Hiking with Opie at Jonathan Dickinson State Park, Jupiter FL

We escaped chilly DC in mid-December and settled in at Jonathan Dickinson State Park in south-eastern Florida. This is the winter Florida we think of: full of palm trees, warm sun, beaches. Unfortunately dogs are not permitted on the beaches and all the freshwater sources contain alligators, so Opie did not get many chances to get his swim on. The park has a lot of great areas for walking and miles of biking trails. There’s a newer section for RVs close to the entrance of the park with large paved sites and full hookups. Four miles further inside the park, there’s an older section right next to the Loxahatchee River where the views are nicer but the sites are older and smaller. Some of the walking trails were also located in this area so we had to drive here when Opie got bored of the trails around our campsite. You can also rent canoes, kayaks, and bikes at the camp store by the visitor’s center. It’s a nice campground and since Jupiter is a big tourist town, it’s easy to find places to eat or things to do nearby.

While at JD Park, we did hang out with a couple we met at Red Bay while our coaches were being built, and compared notes on modifications, hacks, and complaints. It was fun talking to another Phaeton 40 IH owner and seeing the experiences they were having. We also met Melinda and Erik (Pookie and the Bear) and spent a day relaxing with them. After our brief flirt with winter in Virginia, it was great to get back into our preferred “follow the sun” RV weather!

Oops!

Next we headed to Mom’s for our traditional winter visit. In Rover, we’ve been able to (just barely) fit into her driveway but R2 is four feet longer, so we knew that wouldn’t be possible. We decided to try parking on her large, empty lot alongside her house during our visit. Unfortunately, while we made it into the lot ok, we miscalculated just how R2’s impressive weight would react with Florida’s soft, sandy soil. When we turned R2’s wheels, they dug right into that soft Florida sand and got stuck good! The more we tried to get out, the more our tires dug into the sand. After some hours of digging and trying to use R2’s jacks to lift us out, we gave up and went for professional help.

Time for extraction…

Prompt Towing did a fantastic job of pulling R2 onto more solid ground. We were heavy enough that while his truck pulled us out, we pulled his big truck sideways along the yard! Thankfully, he was able to get us free and back onto solid ground.

Staying with Mom is always wonderful since Kathie can take over the dining room for her sewing, Opie can swim in her pool every day, and we are all fed non-stop! When it was time to leave, Opie flopped belly-up onto the front lawn and wouldn’t budge. We actually had to half drag, half carry him into R2!

Time to trim the trees at Hillsborough State Park

From Mom’s house, we headed to Hillsborough State Park in Thonotosassa, just north of Tampa. It’s a much older state park with some very narrow roads, cramped sites, and low hanging tree branches. It’s always a little traumatic hearing tree branches scraping our roof, especially since R2 was still so new! Here, the palm trees are edged out by willows and pine trees, giving a more rainforest feel to the campgrounds. We enjoyed the hiking trails through the park although we did see some massive alligators sunning themselves along the shores. Since we walked right by the river, Opie would regularly yank us towards the water but we steadfastly refused to let him in. I’m sure he was very confused! While at the park we met up with our friends Jeff and Sue to do some fun biking near the park and catch up. The last time we crossed paths was in Heber City, UT, and we’re still amazed and delighted how often we cross paths with friends all across the country!

After Hillsborough we headed east to Orlando. We’ve stayed at Bill Frederick Park at Turkey Lake (a city-run park) twice before and loved it. This time we found that while Rover’s 37′ length was manageable, R2’s 41′ made enough of a difference that it was very tricky navigating the campground’s twisty narrow road. When we made it to the site we’d reserved months before, there was another rig already in it! After an hour or two of discussions with the office about their error (the other rig just arrived that weekend and “the computer” put them in our site by mistake), they put us into a spare site for the night and we moved to our reserved site the next day. [Photo, top of page]

Spending the day at Epcot Center

While in Orlando we spent a day visiting Epcot Center which we hadn’t been to in a long time. It was more crowded than we expected (we try to visit off-peak) but was a fun day nonetheless. We spent most of our time walking around the World Showcase, and missed most of Future World. We did try to sample as many different cuisines (if you can call country-themed amusement park food “cuisine”) as possible, until we were stuffed. While Epcot doesn’t have a lot of rides, there are some great displays and showcases and we’ll have to set aside two full days to see it all the next time we visit Epcot.

