Million Dollar View

Hopefully you will see that title again, as it is one of the primary reasons we chose the particular fifth-wheel that we did. It has a nice big back window and we thought that we would love to be able to back our home into a parking spot and throw open the curtains to a view of the ocean, or the countryside, or the city, or whatever. The idea that the view can change when you're mobile is appealing to us and so far it has proven to be very cool.

We decided on St. Augustine for a couple of nights as our "now-where-do-we-go" first stop in Florida. Both Robin and I have been there before, but this would be a chance to do some hand-in-hand street exploring and act as tourists for a while. I drove I-10 eastbound and Robin navigated and researched places to put the 5'er (now you're getting into the lingo) in for the night. Found a place just south of St. Augustine call 'Bryn Mawr" RV resort. Sounded good, the 'view rating' was high and they had a spot we could back into facing ocean-side. OK, cool. :)

Well, it was indeed an idyllic spot, and we got to park with a view of .. umm .. the sand dunes (they had to build them for hurricane protection) but we could sneak a small peak at the surf from our window and it was 50 feet from our door to the boardwalk that ran out the the beach. OK... it'll do :)

This was probably my tightest parking spot to date, and took a while to wiggle the trailer into place without relocating the neighbor's car or the electric post and water stanchion or the gazebo next to the pad. Robin is a great spotter and it all worked well (and helped prepare for the next challenge which I will mention in the next post). So... off to the beach; we got a little rain but we made it to the ocean.

This is why we are moving to Florida in the first place: to get to the water ... and we made it! We checked some data and then headed back to the beach to see if we could see the moon rise for us, but alas it was cloudy out to the east and all we could see was a cream colored glow spilling through the tops of the clouds. Good enough ... we'll take it!

Happily installed in our camping spot, we took the truck into St. Augustine the next day (Saturday 10/18) and spent most of day poking around the Estes-Park-tourist-zone-like setting. We explored back streets and shops and walked along the waterfront and had lunch at a great little cafe. Then we walked some more, wandered around the old Fort (built in like 1565, if I remember) and milled among the other tourists, eventually taking the long way back to the campsite and stopping for some repair parts at Home Depot along the way.

Sunnday morning we awoke, stowed away what we'd drug out and hooked up to the truck. We pulled out (guess when) and began the not-so-long trip to Orlando and our next stop; the rugged back country camp ground called Fort Wilderness. It was time to take a break from our travels and spend a few days unwinding and escaping. Last year we had bid for a week of vacation time around this time, and now we were going to spend some of it running around with Mickey and being goofy.