RVoutoftheRatRace

We are camped in a quiet Park Service campground in the middle of Big Cypress Preserve. If you look at a map of Florida, we are in the big empty area between Miami and Naples. After being in a busy metro area for the last few weeks, we decided to cancel our reservations at Collier-Seminole State Park and enjoy the solitude of the swamp. This is one of the few places we have found in South Florida where you can really get away from crowds of people. Being forty miles from the closest grocery store has made us feel like we are in the west. We are continuing to love winter Florida weather. We had a few cold days, low 60’s. Otherwise, it’s been 70’s and 80’s for the last several weeks.

Our campsite is located between a lake full of alligators and an expanse of sawgrass prairie dotted with cypress domes. The sunsets are outrageous, the birding spectacular, but the silence is the selling point. There are no hookups here, that tends to keep the RV’ers away. Our solar is coming in handy. There are a few camphosts and one other trailer scattered around the lake. None of them within a quarter mile of our site. Not quite the same as being miles from anyone like we can be out west, but for Florida….it’s fabulous. I think we will spend two weeks here before heading south into the Everglades.

We don’t have any special plans for Christmas. We have been out birding early the last two days. There are several kayak routes nearby and some biking choices. There is way more to do than we will be able to get to in two weeks. Just the way we like it.

We spent the last few weeks in a private RV park in Pompano Beach, FL. My first clue that something was different was when I was called “Madame” while checking in… as in the french Monsieur et Madame. As soon as we were set up, the RV’er behind us asked if we spoke French. What? Why would someone think we spoke French in Florida? We soon realized that we were in a resort that catered mainly to French-Canadian Snowbirds. We could hear French being spoken everywhere around us. Unexpected, and somewhat delightful. Such a soft and musical language. Sadly, my many years of French study in high school did not pay off with actually understanding most of the conversations. Our younger ages usually ensures we are bombarded with curious neighbors in a snowbird park. Not possible with a language barrier, a friendly smile sufficed.

Key Largo calls itself the “Dive Capital of the World”. I haven’t been able to find out why. To me, the phrase “Dive Capital of the World” would mean outstanding diving, but I don’t think that is how the tourism industry means it. When you look at the top ten reasons the tourism boards list to dive the keys, they mostly have to do with ease and convenience of diving there. You can drive there, you don’t need to enter another country, hear a foreign language, or have a passport. It is certainly easy, but is that enough to qualify it as the dive capital of the world? Not in my book. Besides, we think all the “hassle” of foreign countries is part of the fun.

There are a lot of reasons to visit the keys. The state parks are terrific, the water and weather were warm, the snorkeling was fantastic, and the lifestyle is laid-back. However, the diving is just OK. I talked to several other divers that thought it was awesome. Whenever I heard that, I would ask where they had dove before. Invariably, the answer was New Jersey, Seattle, a quarry, this is my first trip, etc. The people that thought it was awesome had never dove outside the USA. We did meet some divers that have dove in Fiji, and they thought it was just ok, too. I think it really depends on your previous diving experience. If you are a new diver, you will love it. If you have dove around the world, it will probably rank at the bottom of your list. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t dive there, it just means you will probably find other locations better.

We weren’t going to the keys just to dive. We were going to the keys and going to do some diving while we were there. There’s a difference. It wasn’t a dive trip. It was a trip with some diving. We weren’t disappointed because we had low expectations. We couldn’t imagine it comparing to Bonaire or Curacao, and we were right, it didn’t. I did a lot of research and and kept coming across the same info. Many sites said you shouldn’t miss Looe Key in the lower keys, and you have to dive Pennekamp. I wouldn’t agree about Looe Key. I think you could easily miss it and devote most of your dives to Pennekamp. The coral in both places was damaged and dying. There is a lot more rock than coral. There are some nice patches of reef, but no awe-inspiring formations. The marine life was better than the coral. Plenty of healthy fish. However, our best dive in the keys was not as good as our worst dive in Bonaire.

I am writing this in case anyone else goes looking for diver’s reviews of the keys. The dive operators will all tell you it’s terrific. The websites will say the same. It’s not. It’s easy and convenient and in the US. I would call it the Dive Capital of the US, but not the world.

After saying all that……There are very few places in the world that you can dive on coral reefs. Global warming is projected to destroy coral reefs as soon as 2050. This would be a horrible tragedy. We are grateful to have the opportunity to see them while they are still here, in any form.

If time and money are a consideration, head to the keys. If you can manage a week and a slightly larger budget, dust off your passport.

