Johns Trippin'

Dry Tortugas National Park,  you are hard to get to. Perhaps I should provide some background information. Dry Tortugas NP is one of the three national parks in Florida. The other two being Everglades NP and Biscayne NP. Back at the start of the RV trip, the first thing we did was head south. Due to the fact that it was March, and we didn't want to go north when it was cold. Since we didn't have much national-park-going experience, we didn't realize until too late that Dry Tortugas is in the ocean and needs a ferry to get to that is booked months in advance. (We also missed Biscayne NP, which is also on the water.) Therefore, we made plans to go to the island with our cousins' family and booked a ferry and camping trip 12 months ago. We were all staying in the RV as we went down to Key West from Georgia. It is not fun to sleep in an RV with nine people. Here's where everyone slept: Everyone in our family slept where they always do. As you saw in the picture, we had ...

When you drive in, the office is on the right with a lane to park in while you check in. You drive on a paved road through a campground with plenty of trees. There aren't any ditches or tight turns on the road.  Then you arrive at your clearly marked site at an angle convenient for pulling in. The site is level and held back with a retaining wall made of natural materials. The utilities are close to the site and there is plenty of room for the slides. After setting up, you could bike to the big playground on the smooth roads, or you could take a walk around the lake. Dinner could be eaten outside at the picnic table on the concrete patio, without any neighbors right up next to you.  If you fancied a shower after dinner, then head down to the bathhouse along the well lit street. All the lights are facing downward as to not contribute to light pollution. The bathhouse is clean and also well lit. The lights in the bathroom are always on.  Step into the shower, clos...

We went to the State Park on a Sunday. After popping into the Visitor Center for a few minutes, we hit the trail to the gorge. In case anyone who is reading this is unfamiliar with the concept of a gorge, here you go: Gorges are deep. In order to get down into one, you typically need to go down. There are a few (non lethal) ways to do that. One way is stairs, lots and lots of stairs. Three hundred and ten to be exact. Stairs More stairs What do you know? Stairs! Stairs coming down as seen from the opposite side of the gorge At the bottom of those 310 stairs, there is a suspension bridge crossing the gorge, eighty feet above the river.  The bridge even swayed when you walked on it! From there you have the option of continuing down two hundred and twenty one more steps to an overlook of Hurricane Falls. And, unless you have a permit and are planning to go downriver, that means you have two hundred and twenty one stairs back up. Hurricane Falls Bottom of gorge Now that you're back to ...

As soon as we got there, three Great Pyrenees dogs came running out to meet us. If you are unfamiliar with such dogs, they are big, white, very furry, and entirely lovable. Later we got to see a litter of five Great Pyrenees puppies along with the proud mom and dad. Our RV was parked next to a lot of goats. In the morning we got a tour of the farm.

This park is among the nicest we've been to. There's 28 miles of trails there, so we used our scooters a lot. In fact, I don't think that I ever went in the car to go anywhere other than the beach. We just rode our scooters around the park. The night we got there we went and played at the huge pool. We found out that there's a nature center here. There's lots of animals, especially reptiles, but there's also some aquatic life and a big brown bat (even though it's only as big as a fist if it's wings are folded in). The reptiles are snakes, a few lizards, turtles, and two baby alligators. There's also a free-range turtle here. Caleb named him Shelly and he likes to inspect shoes. And they have three owls and a red-tailed hawk outside. Hey, Willow! This Diamondback Terrapin is one of my favorites Hi, Shelly! Peek-a-boo! I think we went to the Nature Center every day we were there. The state park is right up against the Gulf of Mexico. We went to the bea...

We were tired of staying at three campsites for only one night, so we decided to take a break and stay there for two whole  nights. As this picture shows, we had an oil rig and a highway in very close proximity. Courtesy of Google Maps On the plus side, we've never lived on a service road or this close to an oil rig before. We were just there for the full hookups, but we did do two things here: We got our Covid booster shots and our flu shots. Dad took us to a movie theater where we watched the first two episodes of Season Three of "The Chosen."

  Triple L Farm is a Harvest Host. We stayed there one night. It's a small farm with goats, chickens, two pigs, about five dogs, and a cow. Right after we got there, we got a barrel train ride behind a tractor. Playing on the trampoline with their daughter Dad posing with Thor the cow That night we had a nice campfire with them. We all had a lot of s'mores and marshmallows.

Most people we meet on this RV trip ask us "what's your favorite place?" Well, for starters, favorite what? Favorite National Park, favorite campground, favorite thing we've seen, etc. It is really hard to answer that question because of how different everything is. You just can't compare anything. So, short story shorter, there's no way to have one single favorite anything in this lifestyle. Unless it's a shower. 

The reason we went to Baxter Springs was because I didn't feel like we had gone to Kansas. When you think of Kansas, you probably think of a never-ending prairie. To me, the middle of Kansas City (the Kansas side) didn't feel like that prairie. So, we went to Baxter Springs. We picked Baxter Springs for two reasons. One, dad had heard that it was part of the inspiration for the movie Cars. Two, Baxter Springs is right in the corner of Kansas. We stayed at the Baxter Springs Campground in the city park. The campground was empty so we got it to ourselves. Caleb and Jordan liked bringing the bunnies to the picnic shelter and letting them run around between the tables. We went to explore the town. The population of Baxter Springs is around 3,852 .  We tried to go to the Baxter Springs Visitor Center but it was closed. Instead we went to the Baxter Springs Heritage Center and Museum. There was some interesting things there such as the world's longest wooden carved chain . You ne...