Out of Our Rut Blog Welcome Page

Welcome to the Out of Our Rut blog landing page.

Who we are:

We are a couple of former engineers that lived and worked in the Rochester New York area for over 30 years. When we were laid off from two different companies, one day apart, we took that as a sign to change things up. We had built a beautiful home on 50 acres and loved the place, but with plenty of time on our hands, we began to travel more and realized that when we were on the road for weeks on end, we didn't really miss all the “stuff” we had back home. Plus the work involved with maintaining our home and property seemed to be the only reason we would head back home. That prompted us to get out of our rut and sell 95% of our possessions and our home and move into our 38 foot motorhome and travel the country full time starting in June of 2016.

Chris and Jack Hiking in Washington State

At Pullout Along Rugged Oregon Coast

Our mission:

To explore the country with a strong bias towards outdoor activities. Our passions are hiking and geocaching with some mountain biking on the side. I am an avid photographer. I guess working at Eastman Kodak for 32 years had an influence in that. And while we live in a motorhome and stay in many campgrounds, we really are not campers. We seldom have campfires and don't have a corn hole game. We rarely stay at a campground for its amenities. We pick a place that is near where we want to explore. We think of it more like our home happens to have wheels and can move around. Our desire in these travels is to slow the pace. We didn't want to see if we could get to all the National Parks as quickly as possible. We like to keep a travel day to less than 200 miles and if the place warrants, stay for a week or more.

At Geocaching Headquarters in Seattle for #10,000

The blog:

For friends and family (as well as us) to keep track of what we have been up to, we have created this blog. It chronicles where we've been and what we've done as we wander around the country. Each stop along the way will, at minimum, get mentioned in the blog. Some longer stops in areas we enjoyed may get multiple blog posts in order to give that stop it's due. Generally the blog has lots of photographs as I find it difficult to eliminate photos I like. The blog will talk about the campground to some extent, but it shouldn't be considered a campground review. We seldom seem to exhaust the things we want to explore before we exhaust ourselves and need to move on. That means we may completely skip some activities or places in an area that others may consider essential. We look at that as a reason to come back in the future.

Pretty Sunset in Quartzite Arizona

At the Window in Big Bend National Park

This landing page:

The problem with just about any blog is that fact it is chronological. This is fine since that is how the events occurred in real life. But since our blog is so much about a given location, it can be difficult for somebody to find a specific blog post for a given location. I even find it a challenge to remember when we happened to be at a given location if I wanted to look something up. For instance, if someone asked about Twin Falls Idaho. I know we stayed there but it might take me awhile to figure out that we were there in June of 2017 to get them to the right post. If I could only look at a map of all the places we have stayed and have an easy way to get to the relevant blog post.

Since I already use Google My Maps to keep track of our locations, I have created a special map that has all of our stops since going full time. None of the routes are included in the map since that just seems to clutter it up and don't really add value. By clicking the link below the map, an interactive map with all of our stops will open in another window. It is then possible to move around the map and zoom in an area of interest. Clicking on any pin on the map will pop up the name of the location along with a link to the blog post(s) associated with that stop. Since I am nearly always 2 to 4 weeks behind in the blog, some of the most recent map points may not have a link to a blog, but they will in time. The GREEN pins are locations that happen to include one of our annual or yearly reviews.

So if you want to see what we found to explore in a given area, this should provide a much easier way to find the blog post.

Click HERE to open interactive Google map

2025 Year End Review

With 2025 coming to an end, we are celebrating nine and a half years of living on the road full time in our 38 foot motorhome. We began and finished the year at our RV lot in Titusville Florida at The Great Outdoors (TGO). We purchased the lot almost 2 years ago. It’s a fairly basic lot with a nice flat concrete driveway and the standard full hook up utilities but it does have a 10 foot by 12 foot shed which is very convenient for working on projects over the months we will be stationary here. The resort has a lot of nice amenities but we don’t take advantage of most of them. I must admit that I do miss the occasional winter spent out in southern California and Arizona where the hiking and views are a lot nicer.

We started out 2025 wrapping up some of our doctors appointments in an attempt to get our old bodies in shape for another six months of travel. Our plans for the year were to explore some of the upper Midwest. As we looked into what we wanted to see and do in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, we picked out a few events that were both location and date specific. These types of stops have a much firmer window that form the rough outline and timing of our journey.

