Bubba's Great Adventure
Jeanne and I were sitting in the kitchen of our Cape Cod home one winter’s day in the horrible winter of 2014-2015 looking out onto the deck covered in 3 feet of drifted snow. Almost simultaneously, we looked at each other and asked “What the Hell are we doing here?” We are recently retired, we have a motor home and Florida is a few overnight stops away. Why are we shoveling and blowing 100 inches of snow around? Thus started the Great Adventure of the 2015-2016 winter. A bucket list item checker for sure.
We had just bought our traveling machine, a 1996 Safari class A motor home, in November. Named White Tigers for the mural on the back, she was pretty much ready to hit the road and take us just about anywhere. After a few livability modifications in the spring, we did some week long trips to Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Maine over the summer to shake out the bugs and procedures and started planning our winter without snow. We had a loose plan for the holidays; Thanksgiving with my brother Ray in Boynton Beach and Christmas and New Years with friends near Sarasota. I was hoping to catch a rocket launch at Cape Canaveral but as anyone who’s involved in the space industry can tell you, a launch date is a moving target. Planning in October to be somewhere to see a December launch is futile. Anyway the campground in Jetty Park at Port Canaveral was nice enough, it has a great beach and the cruise ships going by on a regular schedule made the stop interesting. We missed a launch by a week; that is there was one the week before we got there and one the week after we left.
We spent Christmas and New Years in a nice RV park in Bradenton, had a fun time exploring the area with the best man and maid of honor from our wedding and started planning more of the trip. Jeanne’s cousin wintered in The Villages and her sister was coming there for a visit so we timed out our next few stops to be close to there mid-January. I also had a loose bucket list item to add Oklahoma to my ‘states visited’ list. Crossing OK off the never-been-there list would leave only North Dakota. So after the stop in central Florida, the path headed westerly in general out the panhandle towards Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma.
A word or two about trip planning. This adventure was still in the period of recreational vehicle use (before the ‘Covid Campers') where most campgrounds weren’t booked a year in advance. The exception to that general rule was southern Florida, or the south of I-4 area. Seeing that we were staying mostly north of I-4, we didn’t need to have all the stops planned and reserved before we left Cape Cod. Basically we knew where we were going for the next stop, and we were looking at places for the stop after that. We generally stayed a week in any one place and moved on Wednesday, typically 300 miles or about 6 hours. Nothing ruins a trip like this faster than needing to be at a certain place at a certain time. We were able to make the entire trip by staying flexible in direction and time. The only other planned stop was near Kansas City to visit my daughter.
The Trip
Oct 31 - Departed Cape Cod, with one night at Aces High in East Lyme CT. Close enough to home to get back if we needed to. We stop here almost every trip.
Nov 1 - Aces High to Timberlane (now South Philly KOA) in southern New Jersey.
Nov 2 - Timberlane to Fredricksburg VA for 2 nights. We are now less worried about the water system freezing up. We skipped the excellent experience of I-95 through Baltimore/DC by taking US 50 and US301. US301 is the road my grandfather took every winter to get to Florida before I-95 was completed. I suddenly realized why it took him 3 weeks to get from Jersey to West Palm.
Nov 4 - Fredricksburg to Carolina Crossroads CG just over the North Carolina border. Apparently, this is where everyone going south stops for a night to de-winterize. We spent 4 nights here and the entire campground turned over twice in that time.
Nov 8 - Ocean Lakes, Myrtle Beach SC. Not our type of campground (over 1100 sites), but we scored a site basically right on the beach so it was a great stop. We were not towing a dinghy so we needed to rent a car to explore and get supplies. Enterprise will pick you up within a certain radius of an office, so we gave them a call and got a car. More on renting from Enterprise later. We discovered a great seafood restaurant - the Noisy Oyster - where a bucket full of seafood is just dumped on your brown paper covered table. We stayed here a full week, soaking in the warm temperatures and local sites. It started to feel like we had left winter behind.
