January 11 to February 3, 2004 - Clermont, FL to Louisiana

January 11th we drove 225 miles to Clerbrook RV and Golf Resort in Clermont, FL.  This would be our home for two weeks.  Here is our campsite:

Notice the front wheels of the motorhome are up in the air?  The next day the site across the street opened up, it was more level and we asked if we could move.  Here we are in the site we moved to where our wheels were touching the ground:

One day some Florida sandhill cranes entertained us and Evita:

Our friends Dan and Jenny were in the area and came to stay at Clerbrook also in their time out of the Thousand Trails down the road.   We ended up spending a lot of time with them, especially Diane since Bill flew to Seattle for doctors' appointments while we were in Clermont.   

Before Dan and Jenny moved to Clerbrook, we met up with them and we all went to the Tampa RV Supershow, which was running during this time.  We were planning on buying a new motorhome and wanted to look at them.  We had narrowed our choice down to five models and some were at the Supershow.  We also bought a resale campground membership at the Supershow, something we are still happy we bought.

Our friends Ken and Carolle are members of the Nutty Buddy's and they had a rally at Clerbrook while we were visiting.  We hadn't seen them since Jacksonville. We joined the fun and so did Dan and Jenny:

Carolle is the one with her hand out:

Jenny and Dan are the ones on the left:

Here is Ken without a beard:

Diane showing her dance moves:

Bill flew to Seattle and stayed the first night at his mother, Elena's, house in Tumwater, where he got to meet her new cat, Meesha.  Bill brought Meesha cat treats and from then on Elena had to give him cat treats.  After that first night Bill moved up closer to the doctors and while not visiting doctors he visited with family and friends.  He was glad to get back "home" to Diane and Evita.

While Bill was in Seattle, Diane and Jenny went shopping, both for motorhomes and other stuff.  Another day, Diane went to Lazy Days by Tampa, a huge RV dealer that had four of the five models we were looking at.  After looking at them she took them all off the list.  The one that Lazy Days did not carry, a Newmar Dutch Star, was the one we were going to buy. 

January 25th our two weeks camping at a cheap Passport America price were over so we started heading west.  We drove 180 miles to Deerwood Madison Campground in Madison, FL.  We did not bother to unhook the car for this stop:

On the 26th we drove 189 miles to Sunset King Lake Resort in De Funiak Springs, FL.  This was a nice place, we could see spending more time at this campground:

It cooled off at night here, we had frost on the ground in the morning.

The 27th we drove 134 miles to the Escapees park, Rainbow Plantation in Summerdale, AL.  This was our first experience with an Escapees park and we felt so welcome.  We ended up staying six nights, even though it sometimes got cold at night.  Now we had added Alabama to states we have camped in.

On the 29th we drove the car back into Florida and visited Fort Walton Beach:

We also visited the largest selling Newmar dealer in the country in Mary Esther, FL.  We were hoping to see the floorplan we had decided on for our Dutch Star and looking for price quotes.  They ended up not having what we wanted in stock since most of their sales are orders.  But they were still a good place to deal with.

While in Alabama we went to Lambert's Cafe in Foley and really liked it.  We told our friends Dan and Jenny to try it when they came through in a few weeks and they also enjoyed the place.

We decided our next destination was Rainbow's End, the Escapees main campground and headquarters. 

On February 2nd we drove 127 miles to Nella's RV Park in Bay St. Louis, MS.  We did drive the car into town and look around, but not enough since in fall 2005 everything was destroyed or damaged by hurricanes.  We did add Mississippi to the states we have camped in.

On February 3rd we drove 151 miles to Fisherman's Wilderness in Breaux Bridge, LA.  Breaux Bridge is the place to eat crawfish, but since Diane is allergic to them we didn't unhook the car and ate in.  But we did add Louisiana to states we have camped in.

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