Down south in Okeechobee

On February 11th, we traded the crazy traffic and busy tourism of the Orlando area for the laid back (ie: out in the middle of nowhere) of the area around the town of Okeechobee, on the north shore of the lake by the same name. But before we could arrive at our next stop, we had to endure a long day for maintenance, driving, and confusion.

Lola was up for her annual maintenance work (lube, oil, filters for both engine and generator plus overall inspection of chassis to make sure all is good after a year plus of travel). We decided it would be best to take Lola to a certified Freightliner Service Center that specialized in RV work and the closest one to us was in Tampa. We got an early start (but had to spend time to fuel up first and when you are filling a 100 gallon tank, that takes time!). Then we were slowed by multiple wrecks on I-4 heading to Tampa (FYI – Orlando’s traffic almost has Atlanta’s beat and I-4 is just one big disaster between all the road construction and accidents that seem to occur at all times of the day and night). We arrived at the service center late but they said they would do what they could to get it all done by end of day…

Next stop was to drop the dogs off at a local groomer so they too could get freshened up! After that, we found a restaurant on the harbor and enjoyed a nice long meal. Eventually, we got the call to pick up the dogs but Lola was still not finished! We stopped back at the groomers and were able to get them to hold the dogs a bit longer while Dan got a haircut at a barbershop next door. After that, we had no choice but to head back to the service center and wait. They had a waiting room where we sat for a couple of hours (while Brandy found a table to hide under). Finally, at about 5:30 Lola was finished, no issues or repairs needed, and we were ready to leave. But now we were dealing with Tampa area rush hour and still had to drive to Okeechobee.

At this point, we were relying on two different GPS systems. One is RV specific and allows us to put in details on dimensions for Lola (hight, weight, width, etc.). This system should route us in the most efficient manner but avoid taking us down roads where we shouldn’t go (low bridges, skinny bridges or tunnels, etc.). We also run Waze at the same time so we can get real time traffic info in case we need to divert (the RV GPS does not take into account live traffic). Usually, the two systems are somewhat in agreement. This time, they were way off. The RV GPS was taking us a route that would require about 5 hours of driving while Waze was saying it could get us to our destination in 3 1/2 hours??!! Now, you might say, “go ahead and follow Waze”. But what if that takes us on a route we can’t get thru (bridge can’t handle our weight or we get to a bridge we can’t get under)? The idea that we wouldn’t arrive at our campsite until after 10 PM and in the dark was really stressing us. However, after reviewing some maps and what each app was indicating, we went with Waze and arrived at camp around 8:45 that evening. To this day, we still don’t know what the RV GPS was doing??!!

So, now we arrive at the campground and the office is still open! That’s great because we aren’t sure the campsite they have assigned to us is going to work. According to their map, the site looks short and also won’t handle our electrical needs (we require 50 amps while some sites only provide 30 amps). At first, they assured us it would work and provided directions to the site. While unhooking our car from the tow set up, however, one of the staff came out waving their hands. Turns out, our concerns were right. It only had 30 amps and we wouldn’t even fit in the site. Really not sure how the reservation system or review process let this slip but grateful they double checked before we tried to set up. We were assigned to a temporary site while they figured things out and two days later, we moved to our assigned (and long enough) site for our stay.

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Now, there really isn’t much to do in Okeechobee. It does have a Publix and a Walmart and a few restaurants and if you are into fishing, they have a really big lake nearby. But otherwise, pretty quiet. The campground is HUGE – like around 1,000 sites in total. And they are FULL! It appears a lot of snowbirds come down for the winter including a lot of folks from Canada (mainly from around Quebec, Montreal and Toronto). Kind of odd to be in the middle of Florida and hear so much French being spoken.

The campground has a lot of activities planned. They have both a “family” and “adult” pool and let us tell you, the adult pool is packed every afternoon! It doesn’t hurt that they have a bar attached to the pool with very cheap drinks! They also had live entertainment from time to time at the pool and elsewhere in the campground (they have their own convention center). In fact, they made a big deal about a Senior Expo being held one day at the convention center. We figured we’d check it out, see exactly what we might find out. This is when we realized, we might not fit the demographic for this campground. Most venders fell into three categories:

1. Funeral home or death planning or life insurance
2. Hospice care, long term medical care, etc.
3. Dentures and related

Guess it’s good we didn’t really need anything from that expo!

They also celebrated Mardi Gras with a golf cart parade around the park and music at the pool.

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There actually is one or two interesting things to do around Okeechobee (OK, so we weren’t totally truthful earlier). Just a few miles north of town is the Arnold’s Wildlife Rehab Center. This rather small operation lives off of donations and rescues wildlife, sometimes releasing them back to the wild and at other times keeping them if they are unable to return (became too accustomed to humans, have injuries that won’t allow them to survive, etc.). They have at least 50 animals from monkeys to camels, from Florida panthers, to birds of all kinds. We enjoyed the visit and particularly the opportunity to meet the newest member of the center, a young otter that was found abandoned.

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While walking around camp, we noticed several people who had nice outside shelters, sort of like outside living rooms. They were screened in and had a roof which helped block the sun while also keeping out the bugs. Staying in central Florida, we realized that dealing with biting insects as well as the warmer sun down here was becoming a challenge so we decided to dive in and get our own outside “living room”!

We made a couple of trips over to the east coast of the state (about 50 minute drive). One day we visited Stuart, Fl which which had a pleasant old downtown area of shops. Another day, we drove over to Ft Pierce to visit some Botanical Gardens which were mainly focused on bonsai trees.

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We saved our biggest adventure for our last week in the area. We joined an airboat tour of the marshes around the north end of the lake and it was really unique. In addition to flying over grass and other marshland, we found ourselves wandering thru paths cut in groves of cattails looking for alligators and seeing a wide variety of birds. We learned a lot about the lake and those that inhabit the area around it.

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As we write this, we have packed up most of our equipment with plans to depart on March 11th, and start our journey north. A short stop in St. Augustine and then a week in Hilton Head Island. Time to say goodbye to Florida until next winter!