Nov 13 - Hilton Head Island Motor Coach Resort. Once again, not our type of campground (over $100 a night), but they give first time guests 25% off. This campground spoiled us for the rest of our RV adventures. Whenever we stayed at a self-proclaimed RV resort, we would judge it against Hilton Head. Very few have measured up. The sites are all privately owned and individually landscaped. Instead of the usual weathered picnic table, there was wrought iron patio furniture. In lieu of a concrete slab or gravel to park on, most sites had concrete pavers. Even at full price, this resort is worth a stop. Once again we got an Enterprise rental and made a day trip to the beautiful city of Savannah GA. We also entered the good barbeque area of the country. We stayed here a week.
Nov 20 - Stayed 3 nights at Pellicer Creek, a small campground near St. Augustine. First nights of about 60 that we’d be in Florida.
Nov 23 - Arrived at John Prince Park in Lake Worth. The campsite we had was right next to the airport, and normally that would be bad. However, I’m a pilot and I’ve been looking up at airplanes most of my life , so this is a plus. Same thing with campgrounds next to railroads. We had Thanksgiving with my brother’s family and got another rental to explore. In that part of Florida, you spend a lot of time waiting for the left turn signal. We also visited with an old friend that I raced sailboats with for 20 years.
I noticed that I was getting a little tingle of an electrical shock when putting my key into the metal basement door locks on the coach, so I pulled out my multi-meter and discovered that there was a 24 volt stray voltage from the coach to the ground. This indicated an issue with the park electrical system. Twenty four volts is enough to kill a small dog, so I reported it to campground management. They ended up moving everyone in the row to other open sites, which wasn’t that big an issue for us. However, the Canadians that come to this park every year and already had their Christmas lights and decorations out were none too pleased. I kept a low profile at the new campsite. We stayed here until…
Dec 7 - We headed up I-95 to Port Canaveral and the campground at Jetty Park. We didn’t get to see a launch but the passage of the cruise ships was interesting enough.
Dec 14 - Across Florida to the Gulf coast and an under-construction campground in Bradenton. We visited with our friends in Lakewood Ranch, toured the Ringling Museum and ate more seafood. At the time the west coast of the state was a little less hectic, but everywhere we went there were houses going up. They were getting ready for the great migration. We stayed here through Christmas and New Years because you just want to be around friends and family during the holidays, even if you’re rambling.
Jan 4, 2016 - A week at Rock Crusher Canyon in Crystal River. I took a side trip and grabbed a flight instructor and a plane at the local flight school and shook the rust off my piloting skills. We missed the manatees at Homassasa Springs, but did not miss the local seafood.
Jan 13 - We made the trek back east a little to a campground near The Villages. I won’t say much about this place other than mention that there were about 75,00 retired people living there at the time and as of 2023 that number was 145,000. Jeanne’s sister was visiting a cousin that lives there so we connected with more family. This is also where Bubba got the excellent grooming seen above.
It was here that we started having issues with Enterprise rentals. I arranged to pick up a car at the local ‘office’, which was nothing more than an office in an auto body shop manned part time by an Enterprise employee from somewhere else. Dropping off the car at the same place, there was no one from Enterprise to verify that I didn’t damage the car. The driver that was there to take me back to the campground was a contractor and accepted no responsibility for liability. I took a ton of pictures of the car (a few with the driver in the background) and hoped for the best. Throughout the trip we found that we were choosing campgrounds based on their proximity to an Enterprise office. Not the best criteria. All in all, we spent $3000 on rental cars for the trip, which is enough to have a car set up to tow behind the motor home, so the next spring, that’s what we did.
Jan 20 - We started our westward progression out the Florida panhandle via US98. This straight , lonely, pine tree lined road was very enjoyable to drive, and the campground at the end of this leg was by far our favorite stop.
In addition to being an absolutely gorgeous setting, we met up with Brett, an internet mentor that helped me a lot when looking for the right Safari to buy. In one of those moments that cannot be planned, the couple that bought Brett’s old Safari pulled into the same campground and we all had a great meet and greet. In spite of the name, the sunrises and moonrises over the Gulf at this campground were anything but ho hum. Our only weather scare happened here when a line of thunderstorms rolled through at oh-dark-thirty and spawned a few tornados. Although it seems that tornados have it out for mobile home parks, we were spared. The tip here is when there’s weather coming through, keep you cell phone by your bed.
