We sat outside to drink our morning coffee before having breakfast just enjoying the scenery. It was a little on the cool side, so we put our lightweight jackets on.
We watched a pair of bald eagles flying over the lake and some really large fish jumping in the lake near the shore.. There were a few boats out on the lake this morning and I’m sure there will be more this weekend. There are also a few pairs of Canadian geese here and a pair walked up on shore near our site.
We said goodbye to Dee and James this morning and wished we had had more time to visit. We exchanged information and they’ve invited us to stay at their place if we come to Jacksonville.
We drove back over to Dothan this afternoon to pick up our mail at the UPS Store. We had ordered a couple of things and they were delayed in shipment and didn’t arrive until today. Since we were going to have to go back to Dothan to get our packages, we had American Home Base send our regular mail to Dothan.
We also stopped by our storage unit to get a large outdoor mat that we had stored and now decided that we could use.
We had had a long list of things to do and errands to run before we left Dothan and one of the items was to buy Tinker’s dog food. So we waited to go to Petsmart until today and Tinker always enjoys going to Petsmart.
Once we ran our errands in Dothan, we headed back to Lake Seminole.
We left The Willows about 11:30 this morning and headed south on US 231 to Florida. We left a little later than usual since we only have about 82 miles to go today.
We stopped at the Florida Welcome Center at noon and decided to fix lunch. While Mike was walking Tinker, I went into the Welcome Center and loaded up on travel brochures.
After lunch we headed on south to I-10 and a stop at the Walmart Supercenter in Marianna, FL to buy some supplies. There are 2 Supercenters in Dothan, but they don’t have any RV supplies anymore. We continued east on I-10 to Exit 158 and took SR 286 north to Sneads and then US 90 to Chattahoochee and then north to Eastbank Campground on Lake Seminole in Georgia.
We arrived at Eastbank (a Corp of Engineer campground) about 3 p.m. We are in Loop A on site #1 – a back-in. We have water and 30 amp electric. The sites are staggered, so we have a good view of Lake Seminole.
This afternoon we met Dee and James from Jacksonville who are in the 5th wheel in site 2 next to us. They had wanted to stay another day, but someone will be coming in tomorrow on their site. They are on their way to Pine Bluff, AR to spend about a month.
We’ve been spending the last several days getting ready to leave Dothan and start on our trip this year around Florida. We took a few things over to our storage unit that we won’t be needing this year – mostly our winter clothes. We also took a few clothes and books over to the Thrift Shop for the Wiregrass Humane Society.
There is always some last minute shopping to be done and I did leave one errand undone – buying Tinker’s dog food at Petsmart since we’re having to come back to Dothan to get our mail. We had ordered a couple of things and they were delayed in shipment and won’t be delivered until later this week to our mail box at the UPS store here. We already have reservations at Lake Seminole at Eastbank Campground and will have to drive back to Dothan to get our mail and packages and stop at Petsmart for Tinker's food.
We are looking forward to getting back on the road and visiting the Florida State Parks.
We have a mounted spare tire for the RV and a fullsized spare for the Vue and we have been carrying them in the back of the Vue. In order to carry both spares, we have to have the back seat folded down and we are unable to have any passengers ride with us. With our original plans to travel to Alaska this year and have our son join us, we had to find a way to have the back seat usable and still carry the spare tires with us.
So last year we bought a cargo box with a swing-out rack to go on the back of our Saturn Vue with the idea of modifying it to carry the spares. We removed the cargo box and put it in our storage unit here. Mike and W.T., the owner of The Willows, have been looking at different ways to modify the rack. They built a platform on top of the rack for the cargo box and have secured the spare tires for the RV and the Vue on it. The spare tires are too high for us to open the back door of the Vue, but because the rack swings out from the car, we are able to open the door.
Mike bought a couple of tire covers and has secured the tires to the car, so we don't lose them should something happen to the rack. We weighed the tires (207 lbs), so we are under the weight limit for the rack (250 lbs) even with the boards Mike used for the base.
Today we drove over to Lake Seminole on the Florida-Georgia-Alabama border to check out the Corps of Engineers campground there. We drove around through the campground to get an idea of the campsites and their location to the lake and the view from the campsite.
The majority of the people staying there were on their way back north after spending the winter in Florida. After driving around for a while, we settled on site #1 in Loop A. It has a good view of the lake and a large grassy area around the site. We had thought about staying there in March, but it was still quite chilly and there was a pretty stiff wind coming off of Lake Seminole.
We looked at the showers and laundry. The showers are quite large and unisex. The laundry consists of 1 washer and 1 dryer at $1 each. Since we'll be coming here directly from Dothan, I'll just do our laundry before we leave there.
The weatherman was right! We had snow in Dothan today. Dothan only gets snow about every 10-12 years, so it is a big deal here.
We probably have about 2 inches of snow on the ground. Of course, we still had to walk Tinker outside and at first he wasn’t too sure about the snow. But by this afternoon he realized that snow can be fun and he had a great time running and playing in the snow.
We had planned on going to Alaska this year, but we have decided to wait until next year. Our son, Fletcher, is going to join us on the trip to Alaska and he said that next year would be better for him to go. Last year we traveled 15,000 miles (a lot of gas) and it was expensive camping and traveling in Canada (no regrets), so we decided to travel less and stay longer in one place.
Also, our friends Al & Symphony from Collinsville, Alabama and Mike & Gayle from Ozark, Alabama were going to join us on the trip to Alaska with their RVs, but it turns out that they can’t make it either this year.
So Mike & I decided to travel around Florida this summer and visit the state parks there. Mike and I grew up in Florida, but there is a LOT of places there that we haven’t been to. Since we are Florida residents we can stay a the state parks for 1/2 price.
Some of our plans are to visit our son in the Keys, various cousins around the state, and my brother and family in Kissimmee. We plan on staying in the Everglades park for a bit (may only be a few days - it will be summer after all!). We've never been to Busch Gardens in Tampa, there is also the Salvidor Dali Museum, Stephen Foster Folk Center, Cape Canaveral just to name a few places on our list.