Time for R2’s first weigh-in since we loaded him up

Next up was a short drive to Silver Springs State Park in Ocala FL. We took a slight detour to visit the Escapees Smart Weigh station in Florida to get R2 weighed for the first time with all our “stuff” in him. It looks like we’re carrying around 3,000 lbs. of cargo, including the water we had in our tanks at the time. With R2’s impressive carrying capacity, that means we still have another almost 3,000 lbs. of capacity left if needed (we’re still arguing over who gets to fill that extra space).

Silver Springs State Park, Ocala FL

We immediately loved Silver Springs State Park… it had a wonderful feel, and being in a mature pine forest meant it smelled fantastic as well. The campground was quite large, with big private sites and lots of space for dog walks, while being close to town for some stores and restaurants, with the “city” of Ocala a little further away. We only reserved a week, but wished we had booked two! We took one afternoon to rent a 2-person kayak and explore the river, spotting alligators, lots and lots of turtles, anhinga (long-necked birds), and other wildlife along the way. It was a fun and relaxing time and we highly recommend it.

Just a couple miles from the park is a public disc golf course, where we finally got to break in our new (cheap) golf discs for the first time. The course was in a bit of flux, possibly due to recent hurricane activity, which meant that some of the holes and tees were poorly marked and we got lost a couple of times looking for the next tee! We laughed off our mistakes and kept playing, getting better and better as the day went on, which was a nice experience. We also found a nice dog park nearby where Opie got to interact with other dogs for a change, and splash around in their kiddie pool to relieve some of his disappointment at not being allowed in the alligator-rich lakes and rivers.

After a short drive to west side of Ocala we settled into Rainbow Springs State Park. After being so impressed by Silver Springs (a definite “10” in our book), we found Rainbow Springs to be a bit of a letdown. The campground was very small, there wasn’t much to do, and town was much further away. The campground didn’t have much character, and we rarely saw other campers out enjoying themselves. There were a couple short trails around the campground that were nice for dog walks. During the summer, tubing down the river is a big draw at the park, despite the signs warning of alligators!

Rainbow Springs State Park

We continued slowly making our way north up I-75, this time stopping at the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park (now that’s a mouthful) north of Lake City FL. The park is named for the 1800s American songwriter and hosts the world’s largest tubular bell carillon which traditionally sounds throughout the day. Unfortunately, the carillon is currently not functioning and is in need of expensive repairs. We explored the free Stephen Foster museum at the park and learned quite a bit about Foster’s history and impact. There are many trails through the park, but during our visit most of them were closed, perhaps due to hurricane cleanup efforts.

The (inoperative) tubular bell tower at Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center

While at the park we made a new friend… Buddy! Buddy’s a stray dog who had been living in the campground all winter after being abandoned there in November. By the time we arrived, he was just starting to become trusting of people, and followed us (and other campers walking dogs) around pretty often. Most of the campers were friendly toward Buddy, though a few were clearly uncomfortable and shooed him away. By the time we were ready to leave, he was as friendly and approachable as any house pet… which unfortunately meant the park rangers decided it was time to catch and remove him! While we gave some thought to adding another dog to our home, we knew the time wasn’t right, but fortunately another RVing couple at the campground took Buddy in literally minutes before the rangers were to take him. A happy ending!

Buddy.

After a long haul across Florida’s panhandle, we arrived at Topsail Hill State Park near Destin. Last year we camped for a few days at a different state park in the area, but the two couldn’t be any more different! While Henderson Beach was secluded and quiet, Topsail Hill is a former RV resort that was absorbed by the state park. It’s a giant campground with a pool and other amenities, including full hookups. While sites aren’t as private as other state parks (and the quality of sites varies greatly), our site was excellent and we’re glad we booked two weeks at Topsail Hill. There were plenty of trails through the park for long dog walks, and the large size of the campground meant plenty of room for quick easy walks.

