5th April – 13th April 2022
Our next journey took us out of the Florida panhandle and sadly away from the delights of the Forgotten Coast. A three and a half hour drive along some very lovely quiet roads through some beautiful Floridian forests brought us to Ozello Key, a small, end of the line sort of place on the West coast of the main Florida pennisula. The area was filled with multiple modest waterfront homes on a haphazard canal complex giving nearly all the properties water access to the marshlands and the Gulf beyond. Our small camp was co-located with a small marina and as the three days here was going to be the last of the touring part of our trip and we were looking forward to being able arrange a fan boat trip out on the water. As usual we had no plans to drive anywhere once we had arrived so we made sure we rocked up with plenty of provisions and our research told us that there was a good restaurant bar an easy walk away.
The marina had spaces for 3 RVs, right on the canal-side, and our host informed us that no-one else was booked into either for the other sites for the entirity of our stay. We were to have a private camp. Perfect! That meant that the little bathroom block and laundry were all ours too. The laundry was even free. How much better could it get?? Well, TV reception and WIfi might have been good, but the location made up for it, sort of….
It was stinking hot and windy when we arrived so after we had set up we did nothing except sit outside in a shady spot with our books and watch the world go by. The world, however, wasn’t going anywhere. Except for the wind in the trees it was deathly quiet, with the only action being provided bay the odd lizard and shore bird. Unfortunately, because of the wind, all the fan boat charters had been cancelled for the next 24 hours and the forecast was not looking good beyond that. It looked like we might not get out after all. Bummer. The heat continued for the whole three days and we put the air con on for the first time and even had to sleep with a fan for a couple of nights. It didn’t seem that long ago that we were sleeping under 5 blankets and a duvet with a hot water bottle and the heating on all night. Warms up early down here.
A couple of fishing charter boats did make it out and we did get to know a young captain of of one of the small boats that tied up just alongside where we were camped. He was called Teddy, was about 25 years old and was a part-time radiographer, part-time fishing charter captain. He worked 7 days a week when he could and seemed to have his life sorted. Quite a work ethic. It was exhausting just talking to him!
So with no TV and no wifi, what was there to do?? Free blimin’ laudry, that’s what! I washed everything and I washed it good. Got to get our money’s worth somehow.
The local restaurant bar was visited for dinner one evening. We walked the half mile there as slowly as we could to avoid getting too hot and sweaty, but without success. We just looked like suspicious loiterers and then arrived with more than a seemly glow and sheen upon our brows. Luckily there was a spot on the lovely breezy over-water terrace and we cooled down with a cold beer or several. The seafood offerings were more than satisfactory and we had a lovely evening.
The few quiet days at Ozello were good to prepare us for our next stop: A long weekend of fun in Sarasota staying with our new friends Ed and Karee. For those whose memories from which this might have slipped, we met this very fun couple at Rancho De La Osa, Arizona on my birthday weekend at the start of January. Once we found out that they lived in mid-Florida we had cheekily invited ourselves to stay with them at the end of our trip as we were booked to fly out of Orlando, a mere 2.5 hour drive away from their place. They kindly agreed and now we were on our way there.
A couple of hours drive from Ozello brought us to the Florida that we had managed to avoid so far, the busy part. There was more and more traffic on the highway the further south we travelled and as we approached Tampa an accident necessitated a diversion off the highway into the burbs. These roads were equally busy. We limped along, finally arriving in Sarasota and after a quick pitstop to purchase booze as our contribution to the weekend’s supplies, we headed to Ed and Karee’s.
Happily (to all four of us) we still got on like a house on fire. There was none of the awkwardness that is always possible when you follow up a fun holiday friendship with actually meeting up again, rather than just emptily but very enthusiastically promising it when you say your goodbyes. Especially when that involves parking up your not-inconsiderably sized camper on their driveway and requesting to borrow a long extension lead and to plug it into the mains to keep the fridge cold, then being four day house-guests. Even when for the last of those four days you actully spend the whole day and evening out with other friends and just come back to sleep (more on that later) and then before you leave on the last morning you are equally demanding and annoying and create more chaos by giving the aforementioned camper a pre-storage washdown on the aforementioned driveway. None of this phased Ed and Karee one jot and they were magnificent hosts. It is their superpower.
We started our stay with some light afternoon drinking whilst we caught up on the past three months since we had seen them on the ranch and than had an early dinner before heading out to catch sunset at the beach. We started at the roof-top bar of the Westin initially but the cool view was overshadowed by the chilly breeze and we relocated to the shelter of the gound-level terrace of the bar at the nearby Ritz for second cocktails. How swanky was this?! Quite a fancy sort of sundowner compared to our usual beer-straight-from-the-can-around-the-campfire affair. We had returned to civilisation! The rest of the evening was spent back at their house, sitting around the outside fireplace and much rubbish was talked into the wee small hours.
