Base Camp
Our home for the week was Crooked River State Park, a campground located along the Atlantic coastline of Georgia. When we drove into this place we were shocked by the beauty, and finally feeling like we weren’t in the midwest anymore. Everywhere we’ve been parked in the past 4 weeks has felt similar to what Michigan has to offer (except the snow). But this campground had palm trees and Spanish moss hanging from everything, including the power lines. Even the view from the bathroom was stunning.
This state park was busy - lots of people staying and going - but the sites were very spread apart and we were lucky enough to have a spot with some views of the sky. All of our internet options had a bit of difficulty in this area but we managed to get through the week with what we had. The location was close to a few of the Golden Isles which would have been perfect if it wasn’t getting dark as early as it has been. We still visited what we could and caught some amazing sunsets.
Monday, December 2nd
We needed a night to unwind so we did just that!
Tuesday, December 3rd
We brought the Michigan weather down south this week and needed to go refill our propane to fuel our heater. Before going into town for that, we went for a walk within the park to enjoy the sunshine while we had it. There was a trail right along the East River that offered some classic Georgian swampy views and then we explored through a palmetto grove. Once it got dark we headed into town for supplies to prep us for the cold night we were predicted to have.
Wednesday, December 4th
This evening we went into the nearby town of St Marys, where there just happened to be a tree lighting ceremony going on. Before checking out the holiday festivities we walked out to the waterfront park to catch the sunset.
After that we grabbed some hot chocolate and listened to the carolers while we waited for the parade to lead into the tree lighting. Since we stumbled upon this event we really had no idea when anything was meant to happen but the crowd was growing. We ended up waiting about thirty minutes for the ‘parade’ to reach us and were surprised to see that the only participant was Santa and Mrs. Claus in a horse drawn carriage. After the long drawn out wait of the parade we decided not to wait around for the tree lighting and instead tried to beat the crowds by leaving early. On our way home we decided to stop at a grocery store to get supplies for hot cocoa and found that the store was having a going-out-of-business sale. We got a basket worth of things we didn’t need but wanted to try since the prices were so low. Zac was so excited by this sale and even mentioned that if we had a house we would have been stocking up big time, since we have such little storage room in the trailer we were limited to our tiny basket of groceries.
Thursday, December 5th
The past couple days we had been smelling campfires the made us envious so we decided to make one this evening. I attempted to make hot cocoa from scratch while Zac started the fire, one of us was successful…
We enjoyed the warmth of the fire on this cool evening and had to watch The Lions play The Packers - boy was it a good game! This was a nice, cozy, campy kind of night that we haven’t really had in a while and was definitely overdue.
Friday, December 6th
The plan for this evening was to check out St. Simons Island, a place that my best friend has visited many times in years past. Gabby gave us loads of recommendations on where to eat and we even caught the sunset off the town pier.
If we had more sunlight hours we would’ve stayed here much longer to explore, but because it was so dark we mainly stuck to the food recommendations. We tried the famous crab cakes at Barbara Jean’s and then kept on theme at the next restaurant, Iguanas, by ordering a few snow crab clusters to share.
Saturday, December 7th
This morning we took our time eating breakfast then got all packed up and on the road towards our next site located in Bunnell, Florida. It took us about an hour and a half to get there and we were able to set up pretty quickly which left us some time to explore a nearby town. We drove into the city of Palm Coast to visit Washington Oaks Gardens State Park that had another beautiful sunset view and a gorgeous rose garden.
The park staff shooed us out after about 10 mins into our visit because they were closing up for the night, so we ended up finding a Christmas light display to walk around nearby. With hot cocoas in hand, we strolled around the little park that had lights set up around a pond. It’s weird to experience the holiday festivities while wearing shorts and t-shirts but we were the only ones, a few people in winter jackets mentioned that we must not be from around here. After getting in the holiday spirit we headed back to the campground for an early night.
Sunday, December 8th
With a full day open ahead of us, we woke up at a reasonable time and drove about an hour to visit St. Augustine, the nation’s first enduring settlement. Parking was a nightmare but this coastal town had architecture like we’ve never seen. We strolled through historic districts and grabbed a slice of pizza and garlic knots to split for breakfast. Walking around a bit more, we grabbed some coffees and looked at local artwork. Overwhelmed with wanting to see more buildings, we decided to get back to the truck and drive through the city rather than walk.
This allowed us to cover more ground but we still didn’t feel like we saw everything that this historic town had to offer, but we had a chili cookoff to get to. On Saturday I had found a local event in Palm Coast where 25 different vendors were competing in a chili competition at a farmers market. We paid the entrance fee, grabbed our spoons and got to tasting. By far our favorites turned out to the ‘chili verde’ that a few vendors were serving, but all were delicious and filled our bellies. This was a perfect Sunday afternoon activity that allowed us to get back to our campsite before dark to settle in and prepare for work on Monday morning.
Plans
The goal of the next two months is to stay in Florida and avoid the winter temperatures, this means that we will be bouncing an hour or two along the coast each week to maximize our time here. With that being said, there will not be sights and adventures every evening as we have done in the past. In addition, Zac has had a change in his work schedule from 8am-4:30pm to 10am-6:30pm, which would have been just fine in the summertime, but with the sun setting at 5:30pm it limits us from seeing much of anything after work. So with that being said, I will be sharing a post of Florida from a ‘highlights’ perspective rather than the normal weekly perspective. We will be seeing as much as we can on the weekends - which works out with our shorter move distances. Once we get out of Florida we will hopefully have more sunlight to work with and I will get back to my weekly posting.
Thanks for staying tuned and hope that everyone has a happy holiday and new year! Check out the reel I made for this week (shoutout to all the beautiful sunsets) by clicking below.