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Eagle’s Landing RV Park, Holt Florida

Published on January 23, 2011 by Katya in the category RV Parks | 2 Comments

After leaving the Everglades, Miami and the Keys behind, we came to north Florida to take care of some of our legal/tax stuff in our resident county, on the way stopping at St George Island State Park for a week.
St George was awesome but for another blog.

We arrived in Crestview, more specifically, Holt, 10 miles west, to stay at Eagle’s Landing RV Park. For the first night we actually stayed at River’s Edge RV Park, a huge tree filled fisherman’s paradise park at the bottom of “the biggest hill in Florida” as one man called it, but we had almost no cell phone or mifi (our own wireless) signal and the campground wireless was limited to about 2 hours a day per person. Originally we had asked for a week but needed to go get cash. On the way to an ATM in Holt, we saw Eagle’s landing just past the freeway and pulled in to ask some questions. It was a much better spot for signals and they had Tengo internet, a bandwidth limited but not time limited, internet (2gb every 48hrs). We felt bad but told River’s Edge that we changed our minds and decided to only stay a night. The woman was a bit grumpy but what could she do, or why would she really care. They seemed to have plenty of people there. We stayed the night and moved to Eagle’s Landing the next morning.
The people at Eagle’s Landing were really nice. The couple at the office said they co-own the property with their aunt and uncle who were also camp hosts, while they lived in a double wide at the front of the property (with about 10 kids from what I can tell, maybe foster kids? maybe ever kid in Holt? – a town of population 500 or so).

The park has just over 100 spots with plenty of space our your front door and to the front and back, assuming your trailer or bus isn’t 50 feet long by itself. The north side of the park has a huge long strip of open land specifically for dogs. Dogs have to stay leashed but that’s why they invented extending leashes I guess. They also don’t discriminate against breeds of dogs, openly at least. The ground seems pretty well free of poo, one owner stating that there are over 100 dogs in the park but you’d never know because everyone is so good about picking up after them. I think you’d also never know because most of the dogs are little indoor lap dogs who rarely go outside. I’ve seen about 5 dogs so far. There is no cable but, that is completely normal in state parks of course so it wasn’t disappointing to us. With antennae you get about 40 channels, 15 watchable ones, and that’s still more than we usually get. The park also has public restrooms and showers, pretty normal, except that Eagle’s landing only has one toilet shower combo room per gender, (Most people are using their own showers and toilets though so don’t think you wont get a chance at it), and they have a laundry room with 3 washers and 3 dryers for only $1 each! Before we were even setup I was walking to the laundry to take advantage, and a nice old lady even folded my clothes while we were out (I’d only told her she could move them if I wasn’t back and she wanted the dryer, nice!).

We spent Christmas and New Years here and have now returned after 2 weeks in Pensacola to take care of some unfinished business with the DMV and tax office in Crestview. Because the park is basically a big field (not my favorite park design but everything is spacious and nice so we didn’t mind), we weren’t able to keep our awning out because of the wind but it was much to cold out to be outside anyway. The weather got down to 18 degrees around Christmas so we prepared our hoses and pipes as best we could (also another blog) and kept the place warm with out new space heater.

Eagle’s Landing RV Park is probably the best RV park between Tallahassee and Pensacola (inland), depending on what you want. If you want to “camp”, try out River’s Edge RV Park at the bottom of the hill, If you are traveling full time or want a break from “camping” (we stay in camping places most the time), it’s a nice and super affordable dip back into civilization.

Shark Valley Florida

After the Everglades we moved into a park in Miami. We really didn’t think we would find anything, especially anything reasonable, but Larry and Penny Thompson County Park had spots for as long as a month and cheaper than most places we stay where we pay weekly. We got lucky and showed up when it was fairly empty and got a place all the way in the back with our own private yard and facing some brushy palmetto area. With the truck parked perpendicular to the front of the trailer, it blocks our awning and yard area from everyone else and we feel pretty much alone, as we like it. The park holds something like 250 RV’s plus tent campers so having some privacy could have been hard if we didn’t just have great luck sometimes. We decided to stay a month because, although we look forward to snow, theres no rush, and there are tons of things we haven’t seen in south Florida yet and ran out of time in the Everglades (you only get 2 weeks a year there sadly, though we may try to sneak back in).
Our first weekend at Larry and Penny, we headed to Shark Valley just 40 or so miles away towards, directly inland on the top side of the Everglades. We took the bikes to ride the 15 mile loop, expecting to see Alligators all over the road like we have in pictures, but we certainly got to see enough of them without having to worry about falling off our bikes or having our path blocked completely.
There were moms with babies, juveniles and small adults everywhere, making for some pretty great photo ops but the best encounter was when, about halfway through the bike ride, we decided to walk down a trail into a Hammock, and after about 100 yards of walking, I joked that there should be alligators draped across the trail at least, and just as we turned a corner, there were! All large adults resting on the trail where it met with a large pond. We counted about 6 but couldn’t really see around the next bend and there may have been more.
The bike ride was long but easy, except for my seat being uncomfortable due to my camera box being strapped onto my behind the seat bike rack. It was worth it though because it held my excellent quality, 4lb medium format camera and I got some great shots of the alligators on the trail (which will eventually be developed).
Here’s what I have on digital:

Alligators on trail in Shark Valley

Arranging a nice place to lay

Young Alligator

Young Alligator

Everglades, Week One, Awesome.