The first event was to take part in a Habitat for Humanity build in Marquette Michigan in the Upper Peninsula. The two week window for the RV-Care-A-Vanner program was from mid to late June. The second planned event was to attend the Oshkosh Air Show in Wisconsin. This weeklong show runs in late July. With those two points on our map we have quite a bit of distance and time to fill in before, between and after these events.

It is definitely a time consuming task to map out a route, plan our camping stops and figure out how long we want to stay in areas along the way. We spent a few weeks over last winter researching things to see and do in various cities along the route. Where is the good hiking or points of interest?  I use a Google Map and a website called Furkot to piece together a plan. As we get a better handle on our route and timing, we can start to make reservations at various campgrounds and by the end of April we had a 70% of the nights reserved out through Labor Day. We have found that after then, we can be much more serendipitous about our planning for the route back to Florida.

Below is a map of our route for the year. By starting and returning to the same place, the map is a bit confusing. I have a link below the map that will open the actual Google Map which allows others to zoom and pan around to get a better view of the route. Clicking on any of the pins for a travel stop will pop up a window with the name of the stop as well as the blog post related to that stop.

Click HERE to open the Google Map

We left Titusville in late April with just over 7 weeks to make our way to Marquette. While getting the rig serviced in South Carolina, we needed to make a quick drive up to Ohio for a death in the family. It was nice to see so many relatives and friends even if it was at a sad time. We continued our journey with 2 weeks in a few state parks in the southern Appalachians.  In Cincinnati, we got a chance to get together with family and have some Skyline Chili and Graeters Ice Cream. We managed to sneak in a stop at a National Park and get our motorhome windshield replaced in northern Indiana. Then we worked our way up north through Michigan stopping at a few Elks Lodges before crossing over the Mackinac Bridge into the Upper Peninsula. The time spent working with the Habitat for Humanity affiliate in Marquette was quite rewarding and we learned a few construction tricks.

We had about 3 weeks before the Oshkosh Air Show and we got to explore the western side of the UP at a few different campgrounds before working our way south into Wisconsin. We really enjoyed the air show and you’ll read more about that later in this post. Then we continued west into Minnesota where we spent the next 37 nights at various county and state parks. I was able to talk my wife into a side trip into eastern North Dakota to experience what others have called the Disneyland of geocaching - more on that later as well.

It was about this time that we “called an audible”. We had previously planned to head back to Marquette and help out again on the Habitat build and see how it had progressed since our stop in June. But after we had talked with some fellow campers while in Minnesota, we decided to return to Minnesota to check out the north shore area along Lake Superior. This gave us the opportunity to even meet up with my nephew and his wife from Cincinnati while they were in town for her high school reunion. By then it was late September and we figured we better start making our way south to avoid the cold and snow that is inevitable for this area.

We stopped in the Apostle Islands in northern Wisconsin for several days where we got a chance to explore some of the unique landscape along the shoreline. As we headed south, we got to experience a cranberry harvest up close and personal and visit Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin both in Wisconsin. We continued through parts of Iowa, Illinois and Indiana with Chris making a return to her college town of Peoria after 40 years!

Coming through Tennessee, we got to spend a week back in the mountains to see the fall colors before timing our drive through Atlanta on a Sunday morning to minimize the traffic. A few days in a state park in Georgia and a couple of overnight stops at Elks Lodges and we made it back to Florida. It felt good when we returned to TGO after being gone for 190 nights. Things have definitely slowed down over the last two months as we get back to doing some work on the motorhome, our lot and getting in doctors appointments.

Here are a few more maps to help show where we spent our time. These “heat maps” are shaded to reflect the number of nights spent in each state - dark red is more nights, pale red is fewer nights. The first one is just for 2025. We camped in 13 different states this year with Florida, Minnesota and Michigan coming in the top 3 spots. The second map is similar but includes all 9.5 years we’ve been fulltime. The final map is the full 9.5 years but divided down to the county level to get a better understanding of where we were in each state.

