Holiday trip 2013: 2nd stop--Ortona Locks CG

After a week of holiday celebrations with family and friends we are off to the Ft. Myers area for more adventures. The first part of our trip takes us over the Sunshine Skyway.

First night, we stayed at the Pine Island KOA. Nothing remarkable here but close to friends and full hookup!
Next morning we departed Pine Island and headed for our final destination.
Ortona Locks is a small but scenic Corps of Engineers property that sits directly on the Caloosahatchie River. Nestled between LaBelle and Clewiston, it is an easy drive east from Ft. Myers.

 

We headed back to Raleigh on New Years Eve around 9AM, opting to do the entire trip in one day and arrived home by 10:30PM. 

Holiday Trip 2013: First stop--Ft. DeSoto Park

Our first trip to Ft. DeSoto Park in Tierra Verde, FL began today! This is an incredible Pinellas County park right on the Gulf of Mexico. Many sites overlook the water, some bordered by mangroves making them very private. We backed into site #143 and began a week of relaxation and holiday celebrations with our families and friends.

Tanglewood RV park

We recently visited Tanglewood RV Campground near Winston-Salem, NC to meet up with friends for a weekend of fun that included the Adam Foundation Festival event as well as wine-tasting at one of our favorite vineyards, RayLen in Mocksville. I would highly recommend Tanglewood as a great destination for a couple days or a couple weeks! It is very close to shopping, vineyards, walking trails, horseback riding, swimming and golfing. All sites are full hookup, including wifi and cable, although wifi is better on some sites than others.
We arrived to rain showers on Friday, but by Saturday morning the weather was clear and cool!
We were lucky enough to garner 8 sites all together in this beautiful setting.

Our Park Model arrives!

Much has happened, of course, since we first created this blog almost 3 years ago.

It was originally created to track our progress toward purchase of a park model to be placed on a permanent site that we lease in the North Carolina mountains.

After months of research and trips to various dealers and folks with units for sale, we had all but abandoned the possibility and resigned ourselves to parking our Airstream travel trailer on our site as a semi-permanent vacation getaway.

On one of our trips to the mountains, we stopped along I-40 to request a quote for a custom unit--a last ditch effort that we figured would permanently discourage us from pursuing a park model. As luck would have it, the sales model had been placed on sale. What we had previously discounted as "doesn't meet our needs" suddenly became very much worth the consideration. We became owners of a new park model, soon to be delivered to our site in the hills.

Two years later, we have added a golf cart, decking, washer & dryer, internet service, satellite TV and some great memories.

The Airstream? It hangs at home waiting it's turn.

In the beginning...

We are two guys from Raleigh that have decided to lease a permanent RV site in the NC mountains. When we first purchased the Airstream 11 years ago, we leased a permanent site in this same campground. But after a year, decided we wanted to do some traveling with it. We have pulled it all over the southeast and mid-Atlantic states...down to Florida, up into Pennsylvania and west to Ohio (the Airstream factory) and Indiana.

"Rivet"

So, we have returned to the mother ship. Our intent this time around is to ultimately purchase and place a park model on our site, leaving the RV at home so we can continue to travel and explore the country.