We are now camped in John Pennekamp State Park in Key Largo. Pennekamp is known for it’s coral reefs. So far, we We have done two dives and the diving is much better than the lower keys. There is more coral and fish. We plan on diving more later in the week. We have also snorkeled several times and were lucky enough to see a spotted eagle ray on two different days. We got to swim around with it for several minutes. Yesterday, we went for a kayak, and today went birding and saw our first ever White-Crowned Pigeon. For bird nerds like us, it was exciting.

Holidays on the road are always a little strange. We went birding and snorkeling on Thankgiving Day and had pasta for dinner. I did buy a pumpkin pie, but that was going to be the extent of our traditions. We were surprised when our friend’s Ian and Kristen called us up and invited us over to Ian’ sisters house in Miami Beach on Friday. Not only did they let us crash their (day-late) Thanksgiving Dinner, Ian’s dad gave us great seats to see the Florida Panthers play the Toronto Maple Leafs. Candied Yams and hockey, it turned out to be a great time. It was fun to see friends in the middle of the winter, even for just a quick visit. The keys are being good to us.

We left Missouri with the intention of driving for two days and stopping in Fall Creek Falls State Park on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee. It has been voted one of the best state parks in the southeast. It is also the largest state park in the area with more than 20,000 acres, 3 waterfalls and 30 miles of trails. Sounds great, right? We pulled in on a Sunday afternoon, and immediately were worried about hitting the trailer on the large trees all along the campground road. The website said they could take trailers up to 45 feet, but it didn’t mention how tight the roads were getting to the campsites. Due to the leaves changing, the campground was packed with people. There were sites available, but we would have been sitting in a dark forest, with neighbors 5 feet from us, during a cold spell. The cell phone service was iffy. Since Dan is still very busy working right now, it didn’t seem like a good idea to stay. We seem to have followed a cold front all the way across the country. Missouri and Tennesse were both experiencing record lows. This was not what we had in mind when we left Colorado. We decided to keep driving. Our first priority was to make some lunch, we get cranky and stressed when we go too long without eating and learned early on to just pull over when that happens. The cat was stressing us out also. She still wasn’t happy in the truck (much whining), plus all the trees in the campground made us tense. This is our house we are pulling behind us, after all. We needed to stop and mentally reset.

The first sunny spot we found was a school parking lot. It was Sunday, so we pulled over and made lunch and tried to figure out where to go next. Dan asked how far Jacksonville was and then pulled out the map to take a look. I knew he was thinking of Huguenot Memorial Park. We spent two weeks there last year camped next to the Atlantic Ocean and the St Johns River. It sounded great, but it was over 400 miles away and we had just driven 700 miles in two days from Kansas City. We decided to just keep going and look for a sunny spot. Sunny spots are hard to find in the south. All the campgrounds are set up for summer use. In the summer you really need the trees to deal with the heat, it’s the opposite in the winter, you really want the warmth of the sun, especially during the cold spells. Since we were experiencing a cold spell, we hadn’t seen the sun or temps above 40 since before we left Colorado. It was starting to get to us. We both like to be outside a lot. If it’s too cold, we tend to hibernate in the trailer. That’s why Jacksonville was whispering in our ear. We were remembering biking and kayaking in shorts last December. We kept driving and about two hours later, the cat relaxed and started dozing. That was the deciding vote for heading straight on through to Florida. We covered several hundred miles while the cat was mellow. We overnighted in a Walmart parking lot and continued on the next morning to Jacksonville.

We are now camped next to the St Johns River. It was 80 degrees yesterday. We are both relaxed. The cat is happy. There are a lot of birds for her to watch and she has sun patches to snooze in. I have already gone for a long bike ride and been swimming in the river. We don’t have to move for two weeks.

The moral of this story for us is, stick with what works. We knew that trying to get to Florida in 3 weeks with only short stays wasn’t our style. We did it anyway, and stressed ourselves out. We have learned that if what we are doing isn’t working, to try something different. That’s why we changed plans, skipped Tennessee and headed to Florida. We have reservations in the keys for November and December for five weeks. That was the whole reason we were trying to hurry to Florida. It is almost impossible to get reservations in the keys, we’ve had these since January and didn’t want to give them up. Dan was so busy at work that we couldn’t leave any earlier. We also knew that there are a lot of trees in the south, and that doesn’t work if it’s cold. We should have just planned to drive straight to Florida from the start. Once we got here, we relaxed. We are a days drive from the keys, and we will move in two weeks instead of every week. Two weeks is our usual length of stay somewhere.