Jan 27 - Topsail Hill State Park, Santa Rosa Beach FL. Jumping into the Central time zone and the essence of the Florida panhandle, this state park is very popular and we were lucky to get a site. Jeanne went to visit a former co-worker and we explored the area in our Enterprise rental. Along the Gulf coast is a scenic drive known as route 30A where you go through a number of towns and villages all with a different architecture and culture. One reminded us of Nantucket with shingle style cottages and another was more Mediterranean. The town green at Seaside had a number of food ‘trucks’ that were actually Airstream trailers. Unfortunately, I missed the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola. A good reason to go back some day.
Feb 4 - Continuing west we stayed at Buccaneer State Park in Mississippi. It was Mardi Gras week and the folks from New Orleans escaped the city to this and other campgrounds in the area. We met some fine people and ate some fine food and completely decompressed for 2 weeks. The train activity was high here, but I like trains so it didn’t bother me.
Feb 17 - On to Breaux Bridge LA, the crawfish capital of the world. I didn’t say ‘self-proclaimed’ because Breaux Bridge really is where most of the crawfish consumed in the world comes from. Local rice farmers discovered they could seed the rice paddies off season and grow the mud bugs in the same field and harvest them using the same equipment. The crawfish aerate and nourish the soil for the next rice growing season improving the yield. It is a win-win for this fairly impoverished section of the country.
The section of I-10 between Baton Rouge and Lafayette is one of the worse sections of interstate we’ve ever hit in 50,000 miles of travel. However once we got to Poche’s Fish and Camp campground, Louisiana turned into a wonderful place. Things were pretty quiet until Friday afternoon when suddenly the park started to fill up. And the first things the Cajuns did was pull out a big pot and start boiling shrimp and crawfish. With Poche’s Market not far away (put on the culinary map by no other than Anthony Bourdain), the eating was great. We did score a rental car here and thoroughly explored there area and a few restaurants. You may think you’ve had gumbo, but unless it was in southern Louisiana, you had a gumbo-like soup. Chank-a-chang.
Feb 24 - More westward progress to Crystal Beach, Texas, on the Bolivar Peninsula, just north of Galveston. The draw to this campground is that it was the cheapest place we stayed for the entire trip. From the camp site we could watch the endless parade of tugs and barges plying the intercoastal waterway and Galveston Bay. No car here, I had to explore by bicycle. All the houses here are on 20 foot long stilts except the local dive bar that was built with cinder blocks. For some reason, Hurricane Katrina had no effect on it.
Mar 2 - North and a little east to a KOA in Shreveport LA, an interesting stop on the Red River. We visited a local mall on the Red River and were astonished to see the high water mark on an overlook about 50 feet above the river.
Mar 8 - Texarkana, one of those odd-ball towns that straddle a state line. The Texas/Arkansas line goes right down the middle of State Line Ave. The liquor was cheap on one side and the cigarettes were cheaper on the other. The supposed largest magnolia tree is in the front yard of some random apartment building downtown.
We reserved our usual sub-compact car at Enterprise, but to my surprise, they only had Ford F250 pickups. Unfortunately, Enterprise doesn’t order their pickups with running boards and it was next to impossible for 2 old people to climb aboard.
Mar 16 - Checotah OK, home town of American Idol star Carrie Underwood. Bubba liked to go to the petting farm in the campground and growl at the wildlife. Bucket list item check. Move on.
From here, the general direction was east. We wanted to get up to Lees Summit, MO to visit my daughter and it looked like up through the Ozarks was the best way to go.
Mar 22 - We stayed a single night in a state park in Arkansas mostly just to add that state to the ‘states camped in’ map.
Mar 23 - Shenanigans Campground, Branson MO. For some reason, I thought that Branson was like Las Vegas; flashy shows and name brand celebrities. Not so much. They have shows and celebrities, but none that I had ever heard of. Nevertheless, Branson is an interesting stop even if you’re not into the shows. It’s a lot like Pigeon Forge if you’re familiar. We discovered a train excursion through the local hills and a real old time five and dime store in the old downtown section. We also took a drive out to Table Rock Lake Dam. Worth a stop.
