N. W. FLORIDA & THE PANHANDLE

We picked the West Coast and Panhandle for our exit route out of Florida and back to Ohio.

 



Stopping to see family and friends along the way in Cape Coral, Sarasota and St. Petersburg.

 

This is a actually a "sunrise" over the Caloosahatchee River from our good friend's Kathy and Richard De Iorio's house on Cape Coral...We just wanted to show that we do sometimes get up early enough to see the sun come up. 

One of the new places to for us was Linger Lodge and RV Park that boast to have one of the top 5 weirdest restaurants in America...as told by Al Roker of the Today Show and according to "Forbes Magazine" one of the 10 most unusual restaurants in the world. With lots of Gator, Frog legs and anything else they can find to cook from the surrounding lakes, streams, fields and ocean. Our campsite was right on a little stream where we watched some birds do all the fishing.

Then we stopped at a "now" favorite of ours...the Fort De Soto County Park for a couple of days...our second stay this trip. This is a great spot for us because its close to friends and we camp right next to the water. Our campsite this time was under a huge Hibiscus Tree and our timing was perfect with a cool evening and a little breeze off the Gulf our campsite had more than 300 giant flower peddles all over everything...so we just had to have a little fun with it. 

    

We then moved up into the Panhandle area to stay at three state parks that we hadn't stayed at before. All three had good beach access to some of the most beautiful "sugar.. white.. sand.." beaches anywhere! With our favorite being Henderson Beach State Park, but not because of the beach, because it was right near the great little town of Destin with all the great amenities of a popular resort area.

 

Unfortunately not all of our adventures are pleasant...Fortunately Shannon Edwards with Goodyear Tire in Destin got us back on the road in about an hour 

...boy did that make a large "BANG" when we hit something.  

While staying at St. Joseph Peninsula S. P. we heard about this little "hole in the wall" restaurant...and went to the Indian Pass Raw Bar where we watched our seafood steamed behind the bar and helped ourselves to the self serve beverage cooler which was on the Honor System...Great place near Port St. Joe.  



And of course beautiful sunsets!



 

We also spent a little time at this National Park with more great beach, just before we cross into Alabama.

The Panhandle was a great finish to this years trip (well not quite the finish being still 900 miles from home) but it was time to get back to Ohio. So this is when we change from causally traveling along...to covering a lot of ground in a couple days...{actually all the ground in two days}...

Also we need to give a special thanks to the guys at WILSON'S AUTOMOTIVE in Foley Alabama for squeezing us in for an oil change before hitting the long road home. It's hard enough to find good service along the way when traveling especially when it's in an RV. I would trust Wilson's and another similar company to do any mechanical or tire repair on our RV or Jeep.
That other company was MARTIN'S GARAGE AND TIRE CENTER at 5188 Palm Beach Blvd. in Fort Myers (239) 693-5959. They took the time to do a diagnostics on our two week old (to us) Jeep when the warning light came on...nothing found...re-set...and nothing since...
...also no charge!      

This "our sixth" year was one of the best for weather because as we moved around we missed any bad weather and had very few cool days. We also enjoyed the convince of having our new "to us" jeep along so we could extend our exploring options.

As you can see we got home just in time for the last snow fall of the season so maybe next year we will "casual travel" until May before returning back to Toledo.



....Speaking of next year...leaving at the end of September... it's back to the South West by way of the Gulf Coast and through Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.


Until then,

  LIVE
 LAUGH
  LOVE
SanTony