Destin seems to be a magnet for RVers in winter. We ran into some old friends there last year, and made a few new ones. This year there were so many RVers we knew (or met) that we were busy socializing almost every day! If you know us, that’s a strange statement to make, but it was great fun spending time with Indoor Nomads, Nealys on Wheels, RV-A-GoGo, D20 Nomads, Itinerant Life, RollingwithKC, Debbie/Pat, Dawn, and Jenny/Chris. We played lots of table top games, learned a whole bunch of new ones, ate and drank too much, and got to see D20’s hand painted geek/nerd sci-fi/gaming trailer Floki just before they upgraded to a new rig.

Even Opie had a great time here in Destin. Destin received about 36 hours of straight rain while we were there, making for some impressive size puddles on the trails. Since we didn’t let Opie into the alligator waters, he was happy to swim in the puddles instead. Plus Opie had a chance to do morning hikes with other dogs and loved the camraderie.

When our max two-week stay was up, we departed Florida and made our way to Meaher State Park in Alabama for a week of much needed introvert quiet time, as well as time to catch up on chores and hobbies. We found Meaher State Park’s campground to be nice, but very small. Strangely, there wasn’t any more to the state park beyond the campground and a boat launch. That was a problem for our dog walks… when we think state park, we think large spaces with trails to explore, but we walked Opie from one end to the other in about five minutes and then started wondering where else we could walk him. We did find another public park across the street which was somewhat larger, but that park closed at 5pm every day and required crossing four lanes of busy 60 MPH highway on foot. As a place to stop at while traveling I-10, Meaher works out great, but in the future we wouldn’t stay more than a night or two here.

Sunset at Meaher State Park

Our last state park for a little while was Bayou Segnette State Park just south of New Orleans, Louisiana. We visited New Orleans during our first year of RV life, and we stayed at a KOA west of the city (we didn’t know much about state parks yet back then). Bayou Segnette had a very large campground and we found plenty of places to walk Opie, though all were more paved walkways than trails. It was about a 20-minute drive to the French Quarter which wasn’t bad, all things considered. As an alternative, you can drive to a nearby ferry which will cross the Mississippi and drop you close to the French Quarter, but we didn’t try that method. Ben and Lanni (Indoor Nomads) joined us again and we finally got our fill of tabletop gaming, something we haven’t been able to do nearly enough of while on the road.

One of the many spontaneous music groups along the New Orleans streets at night

Since we’d done quite a bit of exploration during our first visit (WWII museum, garden district, bus tour, etc.) this time we wandered the streets, catching the sounds of music from bars, eating pralines and beignets, and enjoying the sights and sounds. It was surprisingly empty and quiet in early March… I guess everyone was still recovering from Mardi Gras!

While in New Orleans we also attempted our first Escape Room. We’ve seen many friends post about them on Facebook and weren’t quite sure what to expect… would it be lame? awesome? somewhere in the middle? We’re thrilled to report it was a lot of fun and the room we did (Escape My Room’s Jazz Parlor) was very well made. The rooms are designed for 4-6 people, and it’s best to go with friends like we did, rather than get matched up with strangers. We examined the clues in our room, put pieces of the puzzle together, and eventually discovered a secret door to an adjoining room where more of the story unfolded and more clues awaited. I won’t go into more detail here as I don’t want to spoil it for anyone else… but we do highly recommend this escape room!

We escaped!

At this point our state park tour was over… for a little while. Next up, a side-trip to Katy TX to catch up with old friends!

I’m fairly certain Opie either sends commands to me telepathically or he’s just really good at making me feel guilty. Either way, Opie successfully made the Catalina stay all about him.

Rain for us meant snow in the Catalina mountains.

Last year we spent a lot of time in Tucson sight-seeing which is a far cry from our stay this year. Honestly after our record-breaking drives to get to AZ, the snow, and the cold, we just wanted to soak in the AZ sun and thaw out. We do have friends in Tucson so we spent a lot of time hanging out with them (and their internet and laundry machines). It’s great since they have the same taste in games as us, so we played a lot of silly cards games like Munchkin, Exploding Kittens, and Ninja Burger. Meeting new friends on the road is a lot of fun, but hanging out with friends we’ve known for almost 20 years is priceless.

A friendly game of Munchkin with friends.

