RV adventure travel

From Prince Edward Island

Well Dale needs to be more prolific with his travel blog. Bad Dale!

Yep I have been neglecting this blog for other projects, but alas, I think I will start updating this blog more and more in the coming weeks, and fancy it up some. So on that note, I have added a photo-teaser section today to the blog so I can post photos and little blurbs about places I’ve been that I didn’t do a full write up on.

From Tuscany

Today I was experimenting with the new picasa beta from google. Its a photo organizer tool of sorts. I’d played with the old one before for kicks, but I read about the new picasa beta over at geesonwheels who are fellow like minded RV bloggers, and well they talked me into it.

Now I’m a photoshop expert (among other things) but I still found the new picasa beta very handy, and I’m going to start using it to help save me time. Yay for time saving goodies.

Knowing how to do things the hard-way doesn’t mean that I have too do it the hard way.

So I’ve started adding a few goodies today to my new picasa web albums. You can view them over at picasaweb.google.com/travelfables

I hope to add a whole lot more pics to the thing. One thing I love about the Picasa is the GeoTag feature. It makes for even more funness I can have with GPS and google earth.

From Prince Edward Island

I plan to be a good geek and tweek that feature much.

Maybe it will even be a tool to get somemore attention to this wee travel and RVing blog.

Article source: travelfables.com (all rights reserved)

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.

Article source: travelfables.com (all rights reserved)

Highlands Hammock State Park

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.

Article source: travelfables.com (all rights reserved)