Our 2025 Camping Map

Our 9.5 Year Camping Map

9.5 Years at County Level

Lots of people ask “how much does this lifestyle cost?”  Well the table below should help answer that. It doesn’t include items that would be spent if we were living in a sticks and bricks home like groceries, dining out, health care, clothing. But it does include camping costs as well as fuel for both the motorhome and the car as well as the miles driven. We did put on more miles on the rig this year but not significantly more.  Nothing else was all that surprising. Since the actual table has so many years now, I only include the past six years.  One other aspect is that the cost per night here at TGO is initially an educated estimate but I won’t have our last rental income check for the year until mid February at which point I will update the spreadsheet and this table.

Just the Stats for the Past 6 Years

The table does breakdown the type of places we have camped into four categories: boondocking, state parks, private campgrounds and Elks Lodges. While we tend to like state, county or city parks over private campgrounds, location is our most important consideration when picking a campground as well as availability and do we fit in the site. This year we did bump up our state park number a little bit compared the past couple of years. Our overall cost per night worked out to be just over $32 - a bit higher than many years but again not significantly higher.

Like we have done in past year end reviews, we have looked over the 49 stops from this year and tried to identify our favorites. After the votes were tallied, we came up with 8 clear winners. Don't look at this list as the best campgrounds we stayed at during the year. I will provide the name of the campground we stayed at but these winning stops are based purely on its location or what we found to see and do in the area. I will also warn readers that one place on the list might be a mediocre location if you’re not an avid geocacher but we found it to be quite entertaining.

For each winning stop, there is a short description of what we liked about it, a link to the first blog post for that location which will provide much more information about the stop and some of our favorite pictures from the stop. Since I am behind on my blog writing, there are some of the stops without the link to the post but this will be updated as they are written. In chronological order, here are the top 8 stops for 2025.

• Cloudland Canyon State Park, Trenton Georgia - We had done a day trip to this park back in 2021 and fell in love with the park and it’s wonderful hikes and views. We managed to get a spot for 5 nights and found it to be a rather roomy site. The final 8 miles into the parking lot is up a rather steep and curving road. It is doable in a rig our size but not necessarily fun. We repeated one of our favorite hikes the West Rim Loop. By staying in the park for multiple days, we were able to hike Sitton’s Gulch Trail which follows the base of the valley along a creek. This park is not too far from Chattanooga so we spent one day exploring some of the sights in that town including the Chattanooga Choo Choo. Cloudland Canyon is a nice relaxing place to visit in northern Georgia.

Cloudland Canyon Blog Post

Cloudland Canyon View

Large Overhanging Rock

• Union River Big Bear Campground, Silver City Michigan - Situated in the far western part of the Upper Peninsula, this private campground is pretty much surrounded by the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. We stayed here for a week after completing our Habitat build in Marquette. It is a remote location that didn’t have any cell coverage for our devices but there was reasonable WiFi that worked in our rig. There are many hiking trails within the park and we take advantage of many of them. The main feature of this area are the numerous waterfalls - more of them than can be seen in the time we were here. We had found a decent guide that rated the falls on beauty and ease of getting to the viewing location and we managed to hit a great number of the better ones. The only real problem with this stop was coming in early July - the bugs were pretty bad at times. If you can time your visit for the fall colors, I bet the views would be spectacular and the bugs would be less of an issue.

First Porcupine Mountains Blog Post

Lake of the Clouds

Beautiful Bond Falls

• Hancock Recreation Area Campground, Hancock Michigan - This stop isn’t all that far from the Porcupine Mountains but there is so much to see and do in this area that it would be a challenge to attempt both areas from one campground. Situated on the Keweenaw Peninsula that juts out into Lake Superior, this part of the UP was formerly a big copper mining area. Several of the old mines and facilities have been taken over by the National Park Service and offer a wide range of interesting tours. We did head up to Copper Harbor to explore an old lighthouse and fort. This area is known for some excellent mountain biking be we didn’t get a chance to try any bike trails and only got In minimal hiking since there were so many other things to see and do and we only had 5 nights in Hancock.

First Keweenaw Peninsula Blog Post

Shaft-Rock House at Quincy Mine

Eagle Harbor Light House

Incredible Stone Building in Calumet

• Camp Scholler Air Show, Oshkosh Wisconsin - Usually I don’t try to rank our tops picks for any given year, but this stop was so much fun that it was easily our favorite place of 2025 and rates up with the Albuquerque Balloon Festival and the Lake Havasu Pyrotechnics Show as bucket list destinations. Similar to these other two, Oshkosh is only on the list because of the event that takes place every July - the EAA Airventure Show. There are around 12,000 mostly primitive camping sites in a 400 acre field so you’re not here for the camping experience. But for a full week, you can join in with roughly 100,000 other visitors each day and partake in everything aviation related. We are not at all into airplanes or flying but we still had a great time. There are 4 hour long airshows each afternoon and two nights during the week are nighttime airshows with planes, fireworks, laser lights and drones which were some of the most incredible events to behold. My blog post listed below will provide all the details about attending and what you’ll see while at Oshkosh. Add it to your bucket list!