When we weren’t socializing, we spent a lot of time hiking/strolling/ambling through Catalina State Park. The park borders the Bighorn Sheep Management Area/Coronado National Forest. Since they are trying to reintroduce Bighorn Sheep, dogs are not allowed on those hiking trails. However there are a lot of other great hiking areas within Catalina SP. I know the little stinker knew it too so when I wasn’t busy, I’d see Opie sitting very still watching me intently while projecting thoughts of hiking into my brain.

Opie loves a nice hike.

Due to the cooler weather the prairie dogs stayed indoors but that didn’t stop Opie from trying to entice them out. He’d check out all the holes and even tried to help renovate and expand the entrance to one of them.

You don’t mind if I invite myself in, do you?

Opie and I really enjoyed strolling Canyon Loop Trail, a relatively flat easy hike through the foothills. It’s an easy 4 miles roundtrip from the campground (the trail itself is only about 2.3 miles). The trail does cross a large wash multiples times. The first time we walked the trail, there was some water flowing through the wash which required stone-stepping to cross each time. The second time we walked the trail, Tucson had received a full day of rain therefore the water was a lot higher. I made it across the first crossing with dry feet. The second crossing I lost my footing and got slightly soggy feet. At the third crossing, all the stepping-stones in the middle of the creek were submerged. Since we were past the halfway point, I just shrugged and got my feet wet (even more). Of course Opie loved each water crossing and didn’t bother using any rocks. The last crossing is through a very large sandy (no rocks) wash area. There was no avoiding the water here. This time the water made it to my calves and gleefully filled up my socks and shoes. Unfortunately for Opie, that was the last time we walked that trail!

One step at a time…

We also took a stroll up the 50-year trail which follows a ridgetop for a few miles. We got a nice view of the campgrounds from the trail and saw a lot of the AZ vegetation here. We had to be extra careful that Opie lifted his leg high enough whenever he decided to pee on a sharp plant! The Bridle Trail took us right by the equestrian center. While Opie barked his excitement at the horses he saw, they just gave him the stink eye and watched him pass. We even met some other dog lovers while outside with Opie. They have a cute little chow-mix named Pepper and they’ve been full-timing since October. It was nice to meet new people and hopefully we’ll see them on the road again.

Taking a break on the 50-year trail.

Due to El Nino, we did get a fair bit of rain (and a little bit of snow) while at Catalina… last year we never saw a drop. Unfortunately that meant our campsite became quite flooded. While I got soggy socks and grumbled, Opie looked at the brighter side of things and enjoyed soaking in his private pool until we moved to a drier campsite.

Opie’s private swimmin’ hole.

Our 11 day stop in Catalina went by way too quickly so Mike promised the next time we’re here, he’ll just make the maximum 14 day reservation to give all of us even more time to enjoy the area (and Opie to guilt me into more hikes).

A drone’s-eye view of the campground.

With such a long visit with East Coast family near the end of the year, we originally thought of either spending the winter in FL or meandering across the south and skipping the Quartzsite AZ gathering in January since that would require a lot of driving in a short amount of time.

We didn’t want to spend winter in FL for a couple of reasons. First, it’s a huge snowbird destination which makes it difficult to find reasonably priced RV parks in the winter. Second, there are a lot of things to do (in our opinion) on the west coast and we didn’t want to wait until March/April before heading west. Surprisingly much of the South does get cold during the winter, so meandering through the southern states wouldn’t mesh well with our distaste for colder weather.

Mike practicing his drone piloting skills.

After talking about it, we decided to just push hard to get over to AZ in two weeks. Usually we drive no more than 250 miles, then stay in one place for a week or longer. For our drive to AZ, we threw all that completely out the window. We decided to break the trip into two parts: 3 days of driving from southern FL to Dallas TX (1,200 miles), take a week off, then 3 days of driving from Dallas to Tucson AZ (1,000 miles). Since we hadn’t done this kind of extreme driving in Rover before, we did a practice run from GA to FL to make sure we could handle it. At 420 miles and 7.5 hours of driving, we knew if we couldn’t manage it, we would have to go to Plan B (after we made up a plan B) to get to AZ. Our practice drive went quite smoothly and we discovered a few helpful tips. Swapping drivers every two hours is perfect for us. It’s long enough to get pretty far but not overload on driving while the passenger has time to relax (or nap in my case). While driving the interstate is boring, it’s easy and not as stressful or tiring as driving US highways. Lastly, Opie really needs Dramamine to help him relax/sleep through the drives without getting motion sick.