Published on November 7, 2010 by Katya in the category electrical, National Park, out and about, RV life, survival, travel | 1 Comment

After staying on the west coast of Florida for over a month, we were happy to finally find a place in the Everglades that allowed RVs. Long Pine Keys campground is the first campground in the Everglades one of only 2 that accept RV’s. The other campsites are only accessible by canoe, which makes them even more awesome, but sadly out of our reach. As you can imagine, Long Pine Key is a forest of really tall pine trees, mostly bald, which become excellent bird perches when dead and have provided me with plenty of awesome bird photos ( vultures, hawks and crows being my favorites).

There is no electricity or water here, but with Ross’s electric setup, and new improvements, there is hardly a difference. We use a gallon of gasoline a day for the generator which, most of the time, we can barely hear, even though it’s directly below our seats while we work. Water we have to collect daily in a 6 gallon tank, of which we use about one a day, and getting rid of the water, we do every other day with our tote tank, which we tow with the truck to a dump station. We use the public bathroom that is about 30 yards away most of the time, showers are the only water usage issue we have but its worth dealing with to stay here.

Besides TV, which we never have any good channels of anyway, we don’t miss out on anything. We have internet, can watch movies, use our laptops, use all the lights and of course the fridge and stove are propane. I could do this forever and not mind it really. During the day it can get pretty hot still of course, and theres not enough power for AC. It usually in the mid 80s so we have the windows open all day and a fan in the door, but about 3pm it becomes too warm inside and we all move our work to the tent outside (the size of a bedroom with a 6 foot roof).

We have basically been alone in the park since we got here last Sunday morning with just a few tents showing up here and there. This weekend though we were a bit bombarded with huge families who talked and yelled half the night and/or blasted their stereos, counter productive to camping I thought but in general, whatever, didn’t keep me awake.

We finally got to take a look around the everglades this weekend, and Friday night had been cold and the day started out really cool, so we felt we could leave the animals for a few hours with a fan in the window. Our goal being Flamingo, the farthest south point in the Everglades and I think mainland Florida, and on the way we stopped at every turnoff we could find. Most of them were also occupied by tourists and people from nearby in blue mustangs (and other soft top mustangs), we went on a couple 1/2 mile hikes, one really amazing one through a Mahogany Hammock (a Hammock is a small forest in the swamp basically). The landscape in the Hammock changed so completely it was like going from desert to jungle in 5 steps. There were vines and old growth, strangler figs, woodpeckers, giant mahoganies, termites, ferns and everything you would expect to see in some kind of a rain forest. Outside of the Hammocks were miles of grassland looking marshes, most of which were actually part of a huge 8 mile wide, super shallow, river, scattered in some areas of the park were bald cypress and other parts, palm trees, or like the area we are in, long pines. Randomly throughout, there are deeper rivers, lakes and ponds filled with alligators. In the most southern areas, you might even find American Crocodiles and – if your in the water, dolphins and manatees. The whole Everglades is just a phenomenal example of varying ecosystems in one area.

There were canoe rentals at a couple points but without knowing before hand, we weren’t really prepared (maybe next weekend), as both of our canoe trips have been about 4 hours each. When we finally made it to Flamingo, we saw the campsites there, fairly open and busy but still pretty cool. The visitor center was abandoned though not in too terrible shape, having closed after Katrina damage. By the time we got there we were starving, half expecting a restaurant or store but finding a small marina shop, with a pretty terrible selection of snacks and sandwiches for fishermen. We bought enough to get us home, walked around a bit and headed back to camp.

We stopped off at the end of a dirt road we saw on the way, partially flooded and gladly tourist free. It lead to a small pond that kept a couple alligators, one at least 8 feet, and as we later found out, a Water Moccasin, which as the time we did not know the identity of.. and poked with a stick because we thought it was dead. It was just shedding and busy, and probably cold, so we got lucky he was feeling nice that day.

We weren’t sure about staying here without electricity at first since a week would be our longest since last year at Slab City, but since it’s so incredibly easy and only improving, we’re staying another week. We would like to stay at Flamingo but not sure about internet, so we may just head there next Friday night and stay through Sunday night, heading to Shark Valley after that!

