Myakka River State Park

Pulled into our Pull-thru site at Myakka River State Park on Weds. January 9th after an uneventful  105 mile drive from Ortona South. We like those short drive days and those easy pull-thru campsites. The only problem is they don't help me with my backing skills. Oh well there will be plenty of back-in sites in the near future.


One of the oldest and largest Myakka River State Park is a beautiful place with lots of hiking, biking and wildlife. We hiked one trail that has a canopy walk and 75 ft. lookout tower. We saw deer, wild hogs, birds and lots and lots of alligators. We also hiked into a place called Deep Hole. It is a preserve and you have to get a permit from the ranger to go back there. Its about a 5 mile round trip that is well worth the effort. When we arrived we saw over a hundred alligators in this one area.

Our stay in Myakka was really layed back and we put lots of miles on our bikes and shoes. With the full hookups and nice spacing between sites Im sure this will be on our return list.

Ortona South

We pulled in to Ortona South Campground on December 28th after a 200 mile drive from the Keys. We landed in Site 19 which was reserved about six months earlier. This is a Corp of Engineers Park that is very clean with concrete pads and a covered picnic table. This is in a pretty remote area on the Okeechobee waterway with a lock and dam  to control water flow and boat traffic. Our spot was across the road from the water and out are back was a few palms and a grass field.

At first I wasn't sure I was going to like it here after just leaving our most wonderful site on the Atlantic at the Curry Hammock State Park, I decide not to draw any quick conclusions and give it some time.

We decided this would be a good time to do some cleaning and maintenance and so we washed everything down to get that salt residue off and I took the hitch apart and cleaned and lubed it.

As time went on here we really started to appreciate the simplicity and laid back feeling of this place. Also this was probably the friendliest  campground that we had ever been to. We met a lot of really nice people and listened and learned from some seasoned fulltimers with 15 yrs on the road!

And wildlife, we saw a family of otters, turtles, an armadillo and I caught 3 really beautiful snook.

After 12 days of camping here I would say I would most definitely return here.

FLORIDA KEYS

We landed in the Florida Keys on December 14th.  Our drive down went well no major problems, actually we were a bit concerned because we were ahead of schedule. There is no place really to park and wait but we didn't have to because our site was open and ready when we arrived.  This park was small and very clean. Our site was 15 and we backed into it without much problem.  We are located right next to the walkway to the beach.  Our view from our rig was priceless.... we could watch the sun come up out the window over the kitchen table and watch the sun set out the windows in the back. Our backyard was the ocean. Now that's awesome. The paved bike path was located just across the street from the park and you could ride it into town.. We could launch our kayaks from the beach but you just wanted to make sure you didn't launch or return during low tide. That could make it a bit difficult.  The campground was very friendly and the weather was sunny and warm with a nice breeze.

We did some fishing and they had lots of places to kayak. We even went through the mangroves. We also saw lots of critters. There were big iguanas that pranced through the campground and you would see them hanging in the mangroves while kayaking.

 We had a visitor, our youngest son Justin came down to spend Christmas week with us, well he actually left to go home on Christmas day. We all hung out and fished quite a bit from the shore,bridges,kayaks and we did a party boat trip on the Marathon Lady. The fishing was good and we put a lot of fish in the freezer.

We took some trips out to check on the other state parks and rv parks for next year.  We really liked the Bahia Honda state park, the Long Key park was a bit small we thought. We also looked at a RV park but it was kind of expensive.  We are thinking we might want to come back next year.  We went to a few restaurants but we liked the The Sunset Grill. Justin took us out to eat for our birthdays and that was a really nice night. Our food was good and the service was better.

 Our time here in the Keys went really fast...we weren't really ready to pull out on the 28th but our 2 week limit was up. We will be returning next winter!