RV adventure travel

I have been playing around in another State Park about 23 miles east of Tampa. Its called Little Manatee River State Park. I’ve taunted some gators, mocked some turtles, rode my bike around many of the trails, found a few geocaches with my Garmin Etrex legend handheld gps device. Yes, geocaching is my new hobby. Its sort of a high-tech game of hide and seek. I think of it as a game for nerds like me who also love the outdoors.
You can read more about the game at geocaching.com.

Been geocaching today. Its fun. I have a new Garmin Etrex legend handheld GPS unit. I’ve been treasure hunting around Osprey Florida at a State Park. I’ll post more later.

Sanibel Island really needs a pied piper to get rid of all the greed-ridden rats and huge infestation. Frankly I hated the place!
Now, Sanibel is an island just over a causeway out of Fort Myers Florida. My family had hyped this place, but I don’t really tend to like the same spots they do, but alas I went anyway. I not only didn’t like Sanibel, I fracking hated it!
Now you can pay 6 dollars to drive onto the island so you can pay to park every hour (I even saw the Sanibel cops giving a parking ticket to a wee Motor scooter, now there’s a vehicle that is so taxing on your parking resources, feh).
It was so infested with humans that you could have had a better beach and nature experience in a Japanese subway with an ocean poster on the wall. Oh and The greed-ridden owners of the island have instituted a 2-dollar an hour charge for all parking on the place. And let me tell ya, this place, well, she aint all that! I guess its popular to some because you can lay your beach blanket down within 2 and a half inches of some hob-snobby swine errr something, or just because it has been hyped too much. But this travel site isn’t anyone’s Chamber of Commerce.
Sanibel is not a place for an outdoorsman. It is a place for city folks to go and gawk at the sad and half-assed remains of what once was obviously a beautiful place in nature.
Frankly I’ve seen parks and islands, and beauty spots in Florida that make Sanibel Island look like a New Jersey slum after a sewage truck explosion. And those were either free or really really cheap by comparison.
I guess like some wise folks have said before. “If its popular, its wrong”. And that’s what Sanibel Island was to me, wrong. You could barely even get through the place. Lovers key, was a glory by comparison. Go there for your Ft. Myers beach action.
I even went through the National wildlife refuge there. Now as a rule, I love my national parks and forests, state parks, and state forests. They are some of my favorite places in the world. But alas this park was in the Sanibel tradition of greed greed greed. I paid 5 bucks (a high fee for entrance to a NWR) so I could drive through a torn up Mangrove swamp. Yep, that was it, that was their amazing park about 6 miles of Mangrove swamp. Nice, meh, but alas, not impressive wildlife wise, though you could at least pull over to the side and park and look (I’m amazed they didn’t try to charge me again for that, I’m sure its in the works.). Na, this park isn’t very nice either, Not when I’ve taken my bike through swamps like these for free and seen more wildlife and beauty than this place holds. Of course these places I like were not really “where the people tend go in multitudes”. I guess the numbers are good for the national parks system, so that’s a plus.
I saw “city folks” fascinated with this bird or that one, or by the fact that they saw a mullet, but guys, Florida has so much more beautiful things to offer! But forever more (unless of course women are involved), I will leave the façade remains of nature called Sanibel Island to the yupsters and hob-snobbies, and will not morn her at all when nature’s pied-piper called a huge hurricane thoroughly cleans her.

Lovers Key State Park in Florida

I cheated I went to Lovers Key without a lover but alas they let me in anyway. I wasn’t camping here (no campground), but I was just visiting for a day visit. I’m staying in a park not too far away in Estero Florida.

Now lovers key was named such because it was once only accessible by boat, and lovers would go their for the romantic setting (wink wink nudge nudge). Lovers Key State Park is between Fort Myers Florida and Naples and it has some beautiful beaches about 2 and a half miles of beach for fun fun splash splash, walking, bird gawking or whatever. It is a complex of 4 barrier islands, Lovers Key (the one with the beach) Inner key, Black Island, and Long Key. Bonita beach hotels were out to the south and Sanibel island could be seen way off to the north. They also had a little tram to take folks out to the beach. I just walked, but I guess the tram would be handy for folks who had either too much beach stuff or too much blubber to walk the very nice boardwalks to the beach. Oh and they had a little gift shop, I had a coke after a nice swim.

They also have bike rentals, and canoe rentals at the park. They have bike trails as well. Hey maybe you will even see a Pirate ghost or something as local legend has it that Black Augustus a pirate made his home here after running away from the man.

