had a blast. Such a great theme park experience (and I usually can do without that stuff). The butterbeer left me wanting, but the park was so fun that I’d go again- and that’s saying something if you know me.
We of course had to visit the Keys for the whole experience. They had a cheap, happy-hour glass bottom reef boat that allowed dogs. Don’t get that combo often, so of course we signed up for some Margaritas. Key Largo was as far as we made it, as we didn’t feel like an extra six hours with no camping to get all the way down to Key West.
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If you haven’t noticed in the pictures, the swampland here is amazing and other-worldly. Only one day in the Everglades, again with the dogs rule. They’re still recovering from the hurricane so many of the sites weren’t available to camp at anyway.
On our way back up the west side, we took a day to visit Big Cypress National Park, and discovered that this was the Florida that we were looking for! Soooo many alligators. We took a 60 minute drive that followed some of the swamp land and almost got desensitized to how many of these reptile dinosaurs we saw.
We explored inland a bit, still just flabbergasted by the cool trees and camping. Not something to manage forever, because we were also overwhelmed by the bugs, but it was so cool it felt like we weren’t supposed to be there.
Our goal was to be home for Christmas, so we booked it back through the south. One stop on the Dauphin Island in Arkansas with a gorgeous view of the Gulf:
Then a couple of nights in southern Mississippi, a stop by the Oklahoma panhandle, and one last night in New Mexico, where we had a nice little Christmas Candle walk in a state park before heading home. Here’s to looking forward to the west in 2018!