We have already decided that next year, we will not make any reservations in the fall. That way, we can leave Boulder when it is convenient and slowly head somewhere at our own pace. Dan is always busy with work at this time of year, and we aren’t fulltiming to create stress. The beauty of this lifestyle is we can change and adapt to our moods and circumstances. We aren’t used to feeling stress, and when we do, we try to figure out how to remove it. It isn’t something we have to just put up with. We are in control of our own happiness. Everyone is, but it’s a little easier to remember when you are wandering around the country in your RV.

Hitching up the trailer in 20 degree weather isn’t fun, but it confirmed that it was time to head south for the winter. We left on October 10th and need to be in the Florida Keys by November 2nd. For most people, 3 weeks to get to Florida wouldn’t be a problem. For us, it means several long driving days with too short of stops in between. It also means some hard choices on where to stop. There are way too many great places between Colorado and Florida and not enough time. Yes, we have a very rough life. We were asked often by friends in Boulder if we were going to keep travelling. The answer is yes. If too little time is our biggest problem, we obviously need more time on the road.

This was the cat’s first time making a long move with us. She isn’t a big fan of the truck yet. I jokingly said I hoped she would stop yowling by the time we got to Kansas. Then it became Missouri and it wasn’t a joke anymore. The first day was the worst, she was afraid and then just mad. When we stopped, she was very happy to get back in her trailer. She regards the trailer as her home and calmed down right away. The second day she did much better. She still didn’t like it, but she wasn’t scared anymore. Still a little pissed though. 650 miles and she meowed through the first 550. By the end of the second day, she seemed resigned to it. Once we were stopped, she enjoyed the new views from the trailer. She wants the window shades opened every morning so she can chatter at the birds and squirrels. I think she will be ok with the truck with a few more days of travel.
We are camped in Weston Bend State Park, just outside Kansas City, MO. The weather is a little colder than we would like, but we are still able to get out for walks and birding. The Missouri river runs next to the park and there are many migrating birds coming through. They too are heading south for the winter. The trees are just starting to turn here and the maples are beautiful. Dan is still working a lot right now, but he is taking tomorrow off and we are going to the National Frontier Trails Museum in Independence, MO. This is the jumping off place for the Oregon, California, and Santa Fe Trails. We have travelled parts of each of these so it will be fun to learn more about them. Fort Leavenworth is just across the river from us, so we are hoping to fit in a tour before we leave. Our plan is to stay here 6 nights and then do another two days of driving to get somewhere in Tennessee.

When we first decided to go to the Caribbean, we were only planning on spending two weeks in Bonaire. After crunching all the numbers, we realized by flying through Curacao and taking advantage of a promotion called “Curacao Now”, we could add another week to our trip for around a hundred dollars. Yes, I said one hundred dollars for a week on a tropical island. It turns out that Bonaire is more popular with North American tourists than Curacao, so the tourism board decided to lure some divers over with free hotel days, car rental days and a $400 airfare credit. This promotion combined with the fact that airlines tickets from Denver to Curacao were over $500 cheaper than Denver to Bonaire made it a no brainer to turn our 2 week vacation into a 3 week vacation. Are we ever glad we did.

We originally thought we would just snorkel on Curacao and save the diving for Bonaire. However, that plan went out the window the second day there when we saw Playa Lagun and it’s beautiful dive site. The combination of the blue Caribbean Sea and the lure of cheap and easy shore dives hooked us. Discover Diving offers full equipment rentals inlcuding one tank of air for $20/day. Each additional tank is $6. We couldn’t resist and each did five dives on Curacao. We were absolutely blown away by how good the coral was and the abundance of the fish life. The visibility wasn’t terrific, maybe 40-50 feet, but that is unusually low. (It steadily improved throughout the trip and was well over 100 feet by Bonaire) Shore Diving was a new experience. All of our previous diving has been from boats with a dive master. I am afraid that shore diving has spoiled us. We loved being able to dive at our own pace and go whatever direction we wanted. After overcoming our initial concerns about navigation, we couldn’t get enough. Dan had 31 dives when we got to Curacao and 62 when we left Bonaire. The best part about shore diving was being able to stay down longer. When you are with a group, you always have to come up based on the air of the least efficient diver. Dan and I are comfortable divers and spent at least 60 minutes under on each dive. I think not having a dive master made us better divers. We are both more comfortable with using a compass, communicating under water, and the dive tables than we were previously.