The osprey and lots of birds had their nests right next to the beach. The park had the area fenced off with a string and Bird nesting area sign so folks would not frighten away the birds from their homes. I watched the big Osprey with its nest in a tree feeding its babies., The chicks would go squawk-squawk-squawk-squeek-squeek-squawkitee-squawk… which is bird talk for feed me- feed me feed me, no me, feed me already-feed me.

The area between Sanibel Island and lovers key didn’t seem to have alot of waves, there were ordinary small power boats mucking about out there, not something you see much on open ocean. but apparently all the keys and Sanibel
area offer the area shelter preventing excessive wave pounding. I didn’t notice any large boats out there, so I’d be interested in checking the Nav charts to see how deep it is out there.

Wowie Zowie and super granulated coolness. I really enjoyed my stay at this beautiful state park just outside of Sebring Florida.

I pulled the Oyster Can of Adventure into the park and stayed for 3 days. I had a site with water and electric with a dump station to use on the way out. Now Highlands Hammock is one of the oldest parks on Florida, and has a museum to honor the CC camp boys who built most of it. But the part I loved was the wonderful woods and bike trails around the place.

Earth Day, I biked around the huge bike trails and explored all day then I went to the Music in the Park Earth Day event.
A band called Groovus was playing. It was Jazz and classic rock flavors, and they were a decent group. They had two awesome Sax players, and the other members were right on as well. I had fun. Music under the stars, relaxing in the park after a day of adventure, it was sweet. Oh and speaking of sweet there was this adorable cute little girl playing bounce-bounce- dance to the music, you could tell she was a born performer, I hope someone is springing for her ballet lessons, though I am sure they are. The Dragon Flies seem to hover above the visitors in a sort of air ballet, but hey a little blink, a wish , some of the innocent energy that was going around, and one was sure that those Dragon Flies were really just Faeries joining in the fun and play. Their ballet was of course just a competition for attention with the little girl performer and actress to be. As the sunset with the cool music , the accompaniment was joined by a full moon. it all was a very cool thing.

I came back to the campsite to the Oyster Can of Adventure after a day of bike adventures and music to grill up some BBQ. Apart from the typical lonliness that tends to surface sometimes when I, a single guy, am surrounded by families (which I am use to), it was an awesome day.

Now Highlands Hammock State Park has a very special feature, that is these really beautiful and old woods. Huge oaks and palms and all kinds of plant and animal life are a feature of the park. I felt like I was in Lothlórien out of a Tolkien story, wonderful faerie trees were abundant, a hello-how-are-ya visit from a huge eagle, and various wildlife that seemed to say look at me, look at me.

I pulled into Crystal Lake RV Park in Scottsmoor Florida, simply because it was in my half price club and hence cheaper than the others in the area. I needed to do some work anyway.
I will refer to it however as Camp Crystal Lake, like the classic camp in the Friday the 13th horror series.
Now Camp Crystal Lake is right off of I-95 just north of all of The Space Coast goodies.
It was 16 dollars plus tax when my Happy camper half price discount was applied. It was very nice for an interstate park, and it had a decent rate.

Now I find it ironic that Camp Crystal Lake is run by the Kruger family.
I guess Freddy Kruger took over when he sent Jason to the future and deeded it to some of his kin. Though they seemed nice ;).

Now unlike the classic Camp Crystal Lake the park was missing hot teen young gals taking their clothes off (bummer), but it did have monsters in the lake.
I called the Alligator Jason Jr.
He was about a 7ft long fella.
He was sunning across the lake a lot in the 2 days I was there.
I took off my shirt and shook my booty at him from across the lake but he didn’t come to hack me up.

The camp has a wee pool, and a nice full hookups setup, except for cable.
If you stay at Crystal Lake be sure to ask for one of the pull throughs next to the lake, I got one of these, and I felt sorry for the poor blokes with some of the back-ins as they were right next to the very noisy interstate.

The Krugers didn’t haunt my dreams, but they did sell me a light bulb for one of my interior rv lights.

Now there is not a lot to do at Crystal Lake, once you have shaken your boodie at Jason Jr. Its next to the interstate, so it might be a handy crash and drive spot for an eve, or as an affordable base to visit some of the space coast goodies. but hey Camp Crystal lake is right behind a Stuckeys, and it was handy for beerness, and I even bought a set of tiki salt shakers for the Oyster can of adventure.