The next day we slowly emerged and a plan for the day was formed. Our conventional tourist activity was to be a visit to the Ringling Circus Museum. Sarasota was the HQ and winter quarters of the imensively impressive Ringling travelling circus. The Ringling Circus was run by five of seven brothers and in its various incarnations ran for nearly 150 years, closing only in 2017. In its hey days of the forties and fifties it travelled around the country on extended tours, running two mile-long trains transporting the three thousand performers and personel and eight hundred animals including many, many elephants. The circus mostly only visited each town for one day and in that time the team would errect its enormous big top, all the tents and enclosures for the animals, all the tents for the kitchen, canteen, costumes and accommodation, all the tents for hairdressers, blacksmiths, doctors and other services for the staff and all the tents for the candy, popcorn and merchendise sellers. They would usually put on two performances of the show, take the whole lot down again, load it all back on the train and then travel to the next town. It was an amgalmation of a town, a zoo, a business and a show on the move each day, every day. No wonder they needed a winter base in sunny Florida for a nice rest. It all sounds very exhausting. The musuem was set in the grounds of the scenic Ringling estate on the shores of Sarasota Bay. Several of the brothers built rather impressive homes on the estate which are now available to tour or rent for events. We wandered around and then it was time for another meal! We met Ed and Karee’s daughter, Emily, son-in-law, Casey and one year old grandaughter, Leila, in town and had a very relaxed late lunch in the sun whilst all trying not to get sunburnt.
An afternoon lull at home took us back up to sundowner-time again and Emily organised us all to drive up to the beach for cocktails at the Ritz-Carlton Beachclub. This sounds more glamorous than it was. The beach bar was quite literally a sand-between-your-toes sort of place on the beautiful white sandy beach. Unfortunately it got really windy and quite cool and an not insignificant amount of that sand was trying to get into our ears, eyballs and teeth. The beach bar was also only selling its hideously overpriced cocktails in crappy plastic cups and stopped serving ’30 minuites prior to sunset’. What??? At a beach bar whose chief quality is it’s sunset view?? Oh, and whilst the men were buying the drinks (a three-man job apparently), they left us unchaperoned ladies alone long enough for a sleezy chap to come over and chance his arm on a pick up. Well at least I think that was what his intention was. He had a few irresistable lines, like “Do I detect an accent?” and “I like your sweater, is that from England?” What a temptation he was… Anyway after a lovely sunset, no prospect of a second drink and borderline hypothermia we decamped back to the house and ate pizza.
The next day the swank was amped up to level 3 and we found ourselves being taken to watch a game of polo at the Sarasota Polo Club. It was an afternoon of fabulous Ra-Ra, Florida style. (As neither of us have ever been to the polo before, this is now our only frame of reference) Our spectators’ pitch was set up on the sidelines with several gazebos, many lawn chairs, a picnic table or several and a healthy amount of food and fizz. (Of note: most of the food was fried chicken, which incidentally is a perfect accompaniment to a glass of chilled bubbles, or is it the other way around. I digress). Prior to the whistle/kick off we were treated to a guided tour of the ‘backstage area’ by a local polo groupie. She was very enthusiastic and effervesent and happy to have a reason to be hanging out with all the players, grooms and ponies as they were getting ready. I think she was also quite knowledgeable, but again, no prior frame of reference. The match itself was a bit incidental to the day as we were enjoying the chitchat, the sun, the bubbles and the fried chicken, but it did provide a rather lovely backdrop to the day.
On our final day in Sarasota we managed to catch up with our friends Greg and Gigi (and two of their three kids) who were visiting Florida from Conneticut. Greg and Nick are friends from school when Nick spent a year here on an exchange after A levels. We had tried to meet them on our trip around the Gulf Coast, but it just hadn’t worked out. Very fortuitously Greg’s mum lives only about 6 miles from Ed and Karee, and they were visiting her for Spring Break, so we had arranged to spend the day with them. This involved a lot of chat, an afternoon on the beach (the fabulous Siesta Key beach, voted one of the USA’s favorite beaches with silica sand so fine and white and cool on the feet even when the sun is blazing), more chat, lunch on the beach, drinks, chat and a seafood dinner before they delivered us back to Ed and Keree’s. It was great to see them but sad to only have this limited time together. We consoled ourselves with the fact that there is a very good chance that we will see them in France over the summer.
The next day we bade our farewells to Ed and Karee and Sarasota, but not before giving Big Dave and Tin Can their final washdown on the driveway. We had planned to do this at at commercial place en route to storage, but bizarrely for a state full of people with RVs we couldn’t find a tall carwash. We headed towards Orlando and stopped at a place called Davenport, about an hour southwest of the city. We had one night here to do our final clean, laundry and prep to put the team into storage the next day. It was hot, hot, hot but there was no rest for the usually idle and we worked up a sweat doing all our chores. Happily we are now a well oiled machine and know exactly what needs to be done. This storage is below the ‘freeze-zone’ so there was even no need to worry about winterizing the pipes with anti-freeze. We were so organised that we even managed to fit in a swim and a short spell sitting in the sun by the pool before our ‘last supper’ of the usual interesting meal created from the fridge scrapings.
Our last day dawned, still hot as hell, and we cruised to our storage unit which was a short 20 minutes drive from Orlando airport. The bags were packed, the laundry was done and everything was ship shape. We put Big Dave and Tin Can to bed in their outdoor, covered unit, plugged in to a trickle charger. Despite the 30 degC temp we had to change into our travel clothes of jeans and boots before wheeling our bags up to reception to grab and Uber to the airport. When will we stop sweating??! (Soon. We are off back to a UK Spring via Iceland.)
Another trip is over. This has been a five month journey from the Northwest corner nearly to the furthest Southeast of this vast country. A journey which started with the lows of an enormous mechanic’s bill and some terrible wet and cold weather and the many, many highs including fabulous landscapes, interesting people and places, great food and new friends. Coronovirus was the constant backdrop to our travels, but at no point directly affected us or significantly altered what we did. We were very happy to have ‘braved’ this trip and finally got back on the road again. Our happy place.
So as I write the last few lines of this final Tin Can Travels post it is with great relief that, after procrastinating its writing for two whole months, I can finally say…..It’s a wrap!