Oshkosh Air Show Blog Post

Large Group of Warbirds During Air Show

Colorful Aerobatic Biplane

Nighttime Air Show Begins

• Bear Paw Campground Itasca State Park, Shelvin Minnesota - In mid August, we spent 9 nights camping inside Itasca State Park in northern Minnesota. The park’s claim to fame is being the headwaters of the Mississippi River. It’s one of the few places along this 2300 mile long river where visitors are encouraged to walk across from one side to the other. It’s only about 15 feet and ankle deep so it isn’t all that impressive of a feat. There are many miles of hiking trails to enjoy. The 11 mile paved bike path right out of the campground can be linked with a gravel one way wilderness drive for a great 17 mile loop around the lake.

Being there for an extended time, we were able to venture out of the park to see some other sights. The Heartland Trail a little southeast of camp was a wonderful bike ride out of the town of Walker. Possibly the highlight of the stop was a day trip to the town of Detroit Lakes to see the trolls. These 6 art installations are scattered all around the area and we found it is a full day to get them all in since most of them are not right at a parking area but require a bit of a walk. But the effort was worth it.

 First Itasca State Park Blog Post

Calm Waters of Lake Itasca Near Sunset

The First Few Feet of the Mighty Mississippi River

Chris Mimics Ronny Funny Face Troll

• Turtle River State Park, Arvilla North Dakota - Located 25 miles outside of Grand Forks is the small town of Gilby North Dakota. Small is an understatement - population ~240 people! The nearest campground was this state park about 10 miles away. Why did we want to go to this blip on the map in the middle of farm fields and not much else? That’s easy - geocaching. We had heard about Gilby on a geocaching podcast we routinely listen to and it sounded quite intriguing. When we put together our travel plans for Minnesota, I realized that we were only going to be 150 miles from Gilby and talked Chris into heading there. This place is known as the Disneyland of geocaching mainly because of one very creative cache hider named Trycacheus.

We spend 3 full days driving all over the backroads of Gilby in search of some of the most creative caches we’ve done over our 15+ years of geocaching. Most of the hides involved some sort of puzzle that must be solved in order to open the final cache container and each puzzle was very unique. Some were complicated and required a fair amount of thought while others were simply cute and fun to solve. Brainpower was used for most of them but a few required strength or throwing accuracy. In our 6 nights there, we found 71 caches with 50 of them having over 100 favorite points. We were there a couple weeks before some big geocaching event but that probably worked out in our favor so we could enjoy the time spent solving them in solitude. There were a few other things to see in the area but not many. So if you are a geocacher, this is a must do stop, otherwise you will likely skip this part of North Dakota.

 

 Blog Post from Gilby

Giant Anvil Weathervane is a Geocache

ET Phone Home Bike Cache

Geocaching Swiss Army Knife Cache

• Black Beach Campground, Silver Bay Minnesota - This stop wasn’t planned until a couple weeks before staying there. We only decided to consider checking out this part of Minnesota known as the “North Shore” after several people talked about how beautiful it is and a tour of the state should include seeing it. It’s an area that extends about 150 miles northeast of Duluth to the Canadian border near Grand Portage all along the northern shore of Lake Superior. We worked 4 nights into our schedule to check it out. There are a fair number of campgrounds along the route and some of the state parks looked nice but didn’t have availability during our timeframe. We picked Silver Bay because it was roughly halfway along the North Shore so we could easily explore in either direction.

There are numerous places to see with lots of waterfalls and other attractions. Gooseberry Falls and Split Rock Lighthouse were two of our favorites. One day was spent exploring all the way up to Grand Portage just before the border crossing. We did a beautiful hike there and found lots of places to stop at on our drive back. If you do make it to the area, you should really check out Betty’s Pies in Two Harbors. Had we only known to include the North Shore as we were planning our tour of Minnesota, we would have allotted more time to explore.

