Coachmen Beyond 22RB

We departed Key West yesterday.

Except for the heat and humidity we had a good time.  Everyone was saying that it was unusually hot while we there, and it was hot. 

But we still enjoyed ourselves.  We visited the Mel Fisher museum, that was very interesting. We learned about Mel and what his life was like.  We spent a day on the beach at Truman Annex, one of our favorite places.  We enjoyed some great meals.  Our first time at Charlie Mac's for BBQ and that was really good.

We had breakfast at Breakfast Club Two, our favorite place to eat breakfast when in Key West.

We visited Hogfish Bar and Grill on Stock Island and the was great, we will back there again for sure!

The action on Duval Street was crazy with Fantasy Fest going on, really some great people watching.  

We had a great time, but onward we go, back to Homestead for a couple of days and then northward for some cooler places to visit.

Spent most of the day at the beach at Truman Annex

It's a great place to relax by the water.  Plenty of birds there to amuse me, I like watching them.  The sky was real cloudy so not a good sunset.

Later we took a bicycle ride to the Bahama Village to check out the Goombay festival.

Just a day getting settled in.

We arrived at the campground yesterday after the office closed, so today we went over to the campground office at Sigsbee and checked in.  Did a little shopping at the exchange and drive around Key West and Stock Island a little. 

Later when the sun went down we rode our bicycles around Old Town a little.

It is really hot here right now!  It's 10 on and since we are dry camping we can't run any AC.  That said, it's 86 degrees in the RV right now.

It's hot here!

Made it to Key West!!!!

Made it to Key West at 3:40pm, and it is starting to feel great here.  There have been some big changes at Trumbo FamCamp where we stay.  I will post a video tommorow showing the changes, over 50 less camping sites is probably the biggest change. 

We picked a spot in the overflow, we are the only people in the overflow so far and we like the quiet.  The main campground has only about 25 RVs there, but the campground has only been open a couple of weeks. 

Will be in Key West tomorrow!

We spent two nights in Homestead with my sister and brother in law.  We will leave here in the morning and be in Key West late afternoon.  There are a couple of places we want to stop at on the way down, one is the Bucktooth Rooster for lunch.

Sanibel Lighthouse

We just briefly stopped by the lighthouse while we're were on Sanibel Island.

Made it to Fort Myers

We spent last night at the Cracker Barrel in Kissimmee, we really like staying at them.  They are usually quiet during the night, and we start the day with a great breakfast.

This morning we enjoyed breakfast with some friends who are staying at Lake Magic RV park.  After breakfast we left Cracker Barrel and stopped at their campsite.

We had a pretty simple trip to Fort Myers, we did drive through the city of Lake Placid.  We enjoy looking at the murals throughout the city.

Back on the road and at 8pm we are parked for the night at guess where, the Cracker Barrel.

Made it to Kissimmee FL

We made a few stops along the way, first stop at Sunshine RV in Gainesville FL.  We like stopping there, they usually have a great selection of Class B motorhomes and today they had a great inventory to look at.

From there we headed to Cross Creek to tour Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings State Park.

https://www.floridastateparks.org/parks-and-trails/marjorie-kinnan-rawlings-historic-state-park

Her old home is well preserved, and for only $3 for a guided tour is a deal.

Our next stop was Micanopy FL, every time we are passing by here we have to stop.  A couple of places to grab a bite and some unusual stores to shop in.  I grabbed a piece of chocolate pecan pie and will enjoy it later tonight.

Then back behind the wheel toward Kissimmee for our second night in the road to Key West.

Day 1 of our trip to Key West completed

After telling our children good-bye we set out on the road south.  Traffic through Atlanta was not bad, it was about noon on a weekday.  We jumped off I-75 at the Arabi exit, never visited Arabi and thought we would this trip.  From there we continued with our GPS set to avoid highways.  It added  about 2 1/2 hours to the trip but the interstate gets boring.

We made it to Cracker Barrel in Lake City just before they closed, so we will have breakfast in the morning before continuing on.

Getting ready for Key West!

We made reservations for a month in Key West several weeks ago.  We will be staying at Trumbo Point Family Camp on the USCG/Navy base, this will be our third winter season there.    We prefer Trumbo over Sigsbee on Dredgers Key because it is a shorter walk to Old Town which makes it nice for us.  We usually ride our bikes to get around, Key West is very bike friendly and it's much easier to park a bike than a car.

Our RV has been in the shop having some issues taken care of, seems to be very common for many RV'ers sadly.  This last shop visit we finally had the Dometic 3 way refrigerator replaced, the propane regulator replaced and the sofa/bed worked on.

I picked up our RV Thursday and visited the Mercedes dealer Friday to have the engine oil changed.  After that was completed I drove home so I can prepare the RV for leaving the following Friday.  I changed to oil in the propane generator and filled the freshwater system with a bleach/water ratio to sanitize the freshwater system.  I have a 30 gallon freshwater tank, so that is 1/2 cup of bleach in a full tank.

Now we will be giving the RV a complete cleaning inside and out prior to loading it up for our trip.

Friday will be here soon!