We had a bit of a culture shock last week. After spending two months in the Keys where the biggest store is a run down Kmart covered with a charming undersea mural, we made our way north to the land of endless strip malls, big box stores, and gated communities. The snarls of multi lane roads, highways, and turnpikes that serve to connect all this sprawl is exhausting and confusing to say the least. Maybe it’s because I am a small town girl at heart, but driving around these kind of places never works out well for me. I went out twice by myself during the week to do errands, and both times made some comical errors that lead to multiple u-turns, re-routing, and general frustration with both myself and my Google lady (who really should take some of the blame).
The upside of dealing with all these crazy roads, endless traffic, and downright rude drivers is that we were we there specifically to see some friends from VT. Friends we hadn’t seen in over two and half years! They had escaped the frozen north to visit family in Boca Raton, and since we were headed in a northerly direction it only made sense for us to find a campground nearby so we could meet up. We ended up about halfway between Boca and West Palm Beach at the John Prince Country Park.
While I was less than thrilled with the area outside of the campground, the park itself was very nice with a long bike trail, a nicely mulched and shaded fitness trail, a big lake, multiple playgrounds, and other stuff that I am probably forgetting. For some reason I barely took any photos all week and only got this one of the park at sunset.
Another gorgeous Florida sunset
I also didn’t take any other photos of the campground other then a single one of our site. It was a pretty nice campground, although the site quality varied widely. We stayed in the 14 day limit electric and water section on the lake shore. Our site had a huge side yard with a nice water view, but this section is definitely for smaller RVs only. On the other hand, the full hook-ups 14 day limit area with lake views was more suitable to big rigs. The rest of the sites are set aside for seasonal RVers. All those sites seemed pretty yucky to me – cramped with no privacy. But they were all full so I guess someone wants to stay in them. Probably doesn’t hurt that the monthly rate it pretty good for this area. Also, having access to the rest of the large park is a definite plus over a typical private RV park.
John Prince Park – site 17
Enough about that though. The real highlight of our week was when our friends came over. We’ve known Gretchen and Michael forever. In fact, both Tim and I knew Gretchen before we even knew each other. We went to their wedding, they came to our wedding, we’ve been on several vacations with them, and watched as their family grew from two cute pups to two awesome kids.
Michael, Gretchen, Tosh & Sydney
While the decision to sell our house and travel full-time was an easy one for us, leaving all our friends behind was not. Yes, we have made some amazing new friends out here on the road, friends we will hopefully have for a long time, but we still constantly miss everyone who we left behind. Even though our visit was brief, we had a great time catching up and are so excited to see them again in VT this fall. Thanks for visiting us!
Friends
The only other thing of note that happened during our stay was an evening stroll on the beach. It was crazy windy, and since we’re now officially on the east coast the sun set behind us, which is going to take some getting used to. As far as public beaches in built up areas such as this, it wasn’t bad, but we didn’t feel the need to make a return visit.
Tim greeting the Atlantic Ocean
On Saturday we moved on to an area of Florida that while certainly no less congested, is definitely more entertaining. More on that coming soon!
3 comments
Looks like you had a pretty decent place to get away from that nasty city traffic. I was always a big city girl but after spending so much time in smaller towns I am now allergic to the madness that is city traffic! Though I do appreciate a city that has a good freeway system that can get you places.
Yup, the campground was like an oasis in the middle of all that craziness. It’s easy to get used to the slower pace of life isn’t it?
If you have time Sebastian inlet state park is well worth a visit. Ilinke and I went there twice and I stopped there on my way back to St. Augustine to break up the drive from Key west.