Our first overnight stay at a Walmart.

We did have our first ever overnight Walmart camping during the first leg of our journey. We checked-in with the store manager, found the right area to park in, confirmed we could open our bedroom slide, did our grocery shopping, and headed out the next morning. It’s definitely not like staying at a campground, but it’s only one night, close to the interstate, and free. If we needed a place to park for one night, we’d do it again. OvernightRVparking.com is a great resource to help find free overnight parking spots. It is a paid site, but worth it if you need to find free places to park. Walmart, Cracker Barrel, Cabela, and Camping World are some of the places that may let you dry camp for free in their parking lots but not all will allow it so calling in advance or using the site to double-check is always a good idea.

Last year at this time, we were further south in TX (Austin, Big Bend and Fort Davis) and were pleasantly surprised by the TX drivers on the roads… safe and courteous. When we made it to Dallas, we expected the same type of drivers, but we were sadly sadly mistaken. Many will cut you off, randomly break traffic rules: blow through a VERY red light to get in front of the cars, follow ambulances on the emergency lanes/shoulders, and forget they have turn signals. I think we both decided to keep our driving in Dallas to a minimum to keep our sanity (and our car dent-free).

Six Flags Over Texas, our last roller coasters for a while.

While in Dallas, we hit our last Six Flags for the year. That makes a total of eight different Six Flags parks on one season Pass! A great way to check out roller coasters but I think we’re definitely coaster’d out now. If we happen to be near an awesome coaster during our travels in 2016, we might try it, but otherwise 2016 will be coaster-free.

One of the many flooded campsites at Loyd Park.

Most of our Dallas stay was walking through our (mostly) flooded campground, playing with Mike’s new drone, and girding our loins for the next leg of our journey west. Due to heavy rains this fall, much of the county park campground was underwater so the trails and lake beach were inaccessible. We did make it out to see the new Star Wars movie, having remained spoiler-free since it opened the week before.

above: one of our first drone videos, checking out our flooded campground

Thank goodness Mike plans obsessively. Watching the weather, he noticed that Winter Storm Goliath was going to hit Odessa, TX on Sunday, at the same time we were driving there for our next overnight stop. If we instead hunkered down in Dallas for a couple extra days, we would get a LOT of rain (in a flooded campground, that could be bad news) from the storm. If we left Dallas a day early, we could try to drive past Odessa and wait out the storm further west (with less snow) but we might hit a lot of rain and wind during the drive. We chose the latter option, left Dallas a day early and drove 510 miles (our longest drive ever in Rover) to Van Horn, TX.

Glad we weren’t driving today!

By the time we arrived the temperature had dropped from 70 to 35 degrees. Freezing rain and snow started, wind increased, and the campground power went out. We pulled in our big slide to conserve heat, turned off all extraneous circuits, turned on the propane heat and hunkered in the covers for the 20-degree night. Since the next day’s forecast called for snow, we stayed at the campground to wait it out. The campground did recover electricity that morning, and since the wind died down we were able to open the living room slide and nest comfortably watching it snow lightly for most of the day. We checked the news and saw that a tornado had touched down in Dallas about 12 miles away from the campground we were at, and another one completely destroyed a campground on the north side of Dallas. Living in an RV, we really really don’t like tornadoes! Odessa had gotten a lot of snow, so given the options, we made the best choice to weather the storm.

The next morning after the storm had passed we headed out of Van Horn TX, and drove an easy 230 miles to Deming NM, through some beautiful snowy mountain scenery. Finally, the next day we drove our final 230 miles and made it to one of our favorite campgrounds, Catalina State Park in Tucson AZ, where I am now sitting outside in a t-shirt soaking up the sun and thankful that the past few days are now simply memories.

Our awesome view for the next 9 days at Catalina State Park

Marshmallow time at the campfire!

We decided to keep things relatively low key during our stay, enjoying the peace and quiet rather than packing the days with sight-seeing. The campground and the adjoining county park were large enough that we could take Opie for very long walks, and the gigantic fenced dog park (an easy walk from the campground) was great for Max to relax in.

