We got off to a good, problem-free, start with a comfortable 200 mile trip. After picking up Winnie at her storage home, we traveled North, stopping at Bee’s RV Resort in Clermont for the night. Most of the sites are occupied by long term residents in a variety of RVs with some significant additions for additional storage and living spaces.
March 7: Clermont, FL – Bee’s RV Campground
Bee’s is a working RV campground with mostly permanent residents. Thus it was crowded, smokey, and an OK place if you need a spot to camp while working in the area. I doubt we will return.
March 8: Chattahoochee, FL – Flat Creek Campground,
A lovely, uncrowded place to camp. A 265-mile drive. Quiet, lots of open space to “camp” our trailer for the night, nice place to walk around and enjoy the outdoors.
We departed the next morning, heading for the Splash Resort, stopping along the way for a much-enjoyed breakfast at Keke’s Breakfast Cafe in Gainesville
March 9-14: Milton, FL – Splash RV Resort
A lovely true resort. Splash has two pools, a hot tub, a small lazy river, minature golf, movies with popcorn, morning coffee, and lots to do. While it was quite cold, we kept busy. A bundle of fun with roasted marshmallows and ice cream to keep the blood sugar high.
March 9 – to Splash
The 140-mile drive mostly in heavy rain, we arrived at Splash, at about the same time as Rebecca (Stu’s daughter), Miguel (son-in-law), and their children, Sierra (6) and Dylan (3), Stu’s terrific grandkids, in their motorhome, driving from Austin, Texas. Fortunately, an uneventful ride except for a car that ended upside down beside the road.
March 10 – Splash day 1
The day was too cold for the unheated lazy river, but fine for the heated pool and the land activities.
March 11 – Splash day 2
Still cool weather, but that didn’t stop the activities. Sierra even braved the slide into the cold waters one time, and Rebecca was quick enough to capture the following video of Sierra’s courage. Tomorrow afternoon should be warmer.
For dinner Rebecca brought a salad and Stu grilled chicken drumsticks. We had a delicious dinner at the picnic table between our RVs.
March 12 – Splash day 3
Breakfast for the family was in our trailer. Omelet rollups for all – eggs stirred by Dylan and cooked by Stu on his induction cooktop. Yesterday’s breakfast on our RV was waffles made in Stu’s waffle maker, batter stirred by Dylan.
After breakfast we went to the Make a Ladybug activity (it’s bug week), and then went to the foam party pictured below. Bubbles (foam) were sprayed out of a machine to cover the dry splash pad – at some points bubbles were higher than the children. It was wear goggles or get soap in your eyes.
4pm Make a Dragonfly
Crafts activities were scheduled for several times each day. The staff did a great job of keeping everyone supplied with the right materials. The participants were mostly children, but adults were always welcome. One staff member worked the glue gun for difficult-to-glue dragonfly parts.
March 13 – Wednesday – Splash day 5, our last full day here
10am Make a Bug Puppet
12 noon Musical Hula Hoops
The noon activity for children, and willing adults, was hula hoops. Joan had not touched a hula hoop in many, many years, but with some practice, got the hang of it again.
2pm Make a Caterpillar
6pm Bingo and Potluck Social
March 14 – Thursday – Splash to Navarre
Our final craft activity at Splash – paint a rock
Sad parting from the Romans – wonderful time together
lunch at David’s Catfish House
Drive to Navarre – 30 minutes
Dinner – salads, and crab cakes from our freezer
March 15 – Friday – full day in Navarre
thick fog in morning but beautiful day
Navarre is located on Santa Rosa Sound, a long thin body of water that separates Navarre from Navarre Beach. The campsite is separated from the sound by a 2′ wall to keep a small, clean beach in place. There are several sets of lounge chairs on the small beach where Stu sat, enjoyed the view, and read.
