Our Road Trips

6/4/16 6/1-4/2016

Our Grandson Tyler decided he needed a new car before we left, as I have agreed to be a co-signer on his loan. He found a pretty good deal and started the process. We spent most of the day on May 31 dealing with a loan officer who was trying to figure out what she was doing and the tag office and other craziness. But we got it handled and Tyler is the proud owner of a 2006 Infinity G35 with less than 50K miles. Best wishes to Tyler with the new car...Kaylee is going to inherit his current car when she gets her license.

We got our stuff loaded up and on June 1 we headed north about noon. It is only a 2 hour drive to our first stop, but like every place else, humans tend to overlook the places closest to home. Neither of us have been to Dunellon or Rainbow Springs State Park, so the drive through the country is like a new adventure. I should add that we have lost another friend who died in his sleep on Monday, May 30. They announced the date & time for a memorial which is going to be a minor conflict, as we have to deal with check-out time at Rainbow Springs and a drive to our next stop on June 3rd. While checking in, we asked for some slack on check-out time, but they were not accommodating at all. We spent the next day visiting 5 new to us State Parks in the area, enjoying learning about Florida's history & beauty. There are 20 State Parks with springs in the parks, and all of these have been gushing water for a very long. There are 33 First Magnitude Springs in Florida and the Rainbow Springs, one of the largest, gushes 410 million gallons of crystal clear 72 degree water every day...pretty impressive. An article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_springs_in_Florida The springs are beautiful. We are going to check them all out before we are done.

So yesterday, we had quite a day: First thing in the morning, we were in Rainbow Springs State Park at the campground near Dunellon, Fl. We pulled our camper off our site at their insistence and parked it in a waiting area, started the generator and made the 1.5 hour drive with our car to First Baptist Orlando for the Memorial Service for our colleague & friend Randy Tuten. What a nice service, lots of friends there and a very nice turnout, all brought together to say goodbye to our friend. After the service, we retraced our route to Rainbow Springs, changed clothes, ate a sandwich, hooked up the car, and then booked our cruise for next Feb with Joe Bonamassa, Beth Hart, Greg Allman and others. At about 3 pm, we set out for our next stop, St George Island State Park, 4+ hours away in the Florida Panhandle. We arrived about 715 pm and are set up here until Monday morning, when we will move west again. It has been a long day, but a very interesting day. The drive from Rainbow Springs to SGI State Park was very peaceful, beautiful & stress free.

Our 2 days here at St. George Island has been nice & laid back...never even put out the awning. Yesterday, we slept in and then took a ride to Port St Joe so we could get cell service. Barb talked to Directv about local channels, mostly for naught. We stopped in Apalachicola at Up The Creek for lunch and I had some very fresh, very tasty oysters and we sat overlooking Apalachicola for an hour or so. Then we stopped at Oyster City Brewing for a beer, sitting in downtown Apalachicola watching a Saturday afternoon go by. We made our way back and I spent 2+ hours on a chat with Directv, again regarding local channels. We ended up with local TV from LA, which we can get with our dish all summer. Then we drove the 5 miles to Harry A's, a restaurant, music venue on St George Island that had a band playing old classic rock...called themselves Abstract Radio. We headed back to the camper when they took their break, only to find the gate controller wouldn't open the gate. I finally slapped it after it failed about 10 times and up went the gate...go figure.

Today, it has been rainy, so we got some stuff ready for the trip...I entered all 36 of our future destinations into the GPS in the motor home so that will be ready to use tomorrow and the rest of the summer. Trying to line up the addresses with what the GPS will accept can be a challenge at times.

Tomorrow, we move west about 250 miles to Big Lagoon State Park, a new one for us. We are also watching the weather, the tropics are already active.

Steve & Barb Larson