Georgia to Florida

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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