Dewey Destin’s Navarre served the best spicy seafood gumbo Stu has tasted in years. Thick, full of shrimp and fish and slightly spicy. It was served with OK hushpuppies suitable for dipping. A lovely first start.
Joan had broiled shrimp and salad. It must have been good because she ate the entire portion. The shrimp looked tasty and the tails she save me tasted fresh and perfectly seasoned.
Stu also had a salad with blackened Mahi. Perfectly seasoned, broiled to perfection, and even approved as quite good when he shared a piece with Joan.
March 16 – Steinhatchee
The word steinhatchee comes from an Indian word meaning place of man. It is around the “point” of Apalachicola and requires either driving far inland to I-10 or cutting across surface roads for a shorter distance but potentially more time as we travel through interesting but slow towns.
Joan found an interesting campsite. Apparently a small landowner with an extra few feet of land found the zoning laws were not very strict and paved 3 very nice concrete sites. He named the place Big Z. The site had rocking chairs, a nice table, a large concrete pad and full utilities.
The secret of the town is Roy’s Restaurant. It is located at the only real marina in the area and is 1/2 block from a public dock – both are very busy. Stu expected to kayak down the Steinhatchee River, and even bicycled to the marina to see the canoes and kayaks being recovered at the end of the downstream trip.
He found, instead, four very busy boat ramps launching and recovering fishing boats to harvest the bounty of the waters flowing by the Marina. That, and the unseasonably cold weather, changed our plans.
We did have an amazing dinner before we left town the next day. Roy’s has a small but very well provisioned salad bar with wonderful homemade carrot salad, peas in a sauce we cannot name, and a giant bowl of homemade potato salad that was, rightly, a big draw of the folks who came to dine. After two trips each to the salad bar, we were ready for a nap, but we still had our entrees to eat.
Joan’s rock shrimp special arrived hot from the broiler with a serving of fresh broccoli that looked good enough to eat but ended up mostly in a take home box. Stu’s catfish was a hit, nicely flavored and with three filets more than he should eat, but he foolishly enjoyed every bite, served with cheese grits and OK hush puppies.
March 17 – 19 Homosassa – Camp N Water Outdoor Resort
What a special place this was – lovely setting, friendly people, right on the canal for great boating and lots of places to dine.
We had a wonderful dinner at the Marguerita Grill in Homosassa, mahi sandwich for Stu, Garlic Herb Shrimp for Joan, very fresh and delicious shrimp, except that there was no garlic herb flavor.
March 20 – 21: Sarasota at Sun Outdoors and home
The 2-hour or so drive was uneventful. We had brunch before we left – about noon – and took a combination of surface roads and I-75, forgoing the coastal route.
Sun Outdoors is a large park with a combination of permanent residents and a smaller number of RVers who are seasonal and an even smaller number of short term guests like us. We were assigned a small but usable spot on a curve on a main access route that I had to completely block to back into the tight spot. It took a few minutes and involved some tension.
We have been here before when the park was no better. It is crowded due to the proximity of Sarasota. Our area was all full-time residents except for a few transient sites like ours that were far to small to hold the much larger homes that were really not intended to be moved.
Once settled in, the tobacco smoke began to filter into our trailer. Even equipped with smoke filters, the neighbors walking by made the stay very uncomfortable.
I hope we never return here.
We did have a very good dinner at der Dutchman, a restaurant run by the Amish.
Stu had the meatloaf dinner which he downed with gusto. Joan got the salmon dinner “lightly grilled” which arrived with thick black grill marks on both sides. We sent it back, but the waitress brought a second second dinner with thin black grill marks. Other than the black marks, the salmon was very good, both for dinner and for lunch the next day. The meals came with 2 sides including a wondrous salad bar for an extra $2.49. We both filled our plates twice, it was so good.
The next morning we drove to the local Regenexx office for Joan’s knee treatments that we had pre-planned, and then we drove straight home, to arrive before the novacaine had worn off.
All in all, a wonderful trip.