Andy & Gillie's Big Adventure!: Wish You Were Here?!

Well, it’s been a while. Again! No real excuses this time, except that we haven’t had brilliant wifi. (And we’ve been a bit lazy, if truth be told!)

Now, here’s a thing. It seems like our last post was the least popular of all 31 posts to date, with only 21 views. But our stats say that there were over 190 page views last month and more than 5,000 all-time history (whatever all that means). Doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to us. We’d love to know, somehow, whether these figures are accurate or, if anyone out there understands this stuff, whether we’re misreading the data. Just vanity really!

We’re currently in Anastasia State Park, St Augustine, Florida and it’s quite lovely. It is, of course, winter here, so the weather (typical Brit!) is cooler – about 26-29 C on average. Life, as they say, is a bitch.

So, where were we? Ah yes, Biloxi. Moving on…we did a couple of Walmarts, then arrived at the first in a short series of State Parks that we have booked into for parts of November and December. Now, there are a lot of State Parks in Florida – indeed in USA generally – but unless you book 11 months in advance, there’s no chance of getting a weekend booking between the months of November and March, as all the Snowbirds flock down for the winter. So we managed to book some available weekdays – and that wasn’t easy either, I can tell you.

The Florida Panhandle is a little-known, but quite lovely area of the state, joining up the rather plain Alabama coast with the more illustrious parts of the Sunshine State. The Forgotten Coast is what they call it in the publicity blurb, and…now where was I?...Oh yes, it really does feel a bit forgotten at times. But it has some exquisite beaches, with genuine white sand, which brings us back to Grayton Beach State Park, our first proper stop in Florida. Boring geological fact alert: the sand is so white because, apparently, there are no river deltas feeding into this part of the Gulf of Mexico to make it turn brown or discolour it in any way. In fact, it’s supposed to be the whitest sand anywhere in the world. But this is America, so they would say that, wouldn’t they!? The beach was very white, though.

While we were there, we met up with friends of ours from Fleet – Pete and Sue, who were staying with friends in St Augustine and drove about 400 miles to come and have a barbeque with us! How lovely it was to see them and to have slightly (!) too much to drink while enjoying good chats and laughs. They drove all the way back the next day too!

We spent a few days there before moving on to what Gillie considers to be the finest RV park we have stayed in during our 14+ months on the road, Coastline RV Park at a place called Apalachicola. Every site had a view of the sea, all were perfectly flat and paved and the toilets were of 5* hotel standard. If we weren’t booked up at other places, we might well have stayed for ages! The only caveat I can think of was that they didn’t have firepits!

Just over the water from the Shangri-La that was Coastline RV Park, is St George Island State Park where we also stayed, but again for only two nights and although it had lovely easy-to-reach beaches, we were plagued by flies at our campsite – so only 2.5*.

From the sublime to the ridiculous. Well, not quite, but big contrasts with our next stop, which was at a place called Cedar Key, whose main claim to fame, apart from being a charming hippy-type backwater along the Panhandle, where I for one felt very much at home, was that it was the location for shooting parts of ‘Easy Rider’ – the famous ‘end of innocence/hippy ideal’ road movie with a great soundtrack starring Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper and featuring a cameo by a then unknown Jack Nicholson.

If you’re following this on a detailed map of Florida, then you’ve done better than we have all the way around the States. They don’t believe in detailed maps, just as long as they show where the advertisers’ restaurants, attractions, casinos, real estate offices are, who gives a shit about the roads?!

At two completely unrelated places earlier in our travels – one a campground in Maine and the other in a Walmart car park in Bar Harbor, the next campground was recommended to us. ‘if you’re going to Florida, you must stay at Rock Crusher Canyon RV Park’. Well, with a name like that, how could we resist?

Because we were approaching Thanksgiving time of year, we thought we had better make sure we knew where we were for that big event, so we booked in for nine nights! The longest, apart from house sits, we had stayed anywhere on all our travels. It was very relaxing knowing we didn’t have to put foot to pedal for such a long time, but we were a bit away from things.

Not to worry, we had our bikes and cycled 13 miles to visit the most endearing creatures – manatees – at Three Sisters Springs, where people were actually snorkelling with them! Jealous!

We also experienced our first (and probably last) ever Thanksgiving Dinner. At the clubhouse (yes – you read correctly) at Rock Crusher Canyon. Everybody paid $5 each and provided either a veg, salad or ‘dessert’ (pudding) and they provided the rest: turkey, several types of spud, stuffing, biscuits, gravy. It was very sociable and jolly and we’re glad we did it!

Leaving RCC, we paid a visit to Homosassa Springs Wildlife Refuge, and had the pleasure of visiting Lu the oldest (we think) living hippopotamus in captivity – 56 next January. All he does is eat, sleep and shit. Not bad eh? We also saw lots of other lovely beasts and birds who are on the endangered or threatened species lists in Florida or the States in general.

Which brings me to Anastasia State Park, where we are now, and St Augustine, where we shall be this coming weekend for a couple of festivals (something to do with the British occupation – hooray - and lights, we think) where we shall probably post this blog. Sure there will be another one before Christmas. Hope it’s not too cold where you are. Stay cool. Love A xxxxxx

PS. Hi there, it’s now Sunday and we are enjoying the loveliness that is St Augustine. We spent the day in the town yesterday and had such a great time; we even sang some carols under the two million white lights decorating the trees! It’s actually a ‘proper’ place, which so many towns we’ve come across in the States are not. It’s a bit touristy, but for some reason it doesn’t matter. It has a Plaza, which is the heart of the town, with narrow cobbled streets radiating off. The Spanish influence is everywhere, which gives it character missing from so many places. Also with a thriving university, housed in what was once one of the poshest hotels in the country (lucky students), the place has a vibrant and buzzy feel, with loads of bars and cafes with live music everywhere. It’s billed as the ‘oldest’ town in the US (so many places say this), but it is pretty old and has been in the hands of the French, Spanish and also the Brits, who were really horrid as they burnt it down!! [so did lots of other people – ed.]. As you can gather we really like it here!

Another couple of places we loved, but unfortunately were only able to drive through as we had our ‘Rock Crusher’ commitment… were Watercolour and Seaside (!?!) Little paradises flanked by the whitest beaches and the bluest sea we’ve seen so far. (We must return!) We can’t believe it’s nearly Christmas; this one is to be the weirdest yet, as we will be totally on our own, amongst unknown people, whom we hope will be friendly and fun! I’m trying to persuade Andy to let me watch ‘The Queen’ on our Tunnel Bear link to British tv (which I’m sure everyone knows is still the best tv in the world!!) The joy I had recently when I watched ‘Location, Location’ in the comfort of the sofa in Molly, while drinking a cup of Tetley’s tea…

I've come to the conclusion that my favourite creatures in the world are pelicans and manatees (who I'd never heard of before), but fell in love as soon as I saw them swimming at the Three Sisters Springs Wildlife Park.

Funnily enough, we haven’t been homesick at all, we are acutely aware of the fact that time is whizzing and we’ll be back in the UK on March 15^th. Before then we have our South American adventure, which we are sooo looking forward to and are in the process of planning. Thanks to our lovely friends Pete and Sue, also Lesley and Andy for all their advice and suggestions. From here we’re heading south to Kissimmee and then by next Friday we ‘hit’ Miami to catch up with more lovely friends, Joelle and Gunter, who are holidaying there for a week. We’re really looking forward to seeing them, not only for the fact that they are bringing us English teabags and chocolate!! Wowee!!

Time to go before I get too excited. Love to all, enjoy the run up to Christmas. Gillie xxxx