Bill And Pam's Adventure

 Naples and Ft Meyers, Florida After a few days staying in the middle of the Everglades, a bit of a change to stay at the KOA Campground in Naples / Marco Island on the southwestern coast of Florida.  We had a small site right near the pool.  The sites were a bit close together, and our neighbors were a bit noisy late at night, but that is part of campground life...   for better or worse. Cape Romano  In 1979 Bob Lee, a retired businessman built a house consisting of a set of four domes on a the small Morgan Island near Marco Island.  The story we were told was that he built the house as a vacation house, but also to be the anchor point for a new island development off Marco Island.  The new development that would need  bridge from the larger island.  Seems that as the world progressed, the increased emphasis on natural areas reduced the likelihood that the bridge would ever be built.  The Domed home laid idle, passed hands a few times until Hurricane Andrew in 1992 when the interior o

 Everglades National Park One word - nowhereland...  well, kinda a word...  but the Everglades is really a National Park full of pretty much nothing...  Well, unless you are a Florida Panther, an Alligator or one of a dozen different kind of birds...   And...   no cell service (actually AT&T only)... but we did have 30/50A electric, a dump station and a water spigot to refill our fresh water tank... and very quiet, dark at night...  a bit of a different RV camping environment... We liked it... The Flamingo campground has sites that are large, and separated... 'course the West Indian Mahogany tree right above the trailer was shedding seed balls that would bang off the roof in the middle of the night...    but other than that, the campground was the quietest place we have ever camped... There were a few Black Vultures flying around...  at least they stayed away from the windshield wipers.  Evidently (from more than a couple of YouTube videos) the Vultures are known to pick at the

 Florida Keys    Off to the primary destination of this trip...   The Florida Keys...   Marathon, Key West and the Dry Tortugas...  Places that we have been looking forward to seeing for the past few years...  The best destination for our first major trip!! But on the way down, we had to stop at the " Robert is Here " fruit stand.  A special fruit stand that was founded in 1959 when a young boy started selling fruit on a corner in Homestead Florida...  Still active today and well known in the media it is a great stop on the way to the Keys.   Just a little bit out of the way, but well worth the slight detour.  Famous for their exotic fruit, milkshakes and... we particularly like the salsa...   great salsa...   Marathon We based our Keys exploration out of Marathon, and stayed at the Jolly Roger RV Resort , right on the sea wall.  A great site!!   And some great sunset views from the trailer!!!     Key West And, of course the ultimate destination was Key West...  and the furth

 Davie / Ft. Lauderdale Florida       ... And every once in a while, there is a campground that you will not ever return to!  We found our first "never-go-back" campground in Davie / Ft. Lauderdale.   The KOA in Davie (really a western suburb of Ft. Lauderdale, which is a northern suburb of the Miami huge city "blob")...    The site itself was OK... but the park is old, and showing its age.   Crammed together sites, a large number of "permanent" campers in run-down "trailers"...    and the worst was a permeating sewage smell.   We will not be back... We did however, get to visit our favorite coffee store.  Koffee Kult has been our coffee bean source for a number of years now...   a small, local coffee supplier in the middle of Ft. Lauderdale.  Yup, we did the typical "touristy" thing and had to go see the place that gets us going in the morning..    They had a small coffee bar, we had a cold coffee drink (remember it is Florida!), and b

 Saint Augustine - For the second time... On the way south, we stopped for a couple of days in Saint Augustine Florida for a second time... we wanted to complete a couple of stops that we missed on the first time, and needed a convenient place to stop for a rest...  Long trip!    We stopped at the Stagecoach RV Park, and had a nice full hookup, pull-through site... We did get a chance to climb the St. Augustine lighthouse on this stop...  The plan was to get there early in the morning (fewer people, and cooler)!!  And in spite of the COVID mandatory mask rules, we successfully climbed all 219 steps...   The St. Augustine Lighthouse was the first Florida Lighthouse and currently stands 165 feet tall.   Today's lighthouse was constructed in 1874 to replace the first lighthouse, known as the the Old Spanish Watchtower that fell into the ocean in 1880 (not an uncommon demise for lighthouses built on sandy soil near the ocean). And had a great view of St. Augustine!! We had heard report

Perry Georgia...     A start of our first long trip...   we stopped a couple of nights in Perry Georgia, and did a little bit of local sightseeing in Macon Ga...   We continue to learn details about how to camp in the trailer, and how to maneuver through traffic...   Atlanta I-75 was a bit tense, but we recovered and finally made it to Fair Harbor Park in Perry.  This park is great for overnight or short stays, has a pond, and some goats!    Nearby in Macon, Ga we visited the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historic Park.   This site is the ruins of an ancient Mississippian Culture settlement in the center of Georgia on the banks of the Ocmulgee River.  These mounds appear to be elevation mounds for the elite members and leaders of the tribe...   The image on the left below is of the the Lesser Temple Mound and the Funeral Mound from the top of the Great Temple Mound.  On the right is a bridge under the Norfolk Southern Railroad, built in 1874 so that the owner of the property which is now t