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FORT CLINCH STATE PARK (FL)

Another Florida beach side campsite for us here at Fort Clinch State Park and another near freezing and windy visit. I know it's still January and we are on the Florida/Georgia border here, but come on, this is still the Sunshine State isn't it? Well, when I heard that Chicago's overnight low was -24°F and their daytime high was a mere -10°F, all of a sudden I feel like putting back on my shorts and t-shirt and taking that walk on the beach!

MONDAY

TRAVEL DAY
YEAR #2 - STOP #7

Nothing out of the ordinary with today's travels except most of it was on Interstate Highways, mostly I-95 and I-295 to get around Jacksonville. We prefer less traveled and more scenic routes using state and county highways, but in this instance there just wasn't a convenient alternate route available.

With the government shutdown temporarily over and with the National Seashore and National Monuments reopening in Titusville and St. Augustine, I suspect we will be backtracking a bit to go visit and get the cancellation stamps needed for my National Parks Passport Book, I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before so I included a link.

TUESDAY

WORK DAY FROM THE POD
321 MILES DRIVEN TODAY

Tricia will be working all day today and I'm caught up with my blog posts so today is going to be a solo road trip for yours truly. With the opening of the National Park system I've got some catching up to do with my Passport Book in hand. But first things first, I had to drive the 72 miles back south to St. Augustine. When Tricia and I visited St. Augustine a couple of years ago we took the Old Town Trolley Tour and one of the stops was at the San Sebastian Winery.

Tricia typically prefers white wine, but last time we were here we did the wine tasting tour and she found a red wine that she thoroughly enjoyed. So being the good husband that I am I stopped in and purchased two bottles of red wine for her and two bottles of Muscadine Grape Juice for myself. With the important stuff out of the way it's time for some sightseeing.

Next on the list is a visit to the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument here in St. Augustine. Having visited this nearly 350 year old stone fort on previous trips, and being pressed for time today, I opted for a quick visit to the restrooms inside the fort and then a visit to the gift shop to get my passport book stamped. After all I only paid for 15 minutes of parking and I have several other places to go today.

Next up, climb the 219 stairs to the top of the St. Augustine Lighthouse, something I had not done on any previous trip. Located just on the other side of The Bridge of Lions is Anastasia Island with the lighthouse and museum. I took a quick look around and then began my climb to the top. This is the second tallest lighthouse I have ever climbed, only the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse with 257 stairs is taller.

Next up is a visit to Fort Mantanzas National Monument which is located 15 south of Castillo de San Marcos, it guarded the inlet approach to St. Augustine. Once again this is a location I've visited on previous trips and decided to forego the free boat ride over to the actual fort, on the opposite bank of the river, and just visit the restroom and gift shop where I once again got my passport book stamped.

Last thing on my to do list for the day is to revisit the Canaveral National Seashore which is just over 75 miles south of here. Two reasons I decide to make the drive down here are to get my Passport Book stamped, and also to get a small sample of sand from the shoreline to add to our collection from all of the other National Seashores we have visited so far. By the end of this year we will have visited eight out of the ten National Seashores in the U.S., only the ones located in Texas and California will be left to visit.

With all that done there is only one thing left to do.
Drive the 155 miles back home to make dinner for my hard working wife!

Can anyone name the National Seashores in Texas and California?
(no Googling please, but the answers are located somewhere on this blog if you take time to look for them!)
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WEDNESDAY

WORK DAY FROM HOME
54 MILES DRIVEN TODAY

All day yesterday Tricia was struggling with getting solid cell phone reception so she could get her work done. So today we are going to drive down into Jacksonville, visit with our friends, use their strong home internet service to get some work done and then go out to dinner with them. After everyone was either home from school, or done with work for the day, we all piled into our cars and went out for dinner at Chowder Ted's.

It is a small little hole in the wall local pub with fresh seafood right on the river, just our kind of place! Most of the à la carte entrées were under $10 and all were delicious. We all had something different, I had a Blackened Crabcake, but we all were delighted with our meals. I'm sure they will be back, but we unfortunately will be moving on down the road.

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ST. JOHN's RV PARK (FL)

Anyone who has been following our travels knows that we don't intentionally visit private RV parks, it's just not our style. Our last private RV park visit was a KOA in Virginia, back in September last year, when Hurricane Florence closed the campgrounds in Shenandoah National park where we were supposed to be visiting. This time also is due to having to reschedule, when a Florida State Park closed for renovations, just before we had reservations to visit. So twice now we have been forced into visiting private RV parks and I must say our desire to visit more of them hasn't changed.

