We leave the park heading to Sawmill Campground near Dade City, Florida. Dade City is not in Miami Dade County. It is northeast of Tampa and West of Orlando. We drive North through the Miami/Fort Lauderdale suburbs and then West on I-75 (Alligator Alley) towards Naples and then again North through Fort Myers, Venice, Sarasota and Tampa. North of Tampa we are amazed at the hills surrounding us. It almost seems as if we could be in southern Indiana, Ohio or any of a number of other areas of the country. We’ve traveled from Washington, DC to Miami so often in the last 20 years; this part of the Florida landscape had escaped our memories.
It begins pouring rain. Later, I heard that it rained 3 inches in 1 hour. We arrive at Sawmill and check-in quickly. The cute guy assisting us offers us a better rate for the 4 nights we’re staying, than we had gotten earlier while making our reservation. This is a good start. We’re back in the truck and driving into the park, through one of 3 gates?
This is the first park we’ve been to with 3 gates. Do that many people arrive at the park at once? We can hear music in the distance. We’re attempting to follow the map but we suddenly are at a circular drive and obviously in the wrong area. Some guy comes running from out of nowhere and directs us back to Banana Lane. We pull up in front of our site and get out in the rain to survey the site.
Steve starts backing the trailer in and the neighbor in, guess what: a Class A motorhome, comes out to his screen room and hollers, “you’re never going to get that in starting off like that, you need to come from the other direction; do you need a real flashlight to see with?” Steve has gotten much better at backing up, but in the driving rain, with the music blaring and of course attempting to line ourselves up parallel to the patio we both become very frustrated. Soon enough we are set up and the rain has let up somewhat.
I attempt to hookup our sewer hose only to discover that our 25 feet will not reach, so we’ll worry about that tomorrow. We go for a walk to find the courtyard of Woodies is packed with people. This is a scheduled band play-offs, several different bands play to the crowds delight. There is a large lesbian contingent and a lot of younger people. The campground is packed and the bars are full. In my younger days I would have had so much fun here. Now all I can think of is getting a shower and into my warm bed!
The next morning after breakfast we walk around the park, it is amazingly cool and there are fires at several the campsites and cabins. People are everywhere although many have left or are leaving now. We wander through the Outpost and find a very comprehensive supply of leather/gay themed items. We decide to go the office and get more sewer hose. They don’t have any but suggest that Walmart will. We drive to Dade City to the Walmart and wander through the store—I am beginning to discover that I love shopping at Walmart. It also gives you a sense of the communities character. We wander the camping aisle—no sewer hose. We went to 3 stores without sewer hose in the camping aisles! So, we drove to Camping World in Tampa arriving at 5:20—ooops on Sundays they close at 5 PM. Back to Sawmill. This is a very rural area of Florida. We bought firewood from the office on our way back into the cg. I fix dinner and we decide relaxing in front of the TV fit our mood much better than a fire.
The next day we stop back in the office to ask about RV parts supplies and are directed to an RV sales office, who direct us to yet another Walmart or the nearby RV parts supplier. We get to this Walmart and are wandering the camping aisle, when I suddenly think we have to walk through another part of the store—in the automotive section I discover the RV parts we’ve been looking for all along. OMG! I can’t believe we’ve been in 4 stores to finally have found what we’ve been looking for! I could lose my mind or already have. We finish our shopping—we didn’t get anything yesterday. We return to the cg and start installing our sewer hose. The site is a huge site, nearly 3 times the size of most RV sites. We need approximately 40 feet of sewer hose. We are astounded! Just as we finish our neighbor pulls into the space in front of our connections, (where his Jeep has been parked all along) commenting that "this is a monument to sewer hoses!" Our site is large enough that 3 RV’s could park side by side on it with room for the patio between 2 of them. The connections are in front of the space adjacent our site. We eat dinner and relax. Steve starts a fire, but the wood won’t burn. We’ve been sold green wood again. Why do cg’s sell green wood?
On Tuesday, we walk around the cg and take photo’s. It is a very nice park. The pond is the cleanest one on a cg we’ve seen in some time. Most seem to be cesspools, but this one has a fountain, so some circulation to prevent stagnant standing water. Back at the trailer we both work for a while. My brother-in-law Gary calls and we agree to meet he and Sally in Wesley Chapel 30 miles away for dinner. The cg is virtually empty. Compared to the weekend party atmosphere this is amazing. The weather has been cool, so we have not really been at the pool, although it is quite nice with the Splash bar poolside blaring music all day long. We have a nice meal at a steak house with Sally & Gary, enjoy chatting with them and then wander around the corner to Bed, Bath & Beyond. We shop and laugh so hard I am crying. We have more fun with them. Gary is hilarious. Sally is a perfect foil to his humor and if I do say so, Steve and I play off them both very well.
Read the next sequence in our blog: Is it worth driving a mile down a bumpy country lane?
Authors bio is coming up shortly.
Great article. There’s a lot of good info here, though I did want to let you know something – I am running Mac OS X with the current beta of Firefox, and the design of your blog is kind of bizarre for me. I can understand the articles, but the navigation doesn’t work so good.
Aw, this was a really quality post. In theory I’d like to write like this too – taking time and real effort to make a good article… but what can I say… I procrastinate alot and never seem to get something done.