Curacao is a former Dutch colony that is working towards independence. It is located about 40 miles of the Venezulan Coast and it’s main industry is refining oil for Venezula It has a high standard of living for a Caribbean country and an interesting mix of people. The offical languages are Dutch and Papiamentu (a creole language derived from Spanish, African languages, and Caribbean Indian languages). Most people we encountered spoke four languages. Dutch, Papiamentu, Spanish, and English. While Willemstad is the capital and only large city, there are numerous small villages scattered around the island. We stayed at Westpunt, about 45 miles from the capital on the “quiet” end of the island. We found it ironic that when locals heard where we were staying, they would remark on how far away it was from Willemstad. Coming from a country where most people commute 45 minutes to work, we didn’t find it too far. Besides, all the quiet beaches and dive sites were at our end of the island.

We stayed at Marazul Dive Resort. I picked it due to it’s reasonable rates and proximity to the ocean. We received a free nights stay under the Curacao Now deal. September is the low season in Curacao and we were pleasantly surprised to have the resort almost to ourselves. There were a few other people in residence, but mostly empty condos. Due to a problem with our freezer, I was able to convince the manager to upgrade us from an ocean view studio to a 1 bedroom ocean front condo. I think this might have been the nicest place we have ever stayed. The view was incredible and the steps to the ocean were 20 feet from our front porch. The ocean was around 82 degrees. Warm enough that even Dan didn’t get cold. September is the hottest month of the year in Curacao with temps in the 80’s and 90’s during the day and low 80’s at night. The constant breeze helps keep things comfortable, but A/C is a must for sleeping. Curacao is not in the hurricane belt which makes it possible to visit in low season.
One of the highlights was seeing two large Manta Rays playing in front of the resort. You can see a clip of them here They passed within 50 feet us of the platform we were on. We also saw large pods of spinning dolphins from our front porch. We did two dives on the unnamed house Reef and thought it was world class coral. Being surrounded by schools of fish and swimming by 30 foot mushroom coral towers made us remember how much we love diving.

We were constantly surprised by how friendly and helpful the people were. Since the economy doesn’t depend on tourism, everything is in Dutch. People went out of their way to help us navigate the city, tell us their favorite places, discuss the best dive locations, talk to us about birds, etc. It was wonderful and very surprising. The other surprising thing is that most of the other tourists were from Europe. In general, Europeans go to Curacao and Americans go to Bonaire. We met a wonderful French couple that owned a condo at Marazul and they spent a lot of time discussing their favorite dive sites with us.

We have been to countries where tourists are only seen as dollar signs, and it was really refreshing to not feel that. It was also wonderful to get some exposure to a different culture. Would we go back to Curacao? Absolutely. I’ll be keeping a eye out for next year’s Curacao promotion. I’ll post about two weeks in Bonaire soon.

I finally managed to update our site to a new format. I am hoping this new blog format will be easier to maintain and I will update more frequently. Now for the updates….

We have been in Boulder all summer. We never got to Yellowstone or anywhere else, due to an unexepected foot injury. For my birthday we went for a mountain bike ride. I wanted to do the Centennial Cone Trail in Golden, CO. This trail is a 12 mile loop with some good single track. It is a great aerobic workout, but not very technical. About 7 miles in, on a fairly easy downhill section, I took a header over the handlebars.  I started to get up to redo the section, when I realized my foot hurt. I tried to stand on it, but it was very painful. Since we were 5 miles from the end of the trail, I had to ride out. By the last half-mile, I was in tears. I wasn’t sure what the problem was, but I couldn’t walk at all. Since we have a very high deductible insurance, I didn’t want to go to the ER. I called the orthopedic doctor that we have used before and they got me in the next day. I still couldn’t walk. The doc took x-rays and said nothing was broken, but that I had a Lis-Franc Sprain that would take 4-6 weeks to heal.  We were very surprised that it would take that long, but he said that wasn’t unusual for this sprain. I got a walking boot with instructions to be non-weight bearing and keep the foot up to prevent swelling. I ended up on the couch in the RV for a month, crutches the entire time. I couldn’t put weight on until the 5th week and it wasn’t until the 6th week that I got to transition to hiking boots. Now, two months later, I still can’t walk barefoot and I am still only wearing hiking boots. This was the most painful injury I have ever had.

The good news is that it has healed enough for us to go diving. Ever since we were in the Keys in Feb, we have been wanting to dive. We went gambling when we got back to CO and won about $1800. We decided instead of gambling again, we would put it towards a dive trip. We are headed to the Caribbean in the morning. We are spending a week in Curacao and two weeks in Bonaire. Even full-timers need a vacation. Yes, we realize how spoiled we are, but this will only be the second time since we left that Dan isn’t available for work at all. We have moved over to a friend’s farm and are camping in his field. His daughter is going to watch the cat and the trailer will be in a safe place.

I’ll post again in about 3 weeks with all the details and photos from our trip.