THURSDAY

TRAVEL DAY
YEAR #2 - STOP #6

It's rare that we get out and do something fun on a travel day. Usually our travel day includes breaking down camp, hooking up THE POD and moving it several hours down the road, then setting everything back up again. Because it was so windy and cold at our beach site, breakdown was easier because we didn't set up any of our outdoor decorations or seating area. Couple that with our shorter than average travel distance and once again we are not setting up our outdoor items we were all done before 1:00pm.

Our reason for stopping in this area is to visit the city of St. Augustine one more time before we leave Florida. We've been here several times in the last few years but one thing we've never done was climb the lighthouse. Hopefully that will change upon this visit!

The other thing we were hoping to do was revisit the two National Monument forts that are here. That unfortunately is probably not going to happen because while there is the government shutdown the forts, along with a lot of other Nation Park Service properties, are not open to the public due to no rangers working there to supervise the property or collect entrance fees. For the same reason we were unable to revisit the Canaveral National Seashore while we were out at the Kennedy Space Center at our previous stop.

Anyway back to the something fun we did, during the months of November through January, the downtown historic district merchants get together and display over 3 million white holiday lights all over the area. They call the event St. Augustine's Nights of Lights. The Old Town Trolley runs a 30 minute tour through the area, playing Christmas songs and handing out these 3D glasses that make all the white lights appear as snowflakes. It's really quite spectacular and has been an award winning St. Augustine tradition now for 25 years. At the end of the tour everyone receives a large sugar cookie and a small paper cup filled with hot apple cider. Yum! Yum!

FRIDAY

MOVIE NIGHT AT " THE POD "
RV (2006)

With another cold front coming through today we spent the day inside working. We had some big plans for our visit here that seem to be falling apart. Well tonight is going to be movie night and I don't foresee anything changing that.

Tonight's selection is a Robin Williams movie, RV (2006). It's a movie we have been looking for at all of the flea markets and finally scored a copy last week. For those of you who haven't seen it I'll give you a brief synopsis. Robin Williams play the dad of a mildly dysfunctional family who, for reasons I won't go into here, decides to take the family on an RV trip to Colorado instead of the Hawaiian vacation he promised them. Being a total rookie when it comes to all things RV related there are quite a few mishaps along the way. Some are traffic related, some are camping neighbor related and others are related to the less than perfect condition of the RV they have rented.

There are many zany moments throughout the movie which had us laughing out loud, always a good thing, because we could empathize with what they were experiencing, being relatively new to the RV world ourselves. This movie will probably become a semi-permanent member of our video collection of six.

Between 1988 and 1992 Robin Williams was nominated three times for an Oscar as Best Actor in a Leading Role. Then in 1998 won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in what film? (Please, no Googling)
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SATURDAY

RELAXATION DAY
and a flea market visit

Today our only plan is to rest and read a few hundred pages of our books. Just kidding, next door to the RV park we are in is a huge flea market, similar to The Swap Shop flea market back Fort Lauderdale. It is permanently located next door and is only open on Saturday and Sunday. There is no entrance fee or parking fee, but we are able to walk over straight from our campsite through a back gate. I believe it is owned and operated by the same people that own the RV park, at least that's the impression I got.

We walked around nearly every booth and managed to walk away with only one purchase. I know what you're thinking, more DVDs right? Wrong! Tricia found these little tiny glass bottles with cork stoppers in the tops for 50 cents a piece. We have been collecting samples of sand from the National Seashores that we have visited and plan to use the little bottles to display our collection in. They are much more attractive than the ZipLock sandwich bags they are in now.

SUNDAY

RELAXATION DAY
0 MILES DRIVEN

Our first truly lazy day in a while, with it cold and rainy all day we never even opened the door to THE POD today. Lots of book reading and since today is the last day of our cycle for internet data, and since we have data left over this month, we splurged and watched a few YouTube videos from some of our fellow fulltime RVers. Recently a dozen or so RVers got together and created a full length documentary style movie about the RV lifestyle.