 Blog Post from Silver Bay

Split Rock Lighthouse Reflection

Gooseberry Falls State Park

Black Beach

Finally Saw the Northern Lights

• Top of the World Campground, Tellico Plains Tennessee - This was our last long stop before heading back to Florida for the winter. We really enjoy spending time in the Appalachian Mountains and doing so in the fall is even better. Having spent most of our time in these mountains on the North Carolina side near Asheville, we picked this out of the way campground to spend a week exploring. We found some quirky things to see in the area including tours of Mayfield Dairy and Sweetwater Valley farms where we saw robotic cow milking equipment in action.

There are many nice hikes to do in this area but it might be most famous for Cherohala Skyway - a 43 mile stretch of road from Tellico Plain TN to Robbinsville NC. It’s a very scenic drive through the mountains and we had (accidentally) timed our visit to be near peak autumn colors. This road ties into another drive called the Tail of the Dragon and many car enthusiasts come here from far away to drive these roads. The day we drove a section of it, there was an Aston Martin car club enjoying the drive - a total of 38 from vintage ones like James Bond drove to brand new models. They would have been much more fun to drive than the Jeep!

 Blog Post Not Written Yet

View from Our Campsite at Top of the World

River View Along Cherohala Skyway

Indian Boundary Lake TN

Below is a map showing all 435 places we have camped in the past eight and a half years. For additional information on any of them, click on the link below the map which will open the actual Google Map I use. Pan and zoom on the map and by clicking on any pin, a window will pop up with the name of the location and a link to the blog post(s) for that place. Those interested in hiking, mountain biking, geocaching or nature photography, may find some of the posts useful if you plan to visit an area we have explored. Our blog posts are more about the interesting locations we discovered during our stops and less about campground reviews so don't expect to find much information about what campground is the best in a specific area.

Click HERE to Open Interactive Google Map

We still haven’t made any plans for where 2026 will take us but I’m sure we will come up with something in the next couple months.

Georgia to Florida

Map of this blog's locations click this link to open the map

Our stop in Tennessee came to an end, leaving us with 7 nights to work our way back to our lot at The Great Outdoors in Titusville Florida. The most direct route was south on Interstate 75 through Georgia. The only problem with that plan was needing to drive through Atlanta. Way back in the summer of 2013, years before going fulltime, we were on an 18 night trip with our small travel trailer and one of our travel days was right through Atlanta on a workday. That was such an unpleasant experience that since then, we have gone out of our way to avoid needing to repeat the frustration. Maybe a dozen years allowed our memories to fade because we decide to drive through town, but this time we had a plan. We had timed our stops before and after Atlanta to permit us the best possible scenario by driving on a Sunday. While we weren’t positive it would work, we were optimistic. To get the timing right, we had booked a state park about 50 miles south of Atlanta to come in on Sunday.

To make the travel distances reasonable, we would stop one night at the Dalton Elks Lodge about 80 miles north of Atlanta. We came in and found the small camping area about 100 yards from the lodge. There were a couple other RVs parked but they didn’t seem to be occupied and we were able to get the one 50 amp site. After going in to the lodge to register, we headed out to get a cache in a couple of these northern Georgia counties we haven’t been to previously. It was a quiet overnight stop and we got out early to attempt the drive through Atlanta. Our Garmin routed us around the western loop instead of straight down I-75 but we were pleasantly surprised to find the traffic was flowing just fine. I guess our planning worked or we got lucky? Of course that meant we would be getting into the campground well before the check-in time but we stopped at a Walmart 20 miles from the state park so we could pick up some supplies and plan our arrival time more accurately.

When we booked a site at Indian Springs State Park, we saw there was a brand new camping area that offered full hookups and seemed to be slightly larger sites than those at their original camping area so we reserved one of these new sites. When we arrived at the northern gate, we were told we needed to go to the visitor center to get our camping pass. Unfortunately the visitor center would have been better reached by coming in the South Gate to the park but they don’t provide that info in advance. Chris got us checked in but our rig needs to be facing the opposite direction to make it to the campground area. We were told we might be able turn around at the museum parking lot just down the road so we unhooked the car and I tried to make the U-turn only to realize that even without the car, I couldn’t get our size of motorhome to turn that sharply without hitting a tree or guard rail. So out the south entrance and back in the north entrance but now waving my vehicle pass at the ranger in the guard shack. We finally make it to our camping loop but it’s behind an entrance gate. Without a keypad up at my level, Chris was forced to open the gate, drive the car through and then come back to open the gate for me. Fortunately we only needed to deal with that once. Our site worked out well but being brand new meant that there was no grass growing yet so it was a bit muddy around our site. The following day would be quite rainy so the mud only got worse.