Mar 30 - Lake of the Ozarks area. We stayed in the Osage Beach area at the southern end of the Lake of the Ozarks. You hear a lot about this area of the country, most of it scary, but we saw none of that. People were friendly and services were plentiful. There’s even a Lamberts restaurant on US65 if you feel like having a roll thrown at you.
Apr 6 -Longview Lake park, Lees Summit MO. We stopped here to visit with my daughter and her step-family. After she left the east coast, we rarely got to see her. I took a small plane and flew 13 hours in 2 days to see her once, so the short trip to the west to visit her was an easy decision. The campground itself was very pleasant and if you’re in that area at Christmas, they have a beautiful drive through light display.
April 13 - Route 66 KOA, Eureka MO. This small campground south of St. Louis was a relaxing stop and yes, it’s on the old Route 66.
April 15 - Rend Lake COE, southern Illinois. This is a US Army Corps of Engineers campground on a dammed up lake. Very peaceful and scenic, however a little creative cribbing was required to level the coach.
April 18 - Elkhorn RV park near Frankfort KY. Bourbon country. Too bad I don’t like bourbon. Surrounded by a creek, you would be advised to leave if it starts to rain heavily. For the first time this trip, I left a campground early. We probably got the worse site in the place.
April 20 - Newlon Airpark, Huntington WV. Right on the Ohio River, this park features an airport, airport grill and trains running by. I loved it; Jeanne hated it. We stayed here 1 night and never saw an attendant.
April 21 - Flatwoods KOA, Sutton WV. Interesting little park that was mostly deserted. It was still off season for that far north. Check-in was at the Days Inn hotel attached to the campground.
April 24 - Hickory Hollow CG, not far from Shanksville PA (flight 93). This stop was a bucket list item. Jeanne is fascinated with Frank Lloyd Wright architecture and Falling Water is probably his best work. Well, maybe the Guggenheim, or Taliesin…anyway, Falling Water was on the list this time and it did not disappoint. All throughout the tour, the most overbearing thought was ‘This all came out of a guy’s head’. A must see if your are in the area southeast of Pittsburgh.
April 28 - Fort Bellefonte near State College PA. A few days visiting with my sister. This is another trip I’ve made a few times by airplane.
May 1st - Belden Hill CG in Harpursville NY. We took interstate 88 out of Binghampton NY and were immediately sorry. Absolutely the worse interstate in the northeast, rivalling I-10 between Baton Rouge and Lafayette LA for the worse in the country. This road was built for a New York state Senator to facilitate his commute to Albany. The contractor must have been a Democrat. If you travel this way, NY route 7 parallels the interstate and is a much smoother road.
May 3 - Saugerties KOA. An overnight stay because we were ready to get home. We spent a single rainy night and headed for Cape Cod, arriving there on May 4th.
Summing It Up
Traveling by recreational vehicle has its ups and downs. Although we had no major breakdowns, we did have a few issues that needed to be addressed, like a major leak in a roof seam. I rebuilt the toilet a part at a time and at the end of the trip, the only part I didn’t replace was the bowl. Between the cost of parts and renting a car to get the parts, it cost me twice as much as a new toilet.
I missed a lot of interesting stuff along the way because I didn’t do enough research on the area where we’d be staying. But we also saw some amazing things right from the window of the coach.
The interstate system is great if you need to get somewhere, but you miss a lot of the country by taking these big roads. The worse roads we encountered were always on the interstates. Regular old America exists on the US routes and side trips down scenic routes, the hills, the beach towns and the Bayou. The only stop we made that I would consider boring was Oklahoma, but even there is the stark natural beauty of the open areas.
The recent pandemic has changed the way the recreational vehicle industry operates. Picking a direction to go and looking for a campground to spend a few nights at the end of a few hours travel got a lot harder. People now reserve campsites at popular parks many months in advance, and at more than one place for the same weekend. When the trip gets closer, they decide which reservation to honor and cancel the rest. Anyone considering this length of a trip post-Covid would probably do a little more pre-planning than we did. However, having every stop planned out and reserved six months in advance will absolutely kill the romance of the open road. With any luck, the ‘Covid Campers’ will get sick of the lifestyle, sell their poorly built Covid era campers and move onto some other form of recreation.