If you are at all interested in an in depth look at our new lifestyle, you should check out this video on YouTube, RV Nomads. It is an hour and twenty two minutes long and very well edited, narrated and produced by a bunch of RVers. It was just released on January 12th and already has over 96,000 views.

Who will be the first to correctly guess our next location?
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GAMBLE ROGERS STATE REC AREA (FL)

This campground is located in Flagler Beach and straddles both sides of US1 on the south side of town. You must go in the mainland side of the park to register at the office, but we were lucky enough to get a three night stay on the ocean side of the park. There are 34 sites with wide open ocean views and another 34 sites on the mainland side of US1 where the Matanzas and Halifax Rivers meet. Our visit here wasn't the best weather wise, with high winds and cooler temperatures.

MONDAY

TRAVEL DAY
YEAR #2 - STOP #5

I'm really beginning to like these shorter moving days but I wish the weather would cooperate a little more. Here we are on a beautiful beachside campsite but the temperature is in the low 50s with a strong 15-20mph constant breeze. I guess I shouldn't complain it could be worse. It's forecast to warm up a little over the next few days so maybe we'll be able to sit outside and enjoy the sun.

TUESDAY

MOVIE NIGHT AT " THE POD "
AVATAR (2009)

I mentioned earlier that we visited a flea market and picked up a half dozen DVDs for $5.00, well tonight we are going to watch the first of our new to us movies, Avatar (2009). We got started right after dinner but I forgot the movie was 2 hours and 42 minutes long. That put us well past our normal, climb into bed and read time, so we pretty much skipped the reading and went right to the sleeping.

After rewatching the movie we both agreed there were so many scenes we just didn't remember, boy are we getting old or what? It's nice to be surprised that the movie is still full of fresh entertainment for us.

Avatar was nominated for a total of nine Oscar's, including Best Motion Picture of the Year and Best Achievement in Directing, but didn't win either. It did however win 3 of the other Oscar's and The Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture and Best Director.

Does anybody remember the famous director of Avatar? (no Googling)
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WEDNESDAY

AN RV FRIENDLY RECIPE
KEY WEST CHILI

COOKING TIME: 45+ minutes
# of SERVINGS: 4

INGREDIENTS

REFRIGERATED ITEMS

PANTRY ITEMS
1-1/4 lbs. ground turkey
(NOT turkey breast)		 1 envelope of McCormick Chili Seasoning Mix
(TexMex Style)
4oz of lime juice
(Key Lime preferred)		 2-10oz cans of Rotel Diced Tomatoes
(Mexican Style)
1 large bell pepper - diced
(orange, yellow or red)		 1-8oz can of tomato sauce
(no salt added)
1 cup of Orzo pasta
(whole wheat preferred)

OPTIONAL ITEMS
Saltine Crackers • Diced Sweet Onion • Shredded Cheddar Cheese • Sour Cream


COOKING INSTRUCTIONS

1.) In a large pot on high heat, brown the ground turkey while breaking it into small crumbles.

2.) DO NOT drain off the little bit of moisture in the pot. Instead, add the seasoning mix to the meat and stir it thoroughly. After this step you should no longer be able to tell it's not ground beef and I promise you won't be able to taste the difference when it's done!

3.) Add in the Rotel Tomatoes (undrained) and tomato sauce, then stir together.

4.) Add in the diced bell pepper, lime juice and orzo pasta, then stir together. Make sure to get most of the pasta deep down into the mix.

5.) Keep stirring the top down to the bottom until you reach a low boil, then cover and reduce the heat to a simmer.

6.) 15 minutes later stir everything together and leave uncovered to simmer for another 15 minutes. Keep repeating this step OR go to the next...

7.) At this point the chili is ready to eat, but as with all chili, the longer you let it simmer the better it will taste.

This recipe will render a very thick and mildly spicy chili. If you like your chili extra hot try adding in a chopped Jalapeño pepper or even a Habanero pepper. This recipe can easily be doubled to create a larger batch, but make sure you use a larger pot. When I cook up a large batch to share, I usually hand out saltines to people to scoop right out of the pot a bite size taste first. It's thick enough that I've always used saltines instead of a spoon to eat it!

Optionally you can garnish with any combination of the traditional chili toppings such as Sour Cream, Shredded Cheddar Cheese and Diced Sweet Onion, but I rarely do.

Do you have an RV friendly recipe to share?
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Who will be the first to correctly guess our next location?
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