The campground also has a single hiking trail which is about a three-mile loop and a pretty steep climb. We took Opie on the trail twice in an attempt to tire him out, but even adding some ball playing at the dog park before and after the hike, he still wanted more. That dog has some endurance!

The view from Eagle Rock during our hike in El Chorro Regional Park.

On our way back from our hike the trail took us right past a herd of cows. Being “city folk” and not quite sure what to expect (especially since Opie was with us), we tried to give them as wide a berth as possible. The largest of the bunch kept its eyes on us the entire time, looking pretty intimidating. Maybe it knew what we had for dinner the night before (hint: it wasn’t chicken).

Our hike took us past this herd, one of whom gave us the stink eye the entire time.

We had heard that San Luis Obispo features a weekly farmer’s market and street festival on Thursday evenings at 6pm, so we of course went to check it out. The city closes off a few blocks for the event, and there were dozens of restaurants with tents set up selling everything from BBQ to cinnamon rolls. There were almost as many market stands selling fresh fruit and vegetables, but the offerings were dominated by strawberries:

Strawberries, strawberries, everywhere!

Kathie did the shopping and says the strawberries were among the best she’s ever had. Since we were in town for a week-and-a-half, I knew we’d be going back the next week for more! There wasn’t a wide selection of other fruits and vegetables, but everything we did buy was excellent.

Our take from the farmer’s market.

We managed to get out of SLO (as the locals like to call San Luis Obispo) a couple times. Once we visited Avila Beach, which had some nice shops and restaurants (see photo at the top of this page). We had lunch at Custom House, a nice restaurant that allowed Opie out on the patio with us—they even brought him a dog bowl with fresh water.

The cute waterfront shops along Avila Beach.

There was also a dog beach nearby where Opie could get his feet wet while we walked along the shore watching the fog roll in, eventually obscuring the entire town. We were surprised to see quite a few large motorhomes parked along the side of the road, many with people relaxing in their lounge chairs under their awnings. Apparently RV parking is allowed, and there are even some overnight RV spots you can pay to park in right along the beach road.

Strolling along the dog section of Avila Beach.

We also took a day to visit nearby Morro Bay. A defining feature of the area is Morro Rock, a volcanic plug. Wikipedia will tell you that it is “composed of dacite, a felsic extrusive rock, intermediate in composition between andesite and rhyolite, and is a member of the igneous family.” We’ll tell you that it’s BIG, and looks out of place all alone on the beach. The beach is supposed to be a great place for surfing, and we saw quite a few surfers catching some waves during our visit. We had an excellent lunch at a nearby seafood restaurant, satisfying Kathie’s urge (we don’t eat seafood often).

Morro Rock, at the entrance to Morro Bay Harbor.

We really enjoyed our stay at SLO, and it’s someplace we’ll probably visit again to do more exploration of the nearby areas.

Following up on our 2014 Year In Review post, we want to also share our favorite campgrounds of 2014. Since we had never been RVing before buying Rover, we didn’t really know what to expect out of campgrounds and RV parks. As we’ve stayed in more and more places, our preferences have evolved and become clearer. When we were getting started we tended to favor commercial RV parks with full water, sewer, and electric hookups. Today, we much prefer county and state parks, even if sewer (or sometimes water) is not available. We’re still pretty dependent on electric hookups, but if we add solar panels in the future, even that may change.

Kathie and I both looked through the list of campgrounds we stayed at in 2014 and made our list of favorites. Happily, we created nearly identical lists! And not surprisingly, all our top campgrounds were county or state parks. Here, in chronological order, are our top picks of 2014:

Lake Fairfax County Park, Reston Virginia (June and August)

Lake Fairfax Park, Reston VA

This heavily wooded county park has huge campsites, plenty of trails to walk the dogs on, and a lake for them to swim in. Campsites have electric service only, with a water station and dump station in the campground. Lake Fairfax has the best showers of all the parks we’ve tried: hot, high pressure, and spacious. It is just a mile or two from shopping, restaurants, and the Washington DC Metrorail service. Perhaps the most amazing thing about the campground is that we lived and worked in Reston for 16 years, visiting Lake Fairfax Park many times, and never knew there was an RV park tucked away inside! $45/night, 50-amp electric.

