It was moving day today, and we moved to the St Petersburg area, where we will stay for 6 days and hope we will be able to see a lot.
We had a normal and good moving routine today. I was up and got my writing done, then started working on packing around 8:30 as I wanted to try to leave by 10. Bella and Bia were up earlier again, and changed, ate and started watching YouTube. Then, before 9 we had them start working on school. Carol was up around 8:30 as well, and got going on packing the inside. We agreed to close the slideout right away, so she vacuumed the floors while I put away some of the stuff that is usually out on the floor, and soon we had the slideout in. I got done pretty quick outside, and just before 10 we moved the girls to the truck and closed up the trailer and right after ten we were rolling out.
The drive to St Petersburg was easy, pretty much highways all the way until the last few miles. As we got closer to Tampa, it was nice driving through the bridges over the Tampa Bay. Everything looks nice around water 🙂
We arrived at our campground just around 1:30pm. As I checked in, I asked the lady if we had a nice spot by the water, and if not, that I wanted to see if we could get one, she looked it up and said we’d be happy with the spot we have. We had an escort take us to our spot, and she was right, we are right by the water, next to some mangroves, in front of the bathrooms and laundry room. It is a great spot. The guy helped me back in, and even though we had to do a few back and forths, it was not hard. He had suggested I could leave the bars connected, and I did, but it was not a great idea. I could hear the bars get pushed really far when backing in and almost jackknifing. After we were in, I looked at everything in the hitch and there was no sign of any issues, so all was good. Our campground is right by a very nice trail as well, and our spot is next to the boat launch, so our location is great.
There is an interesting thing about our spot. Since it is so close to the water, the sewer connection is a bit “off”. It is kind of in the center of the parking path, so as we backed in, it is under the trailer. To connect to it, I had to lay under the trailer and connect. It was not a big deal and it worked fine, but it is unusual. As soon as we got disconnected, Carol left to get some groceries. Bella had school to finish so she went inside. I worked on getting everything connected and setup. I had the grill out and got it going as Carol was getting back. She got burgers, and I had some Brazilian sausage to make as well. After Carol got back, we had lunch, and after lunch she took the girls to the pool. I got the paddleboard inflated and went to the water.
It is nice to paddle here, it is shallow, the mangroves provide some protection from the open water. The water is clear, but there’s a good amount of “stuff” floating. Like, some gooey thing that looks like poop is all over, not a lot of it, but some. I went the kayak launch, got in and went to the left, and as soon as I was out of the main mangrove coverage, the wind was a bit strong and the water was choppy, so it was harder to paddle that way. I paddled 30 minutes that way, then stopped and sat down to enjoy the area. I had a beer in my pocket, so I finished it, took some pictures, and started my way back. The way back was super fast, with the wind and current, I was back in 15 minutes.
When I got back, the girls were back already. Carol was back soon after and took the paddleboard. She decided to launch right from behind our spot. She left and decided to stay on her knees, and was moving quite fast. She was out there for maybe 30 minutes and liked it too. She went forward more, and saw some fish, sting rays even and loved that.
Later, the girls went to shower, we are right in front of the showers, and they came back on their towels within a few minutes…. hahahah… they didn’t even finish rinsing their hairs because there were insects in the bathroom hahahaha… like a spider, which I saw later was the size of a pea. We had the girls finish rinsing their hairs with the hose outside, which is what I use to rinse the paddleboard, or our feet or whatever.
Carol and I hung out outside for a while, it was nice. We then showered, we all ate leftovers and sandwiches for dinner, then had some free time. We had the TV on and the girls watched their own things on their computers, usually Youtube. We got everyone in bed around 9:30.
We had a nice moving day and enjoyed the pool and paddling out in the canal here.