Florida - the land of Alligators, mosquitoes and humidity. This may sound as if it not the place to visit. Quite contrarily it is a tremendous state to visit and spend some time. My advice is just pick the time of the year carefully. We have been to Florida 3 times, each time in June and early July and it was not too hot yet, by our standards, and no more humid than Thailand or Durban in South Africa. Later in summer we hear the heat and humidity is unbearable.

The highlight of Florida for us, without doubt is when we watched the Columbia Shuttle takeoff in June 1996, it is an experience which still gives me Goosebumps when I recall the launch.

We also visited Disney and spent 5 days in a hotel within the Disney grounds - TIP - this, in my view is the way to do it. As a 'Disney' resident one gets to go on all the rides and hour before the park opens to the general public, thereby avoiding the long lines of patient people waiting to get frightened out of their wits. If you love fireworks displays like I do, then Disney at night is a must. Our visit to Universal Studios was also a great experience.

We have a good friend, Dennis Brunton who lives in Sarasota, he owned a Feeling 390 sailboat, so together with him we spent every opportunity sailing in the Tampa Bay area. What a great place to sail. One can go sailing everyday of the year and still sail to a different place. Often we sailed out to one of the islands, anchored and enjoyed the rest of the day swimming in the crystal clear warm water, followed by a BBQ on the boat. The only scary experience we had was the lightning in Florida, especially when on the sea, standing next to a mast extending 15 metres or so into the air, like a beckoning lightning rod. Thankfully, we were never struck.

A year later we visited Dennis again, this time in our Elite 27' motorhome. We spent close to a week parked at the marina where he moored his boat - so plenty sailing again.

We had collected our motorhome in Hialeah Gardens, on the outskirts of Miami. The day we arrived in Miami, there was a tremendous storm, and on our way to Hialeah Gardens we saw our first tornado, which almost went straight through downtown Miami, accompanied with a torrential downpour.

After spending a few days at the park in Hialeah, travelling to Ft. Lauderdale to see the hundreds of marinas with some really great boats, we headed south to the Keys, the drive there was fascinating. It is 103 islands that have been joined by a road, at times the islands are just the width of the road, separating the again crystal clear waters of southern Florida. The water looked so inviting.

Key West is a truly fascinating town, with a buzz that is so unlike the rest of the USA, we could easily have been in the Caribbean. The aroma of cigar smoke in and around the town was very evident. We could not find a RV park that was empty so at around 4 pm we went into a normal parking lot and asked if we could park there all night, for $20 the owner of the lot obliged. Unfortunately we were in the restaurant district so the incredibly loud music, all night, kept us until the very early hours of the morning - and it was hot and humid. The next morning we had a really great swim off one of the beaches - the water was so warm and very salty so we could almost just lie in the water and float.


From Key West we headed for Sarasota again, this time through the Everglades. Never have we seen so many alligators - thousands lying either side of the road that cuts through the 'Glades. We spent a night in a 'free park' in the middle of the 'glades' near a lake, where we watched some locals fishing amongst the millions of mosquitoes. We did not dare venture outside the motorhome after sunset, the bites from these monsters were really bad.

In January 2006, Scott and I attended the International Building Show in Orlando, so I decided to drive to Bradenton to see my buddy Dennis again. He is now building Lotus 7 type cars called the Brunton Stalker V6. He races them (and does well).

He kindly let me take one of his cars for a drive around Bradenton and Sarasota - quite aw-inspiring power.

In January 2007 we entered the Florida panhandle from Alabama. We were once again on one of our favourite states, looking forward to warm sunny days, balmy nights eating seafood at beachside restaurants for which Florida is so well known.

We went into Pensacola and went on a very scenic drive along the Escambia Bay. We also visited Pensacola Port (the old historic area) which was very quaint, but with some extremely expensive houses right on the water. From Pensacola we headed east along Highway 98 towards Destin, our first overnight stop in Florida.

Because we had experienced that the RV parks had been heavily booked along our route so far, we had booked a site in the Camping on the Gulf RV part at US$105 per night! This is without any doubt the most we had ever paid for a RV park site in all our travels. I guess this park was so expensive as some of the sites were right on the beach, we could not have been closer!

Our dream of warm Florida weather was shattered that night, the temperature fell to barely above freezing and the sea breeze was like ice. It's one of the coldest nights we have ever spent in a RV, but the heater worked well and shortly after turning it on, we were quite warm again. The next morning it was still very cold, and the strong breeze made it even worse, we both ran to and from the ablution block.

We left Destin, headed for Carrabelle, via Panama City, Mexico Beach, Port St Joe and Apalachicola (apple-letch-e-cola). Panama City is a typical Florida tourist resort - we stopped at the local information centre where besides useful information & maps we were give complimentary coffee and very fresh doughnuts. I think all the locals know about this as the place was full of people drinking coffee and scoffing doughnuts.

Port St Joe is a really quaint small town, quite old and most buildings have been restored and are in good condition, in many ways it reminded us a bit of a Napier. We parked the RV in a police parking ground and walked around this little seaside town.  Later we found out that the town is actually about to be listed on the NYSE to raise funds in order to promote itself as a premium vacation resort.

We also stopped at Apalachicola, parked the RV and walked around the small fishing town. Just outside the town we stopped at a real hick country seafood store to buy some prawns. I could not understand the guy in the shop at all, he had a real Southern drawl, one I had not heard before. Anyway, the prawns were cheap at $6 per pound and were nice & large. That night we had clam chowder with large prawns in our chowder - yummy!

That night we spent the night at Carrabelle, nothing much happens there, but the camp was good and the ablutions block was clean and more than acceptable.

From Carrabelle  we continued eastwards through Perry on our way to Crystal River, the longest 1-day trip we did. This road does not run along the coast but was nevertheless very scenic, with tree lined roads most of the way. The roads were in excellent condition.

The RV park at Crystal River was also very large and very neat and clean. Unfortunately Yvonne was bitten by either mosquitoes or "no-see-ums", she itched for days!

After leaving Crystal River we visited the small seaside town of Bayport, where we met Steve & Mare Klesse, a couple from Pennsylvania, who were fishing on a jetty. We spoke for a few hours and then we headed off again.

Our Next stop was St Petersburg, where we had pre-booked a site at St Pete Koa. Another very large camp, spotlessly clean in all respects. we even attended a "walk-in" movie, which we watched a movie about a pack of South Pole dogs, even Christchurch was mentioned. Our plan from here was to meet the Bruntons the next day (Friday 5th January) as we had to return the RV on Saturday morning in Tampa.

We basically spent our time visiting old haunts we had previously seen in and around Bradenton, and many of the restaurants - seafood, seafood and more seafood.

On Tuesday 9th, Yvonne & I in one Stalker, and Dennis and Pat in another, did a trip up to Tarpon Springs, a Greek village which is pretty authentic.  We even had Greek food there that was really good and very authentic and un-American.

The trip in the Stalkers was great, they have an incredible power-to-weight ratio, mine was roughly 250+HP and Dennis' was over 350HP, in a car that weighs only 1,400 pounds! The acceleration is incredible. Our day out was really enjoyable.