Planning a Trip

If you want to get the most out of your trailer, just pick a date and pack up. It's that simple. For our first trip, we chose something with minimum level of difficulty -- a campground that was only 15 minutes from the house.

Pulling out of the driveway, we felt a little apprehensive. Rich adjusted the braking mechanism so we could feel the trailer brake behind us. It was a little nerve-wracking at first, but he managed to get the hang of it.

More Tales from the Road Where It All Began Looking Forward to the New Year Florida's Best (and worst) Off the Beaten Track

We decided to check out the Dunedin Beach Campground, which was more along the lines of a mobile home park than an actual campground. It wasn't the kind of campground we were looking for (not a lot of woods), but for our first test drive, the location was great. We wanted someplace close, in case we had a breakdown or couldn't get the air conditioning to work. (Actually my worries, not his.)

OK, so we only made one mistake. We drove with the brake on for half a mile, but after that, it was smooth sailing.

Over at the Dunedin Campground, we were starting to get the hang of things. We scratched our head a couple of times before we figured out how to get the awning down, but after that, it was time to do some camping. We pulled out a couple of lawn chairs, popped open an ice cold brew, and did absolutely nothing for the next four hours.

For Rich and me, it was a sheer moment of greatness: We finally found a way to get away from it all, close to home. After dinner, we even managed to head downtown and check out the Dunedin Blues Fest. As we finished out a perfectly good day, Trip 1 was proving to be a complete success.

Trippin' on Halloween

Now that we got our feet wet, we were ready for the next adventure. This time, we'd try a campground that was a little bit further. We decided on Fort DeSoto, a beautiful Florida state park right on the Gulf of Mexico. The beauty is, it's only a 40-minute drive from Clearwater, so we could arrive on a Friday night and stay till Sunday. It worked out great, since some of my friends from Sarasota and Tampa were planning to make the trek as well. Rich's 13-year-old daughter brought a friend, so we all piled the bikes in the truck, made sure we had the right number of snacks on board, and looked forward to pulling up to our wooded site, right on the Gulf.

The kids had a ball playing with the raccoons and seeing a side of Florida they've never seen before. And we couldn't believe the setup time. Unlike the tent campers next to us, it took us all of 20 minutes.

Autumn Run

Half the fun of planning a trip is looking through all the brochures and Web sites on campgrounds in Florida. The selection is absolutely incredible. But each time we go, we want to be certain we find the right camping site. So we made up a short list of priorities:

• The site had to be wooded or near a beach
• We didn't want to camp in the middle of a mobile home park
• The place had to have the potential for adventure

Now that we had some criteria to go on, it was easy to weed out a lot of places. This time, we settled on a great place in Sarasota.

Right off the coastline was a place called Gulf Beach Campground. Located just off Turtle Beach, it immediately met our first criteria. When I called the place for more info, I was told they only had 47 sites, so I knew it wasn't a mobile home park. And it certainly seemed adventurous if our site was only 50 feet from the beach.

Rich's skills were tested somewhat, as he maneuvered the trailer in a bit of a tight spot, but once we turned off the ignition, we knew it was going to be a great weekend. We could hear the sound of the waves crashing against the beach the minute we parked the RV. We were surrounded by several large motor homes decorated with colorful welcome mats and lights, and people were really friendly. Many of the RVs were occupied by snowbirds who had obviously left the cold, snowy weather of the north to hibernate in the sunny climes of the south.

We decided we wanted some company this time around, so we invited Rich and his family over for a cookout since his family lives close by. His brother's wife and three kids stopped by for a swim, since they live in nearby Bradenton. Then his mom and dad, who live in Nokomis, stopped by to see where we had set up camp for the night. We were a little eager to show off the truck and trailer, since we had been talking about it the past few weeks. It proved to be a huge success, as everyone raved about the trailer.

As we retired for the night, we couldn't get enough of our surroundings. Sleeping within earshot of the beach with the windows wide open, we could feel the breeze and hear the sound of the rolling waves. We realized we were going to enjoy our new life.

|  Previous Page  |

Next: Holidays in the Trailer