Cue photos:

Bald Cypress, Everglades

Swampy Plants

Seed Pods

Mahogany Hammock

Fern in the Mahogany Hammock

Post Hurricane Scrub Land

Water Moccasin

Birds at Flamingo

Water birds at our secret dirt road

Halloween 2010

Published on November 6, 2010 by Katya in the category nerding, photography | Leave a comment

Florida is very Halloween-worthy so I made up a collection of Halloween photos from our stay here so far muahahahaha.

Hawk and Crows, Long Pine Keys Campground

Saw this Alligator (and one other) while canoeing in Collier Seminole State Park

The Black River in Collier Seminole State Park

Dead tree

Alligator at Cypress Forest Visitor Center

Little Manatee River State Park

Published on September 26, 2010 by Katya in the category out and about | 2 Comments

I’m really behind on blogs as usual, even after getting a netbook with the specific intention or writing more blogs with it. Takes 21 days to make a habit right?
Anyway this weekend was great and since part of my new habit making process includes shorter blogs, I’ve decided to write a rundown with some images.

On Saturday, we went to bed at 4 am, as per normal…and got up at 7:30 so we could run down to the park office and rent a canoe before anyone else, thinking of course that every other person in the park was only here to rent a canoe and there may even be a line.. possibly a duel. We were wrong and of course much earlier than we needed to be. We picked up the keys, oars and life jackets anyway and decided to stay awake and get some breakfast at Denny’s. Breakfast was terrible and we returned to check on the animals, pack and head out to the river. The canoes were blue and plastic but fairly large and would be easy to use, even for us who has little experience in canoes, both of us having been on rafts in rapids more.
The Little Manatee River was wider than a creek but not much of a river for the first mile or so, shallow and free from creatures. As we got further down stream we started to see turtles and even a huge fish whose massive slimy back broke the surface for a moment as it turned and slid into the black. I have a phobia of large fish.. it’s not them really, its the blackness they hide in while they potentially eat my toes and drag me under (I watch the show River Monster’s and this happens!). I didn’t get eaten or even bit but I did drop the video camera in the water while trying to take a photo of some stupid rotten structure on the shore. Maybe it was a fish who caused me to drop it. He bumped the boat, attacking the camera in the depths – thinking it was my foot. There were plenty worse things to fear really.
We had gone hiking twice in the week to a lake near the campsite in search of Alligators that one ranger told us were in and had hopes for the river but in a way had given up. We floated miles seeing huge Orb Weaver spiders with webs that span the treetops from one side of the river to the other, a big fishing spider protecting its egg sack from canoeists on a branch jutting out of the middle of the river and many slider turtles from one to 3 feet long, bathing on logs with their arms and legs up off the log like some strange yoga position, but no alligators or signs of them. When we started to reach some civilization, mainly some guys on a rope swing followed by a large anchored boat and 3 fisherman’s trailers we decided to turn around. We had been paddling and floating for about 2 hours already and hoped to do more things before dark.

On the way back, looking around at things as we did going past the first time, we were about 1/4 of the way back when I saw a weird texture in some floating muck. It was a medium sized alligator with gorgeous yellow eyes. He just float there as we got closer, pupils narrow, we kept getting closer, trying to take a look and take a photo, even going back a few feet to get another go. He was completely unmoving and seemed to either be asleep with his eyes open of completely convinced we couldn’t see him. He eventually got sick of us either way and splashed his body and tail in a massive violently and stirred up some of the foulness he was resting in, leaving splattered people and a putrid smell in his wake. It was fun and slightly heart attack inducing to be so close to a wild predator that large, and he wasn’t even as big as he one day will be.
We made it back unscathed, paddling against the weak but present current and not taking enough breaks for water, we were exhausted and a little sun burned. We headed home for an animal check then off to Tampa for some Ethiopian food and to check out the beach.
We were late arriving to Fort DeSoto State Park, nearly closing time for the beach but when we arrived to see tons of people fishing from the bridges and families arriving at the same time we didnt rush. By the time we left I was so tired I was falling asleep sitting up in the car, even after an energy drink and a slap to the face (by me). When we got home after 9 (long drive to Tampa and back), we decided to take a “nap” which turned into my sleeping the entire night, waking up at 9 the next day.

Sunday is an easy one. We got up, made breakfast and drove to Anna Marie Island where we hung out at the beach, floating in and playing in the rolling tides of the Gulf while schools of little silver fish swam around our legs and looked us in the eyes through the walls of the waves that towered over our heads before we jumped and let them crash around us. The fish seemed to get thicker as it got later and after a while Ross got one down his shorts and I had at least 5 splash into my face, one nearly getting into my mouth while I laughed. apparently I love the ocean (though not up my sinuses or in my eyes oddly). I never would have known from the freezing cold jelly fish filled waters of the west coast that it could be fun to be in the water.

We are home. I am again very tired. Photos!