Travel Mode

Friday, December 6, 2019

We have been in travel mode since Tuesday morning. After a wonderful visit we left Johnston, SC and our family a little after 8:00 enroute to Gainesville, FL. We had a pretty easy drive south. We drove SC 25 to I-16 to I-75 to Waldo, FL – just north of Gainesville. We stayed in a commercial campground, Dixieland RV Park. This was our first commercial campground in quite a while. Everyone was very nice but we remember why we like COE and state park campgrounds better. The sites are always so close together in commercial campgrounds. We began Wednesday with breakfast at Classic Cafe, a little restaurant at the park. They gave us a 15% off coupon when we checked in so of course we needed to give it a try. We enjoyed our breakfast. It was good but not really anything special. We also did a little shopping, and stopped and looked at some RVs. In the afternoon we visited Lake Alto Preserve and did some nice hiking out in the woods around the lake. The trails were nice and wide, probably so hikers can spot alligators sunning themselves. One of us was happy we saw none. It was a nice quiet day in the preserve. Very relaxing.

Clocks in the Florida Welcome Center. We have been told by our team leaders that we might need to be prepared to adjust to Florida Time.

Lake Alto Preserve is a really nice local place to hike. The first trail we started was underwater about a half mile in so we had to go find another one.

Thursday, we were again in travel mode and drove south to Midway Campground in the Big Cypress National Preserve on the Tamiami Trail. Except for a long delay due to a wreck causing traffic backup north of Naples it was an uneventful day. We did notice that the sun became brighter and the temperature much warmer the further we drove. It was 38 degrees in Gainesville Thursday morning and by the time we arrived at Midway about 5:00pm our camp hosts greeted us in shorts and short sleeve shirts. Nice! Today will be another play day before we head on down to the keys and prepare to go to work. It is a beautiful Florida morning – no jackets today. Don’t know when we will actually get this posted because we have a very sketchy signal here at Midway.