We haven’t been to this part of Georgia before, so we can head in any direction and find geocaches in what are new counties for us. We study our caching map, find a couple of old ones placed in 2001 and formulate a route. One of our first stops was at High Falls State Park to the southwest of our camp. To find the desired cache, we parked and walked up a trail that follows the Towaliga River. The cache was near a viewpoint and there was a skeleton guarding it although I suspect it’s only there because it’s a few days before Halloween.

High Falls State Park

Skeleton Enjoys the Falls Too

Spillway Over Dam

As we made our loop, we visited the town of Griffin. We had selected a hide near a business called The Sock Shoppe. It was a very busy place and seemed to be too large to just sell socks so we head in to check it out. It was more like a real department store than just a place selling socks. We wandered around and found a few things we could have used. Working around our big loop, we ended up northeast of camp to look for a cache hidden in March of 2001. Today there are fewer than 300 geocaches that are older than this one so it is somewhat of a rare cache. The trailhead has a pay parking area that only takes cash. Fortunately we had the required $2. The trail follows a river and is fairly pretty. We knew the cache was going to be well off any trail based on the description so it took us a little bit of debate before we cut into the woods. The good thing was the forest floor was pretty wide open so we didn’t need to bushwhack the whole way there. We finished the day driving a fair distance but gathering 7 new Georgia counties in the process.

River View on Way to Old Cache

We only had one more day left in the area and decided to stay closer to camp. This state park doesn’t have a lot of hiking trails or geocaches but just a few miles away is the Dauset Trails Nature Center. A portion of its 2000 acres is setup to provide homes for around 70 native Georgia animals that have some sort of issue that prevents them from being able to survive on their own in the wild.

Entrance to Dauset Trails Nature Center

We start at the visitor center and find the reptile room. There was a nice collection of animals on display and many of them were fairly active.

Turtles Under Heat Lamp

Snoozing Snake

Copperhead

It was a dreary overcast day with a chance of sprinkles but we came prepared with our rain coats and headed outside to follow the Animal Trail. There was a large group of noisy schoolchildren ahead of us and we picked our route based on going where they weren’t. Our first find was a river otter. It could hear the nearby kids and was constantly looking up the walls of its enclosure hoping to see them.

Prepared for Sprinkles

Inquisitive River Otter

The Barnyard Exhibit seemed to be void of visitors so we head that way. It is a large area with lots of buildings for equipment and the farm animals.

Barnyard Exhibit This Way

Nice Area for Goats

Large Barn

They have a decent variety of animals to check out and they too were fairly active.

Burros

Horse Looks Through Barn

Cows

Of course Chris liked the goats. I found the hogs interesting with their multicolored coats that were reasonably clean given their muddy conditions. Since it was a cool morning, maybe they didn’t feel the need to roll around in the mud.

Goats Out and About

Fairly Clean Pigs

The timing of our visit was pretty good. It appeared that volunteers were out cleaning up enclosures and also setting out the food for each of the animals. In some cases it was clear which ones had just been given breakfast. The bobcat was keenly interested in what looked like a chicken leg.

Bobcat Eating Breakfast Chicken

Tortoise Heads Out for Lettuce

Bison in the Distance

The bears have a nice habitat with a small pond and a hammock. Based on how they were pacing the perimeter of their enclosure, I suspect they had not been fed yet. There were a couple of coyotes nearby that were very active and fund to watch. But they were behind two layers of chain link fencing so none of my pictures did them justice.

Bears Pacing

We spent around 90 minutes exploring the grounds and found it very enjoyable. There are some trails just outside the main fence line that actually has a dozen or so geocaches hidden but with the on and off sprinkles, we decided to just head back to camp to dry off and warm up.