Skidaway Island State Park, Savannah Georgia (September)

Skidaway Island State Park, Savannah GA. (Stock photo)

I forgot to take photos inside Skidaway Island Park, so above is a stock photo from the Skidaway Island web site. Hopefully we’ll have a chance to return someday and take a photo of Rover to update this page! The campground offers some of the largest campsites we’ve seen, as well as having water and sewer hookups at many of the campsites, which is very rare for a state park. There are several long walking trails, but minimal river access for the dogs to go swimming at. It’s a bit of a drive to get into Savannah, but manageable. $40/night, 50-amp electric, water, sewer.

Bill Frederick City Park, Orlando Florida (October)

Bill Frederick Park, Orlando FL

Bill Frederick Park in Orlando was a fantastic home base for us during our visits to Universal Studios and Disney World. It offers large, wooded campsites with full hookups and inexpensive rates, as well as plenty of places to walk the dogs. The park sits right on a lake but due to alligators, we decided not to let the dogs try swimming. No campfires are allowed, and there are some parts of the park where dogs are not allowed, but that wasn’t really a problem for us considering how large the rest of the park is. $23/night, 50-amp electric, water, sewer.

Davis Mountains State Park, Fort Davis Texas (December)

Like our other favorite campgrounds, Davis Mountains State Park in Texas has very spacious sites, plenty of trails to hike with the dogs, full hookups, and great scenery. The staff was extremely friendly and helpful to us. The biggest drawback for Davis is that the nearby mountains block most of the AT&T and Verizon cell signal from reaching the park. With our cell booster antenna on Rover’s roof, we were just able to get an adequate signal, but without the booster we had nothing. The park does offer free WiFi (if your site is in range of one of their transmitters), but the speeds are pretty slow. $25/night, 50-amp electric, water, sewer.

Honorable Mention: Ocean Lakes Family Campground, Myrtle Beach South Carolina (September)

Ocean Lakes Family Campground, Myrtle Beach SC.

Ocean Lakes is the only commercial RV park that made it on our list. It’s one of the largest campgrounds in the U.S., with about 900 campsites for RVs and 2,500 lease sites for mobile homes, condos, etc. While it is a lot more crowded and cramped than the county and state parks we’ve been to, it also has over a mile of beachfront (dog-friendly, at least during the off-peak season when we visited) and 300 acres of roads to walk with the dogs. The free WiFi was fast and there’s plenty to see and do nearby. Of course, beachfront resort locations don’t come cheap! $55-$90/night, 50-amp electric, water, sewer.

Final Thoughts

Now that we’ve been doing this for a while, we’ve realized that the most important factor for us when choosing a campground or RV park is how dog-friendly the park and its local vicinity are. For example, national parks may be beautiful, but most don’t allow dogs on any trails. Some commercial RV parks claim to be dog friendly, but don’t allow you to walk dogs anywhere inside the park except for one small dog area. Others may not have much dog walking space inside the park, but have great trails just outside the park making them a viable option.

Apart from dog-friendliness, we really prefer campgrounds that are surrounded by nature, with some space between campsites. Since most state/county parks don’t have sewer, it’s also important that the park has good showers to avoid filling our grey tank too quickly. Many commercial RV parks have sites so small that one RV’s awning is almost touching the next RV’s slide-out room. A lot of the RV Resorts have plenty of great amenities like social activities, pool, laundry facilities, game room but we’ve found that we rarely (if ever) take advantage of them so it’s not worth it for us. We also prefer locations where people visit for a short time to camp and have fun. Too many RV parks and campgrounds have many “full time” residents who have been in the same site for months, or even years. These parks have a very different vibe than recreational campgrounds which have a 14-day or 28-day camping limit.

It’s February of 2015 now, and so far two of the campgrounds we’ve stayed at in 2015 (both in Arizona, one state park and one county park) have proved to contenders for our all-time favorites. We’ll write up a “best of 2015” post a year from now and see where they stand!

We were surprised to find that Thanksgiving week is a big camping week, at least here in Texas. Our Houston stay was cut down to just a day due to unavailability of RV park sites after Monday, and none of the RV parks in Austin had availability. Fortunately, for our day in Houston we got to visit with an old friend from Virginia who had moved to Houston a couple years back. As for Austin, we found a campground about 30 minutes south in San Marcos that had one campsite left, so we booked it for the week, figuring we’d move closer to Austin after the holiday.

