Sonya's Blog - Day 210 - Traveling to Orlando

Sonya’s Blog - Day 210 - January 18th - Traveling from the Florida Keys to Orlando

We got up early again today to try and catch that perfect sunrise again. There is another bridge, that is a few minutes past the bridge we stopped at yesterday. We decided to drive to that bridge and see if we had a better view.

It was not nearly as windy this morning, which is good because we are driving out today. They had warnings out yesterday about driving in the keys, as the wind was so bad. When we got to the bridge we realized that this is a much better location, we would have a totally unobstructed view of the sunrise. We hopped out, grabbed Kizmet and headed out onto the bridge. There was a huge bank of clouds on the horizon, so we would have to watch the sun rise over the clouds, instead of looking like it is coming out of the ocean. That will be fine. We managed to walk the whole bridge and caught the sunrise on our walk back. It was spectacular.

When we got back to the RV we got the kids up and started the packing up process. We had lunches to pack, breakfast to eat and the securing and putting away of stuff in the RV. We also had to get our pet deposit back, which was $30 cash. We couldn’t collect it until we were packing up and the office didn’t open until 9 AM. It was to make sure that you picked up after your pet and that you kept your pet under control at all times. We, of course, didn’t break any of the rules so we wanted our deposit back.

We had a bit of an incident when we were hooking up the RV. Our site is on a bit of an incline and when I hooked up the RV to the truck, everything rolled back a bit. This wasn’t cool because we still had our wheel chock between our tires. Blake had to take the whole thing apart to get it out of there, which put us 1/2 hour behind.

We got on the road at 9:30 and had over a 5 hour drive ahead of us. This will take us 7 hours to do, so we are in the truck for the whole day. Once we leave the Florida Keys, we will be on the toll road the whole way. Probably is going to be pricey, but I guess we will find out at the end of the day. Our campground is just off the Florida Turnpike, which makes it a very straightforward route.

The drive was pretty uneventful. We had the regular stops for bathroom breaks and fuel, but it really wasn’t too exciting.

We found our new campground without any problems, it is literally 5 minutes from the Florida Turnpike (this is the toll road). We had fun getting into our campsite, due to a large Oak Tree. Blake got a little too close and just about scraped the top of our RV on one of the branches. We caught it on time, so that was a relief. This campground has very few people that come and go, most of the people here are residents or staying for long periods of time. It is nice enough though and very reasonable rates for Orlando. We looked at staying at the Disney campground and it was over $100 per night and the KOA close to there had similar rates. This one is only $45 per night and about 15 minutes from Disney and 20 minutes to Universal. It was a good find and keeps us in our budget.

We got all set up, had some supper and then Blake and the kids watched some of Terminator. I decided to just read my book instead of watching the movie. I decided to read the 3rd book in the Chronicles of Kazam series (The Last Dragonslayer was the first book). These are Isaac’s books, but he hasn’t read them yet. They are well written and quite witty and I just wanted something that was enjoyable and easy to read.

The kids could only watch about 1/2 of the movie, because they had to get to bed on time. Blake wants to be out the door at 8 AM tomorrow so that we can be at the park for the 9 AM opening.

Sonya