Bald Eagle Calling

Eagle Poses with His Sign

With just two more nights and three travel days to make it to Titusville, we rely on a couple of Elks Lodges for our stops. The first one is about 180 miles down I-75 in Valdosta Georgia - about 20 miles north of the Florida state line. The lodge wasn’t open but they were having bingo later that evening. They do not have any RV services so we had parked in the far corner of the parking lot where we figured we would be out of the way. A local lodge member had stopped to pick up something, saw us and suggested that we should move over onto the grass since they get quite busy for bingo and the lot nearly fills up. Since the ground was dry and firm, we shifted over without concern of sinking in. When bingo players started to arrive that night, the lot did fill up.

The next day was a 122 mile drive to the Orange Park Elks Lodge near Jacksonville Florida. We have stayed at this lodge before since it is right on our route to Titusville. They have a half dozen sites with water and electric and a dump station. The next morning we head south the remaining 137 miles. It felt good to be pulling back into The Great Outdoors after being gone for 190 days. In that time we camped in 13 states, found 643 geocaches and picked up a decent number of new counties - 170 counties spread across 12 states.

Life definitely changes when we come back to TGO. We still have things to do but instead of fun stuff like hiking or sightseeing, we have tasks to take care of. Admittedly a large number of the tasks are specific to owning an RV lot. There are palm trees to trim and weeds to pull and other general maintenance around our small lot. There are also things to take care of on the motorhome. If we didn’t have our lot, we would have needed to fit in these jobs just like we did in the early years of full time travels. One very critical thing we needed to deal with was getting new tires for the Jeep. We have purchased tires for our motorhome and previous Jeep while traveling the country, but it’s easier to do it from a location we will be for months on end. Last spring, we had joined a company called National Tire Concierge Service. Our one time $90 membership fee got us a great discount on our 6 motorhome tires. But the membership also includes tires for passenger vehicles. Not every brand of tire is included in their system, but there are quite a few options. I did a little bit of research on what tires would work well for our driving style and called NTCS to get the ball moving. In a day, I received a call back with the price and a nearby tire service center that was able to get me in yet that afternoon. I saved enough money with just those 4 tires that it would have covered the membership cost if I hadn’t already been a member. I was just glad that we now were riding on tires with tread again!

Getting Four New Tires

In the middle of November, we head over to the nearby Orlando Wetlands in Christmas Florida. This is one of our favorite places in the area for lots of nature viewing. We were pleased to find that the visitor center, that has seemed to be mostly complete in the past two winters, was now fully open - as of early April 2025. They have lots of nice displays mostly explaining how these wetlands were designed and constructed to filter waste water as it slowly flows from one side of the 1650 acre property through a series of holding ponds. While this is interesting, the real reason we like it here is to watch birds. It was a little bit too early in the season for there to be many birds. We did spot a few gators and turtles. Its only a 15 minute drive so we can come back frequently during our stay to see how the bird population changes.

Visitor Center Finally Open

Ibis on Bridge

Turtle Warms Up in the Sun

One of the other aspects of staying put in one location for an extended period of time is that we can get in some doctors appointments. I had been going to a hematologist last year for anemia and I did some intermediate bloodwork while we were in Michigan this summer and things were looking promising. After returning, I had more bloodwork done and had a follow up with the nurse practitioner. She was pleased that all measured results were in the green. Last year we had selected a primary care physician but hadn’t been real pleased with her. We asked some of our neighbors at TGO for recommendations and we picked a new doctor. We got in an initial visit and feel much more comfortable with this doctor.

TGO is surrounded by lots of conservation lands but also has a lot of undeveloped land within its boundaries. Being surrounded by so much nature is beautiful but also can be a fire hazard during the dry season. To help mitigate this risk, we had the Florida Forest Service, local fire departments and many volunteers come in one day to do a prescribed burn in a dozen or so acres on the south side of the resort. That morning, the main parking lot was filled with all sorts of fire truck, bulldozers and other equipment. The area being worked was near some of the homes or RV lots but over a mile from our site. We knew they wanted spectators out of the area during the burn but a couple days later, we hit the trails on our mountain bikes to see what it looked like. They definitely got rid of a lot of the understory in the woods and only charred the trunks of the oak and palms. There was still a heavy smell of smoke in the area but didn’t actually see anything smoldering.

Some Equipment for Prescribed Burn at TGO

Along the Nature Trail a Couple Days After Burn

Understory Burned Away