During our day in Houston, our elder dog Max took unexpectedly ill. He was very lethargic and wouldn’t get up, and more worrying, he refused to eat or drink for probably the first time in his 12+ years of life. Max has always been an extraordinarily healthy dog. After an after-hours trip to the emergency vet in Houston, exams, blood tests, and the following day a trip to an animal hospital in Austin (since we had to leave the full RV Park in Houston), his x-ray and ultrasound showed a lot of fluid both in and around his lungs: Max had pneumonia.

Max the dog, on the road to recovery!

Due to his deteriorating state and his not eating or drinking, we had to leave him overnight and the next day to spend the night on an I.V. along with some antibiotics. We were able to take him home the next evening, but back the following day for more treatments. Fortunately, the antibiotics did their job and within about 10 days Max was 90% back to his old self (and still improving), and a follow-up x-ray came back clean. As an aside, we can’t say enough good things about South Park Animal Hospital in Austin—they were fantastic!

During all this, Thanksgiving came and went. Thanksgiving (and Christmas) have always been Kathie’s day to cook for the whole extended family (with lots of help, of course), so this year was quite a change for us, being away from family, and having a tiny kitchen. Instead, we found a nice restaurant in San Marcos (Palmer’s) that offered a complete Thanksgiving buffet dinner all afternoon. So, we had our turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, bread, cranberry sauce, and more, but without all the work, and no clean-up! Of course it wasn’t quite as good as home-cooked, but we weren’t complaining!

It may not be home made Thanksgiving dinner, but it was tasty, and nothing to clean up!

Once Max started improving, we looked into campgrounds closer to Austin, but we found that we rather liked where we were in San Marcos at Pecan Park Riverside RV. It was quiet, spacious, very inexpensive… and we were already there. There’s something to be said for inertia! Instead of packing up and driving someplace new, we decided to stay put for a while. We were in a brand new section of the RV Park, so once the Thanksgiving campers cleared out, we had the place almost to ourselves.

The view out our living room window… at an almost empty RV park.

Since we’re traveling all over the country and want to ride as many roller coasters as is feasible, last month we bought 2015 Six Flags Gold Season Passes when they were on sale. For less than the price of two admission tickets, a gold season pass gets us into all Six Flags parks for free for the remainder of 2014 and all of 2015, and gets us free parking at all parks. Parking alone costs about $20 at each parks, this is a deal where we’ll save a lot of money and have a lot of fun!

About an hour south of San Marcos is San Antonio, home to Fiesta Texas, one of the 12 Six Flags amusement parks in the U.S. Since it’s winter now, the park is only open on weekends, from 4pm to 9pm, so we took a drive there one Saturday after we were comfortable leaving Max alone for a few hours. We arrived when the park opened, and it was pretty deserted! By the time we left at 7pm though, it was more crowded and full of activity. We were pleasantly surprised by the quality and fun-factor of the coasters we rode. The three that stuck with us, and which we look forward to riding again some day are Iron Rattler, Goliath, and Boomerang. By late winter we should be in southern California, and we’ll be sure to visit Magic Mountain (especially since it’s free free free with our passes!).

Fiesta Texas… we didn’t have the highest expectations, but came away pleasantly surprised.

Also once Thanksgiving was over, we decided that even though we no longer live in a big house, we should still have a Christmas tree. Since the weather here has been in the 60s and 70s, I think the tree is even more important as a reminder us that it’s actually winter! We went shopping and chose the second-smallest artificial tree we found (another first for us—all our trees before have been real ones that need water and smell like pine), one string of lights, and one pack of miniature ornaments. The tree fits perfectly on Rover’s dashboard and is like a little reminder of home.

It may not be big, but it does the job!

We used the rest of our time in San Marcos to catch up on our hobbies (sewing and baking for Kathie, programming for Mike), see a couple movies (Interstellar and Big Hero 6), get some minor work done on Rover, get Red waxed, replenish our supplies at Costco and the supermarket, give Max a bath, and generally relax. We never actually made it into Austin (except to the animal hospital), instead opting to take it easy. We’ll keep Austin on our list for next year!

First Kathie made coffee cake, then cinnamon rolls!