Friday was a typical travel day.  Usually at the beginning of a trip, we have to have some kind of RV store to stop in and purchase some replacement for a broken part. 

This time we needed to replace the latch on the screen door.  For Charlie, it was a fairly easy fix, and the door is now operating much better.  If you have any kind of camper and you have kids, please encourage them to be VERY gentle with the RV.  It is EXTREMELY fragile given that they are made to be light-weight for easier traveling.  Some child of ours, who will remain unnamed, in a fit of anger, yanked on the door too hard or slammed it or something causing the latch to break. 

Also, if you are parents who own a camper of any kind, please be prepared to be VERY patient with your children and expect that things will get broken and get broken easily.  At least we bought this one used, unlike the last camper.

It was a 6ish hour drive to the Miami Everglades campground from our campground in Jacksonville.  We didn’t really stop to do anything exciting, so it was a rather boring day as far as reading and writing a blog goes.  We do have lots of good discussion in the RV with whomever is traveling with Charlie and I, but oftentimes the kids want to travel in the car because I stay on them about getting some of their math done.  As a matter of fact, I need to remind some of them about math as I am writing this!

The GPS took us off I-95 quite a ways outside of Miami, for which I am always grateful.  We drove by Lake Okeechobee, which I thought would be beautiful, but it turns out that we weren’t able to see it most of the time due to the high sides of the lake built up around it. 

In some ways, driving through southern Florida reminded me of driving through Kansas and eastern Colorado.  It is FLAT, and you can see for many miles. 

I was really quite nervous about staying in a campground with a “Miami” address since I am really not a big city person.  Fortunately, this campground doesn’t seem like it is in Miami at all.  We are in a very agricultural area.  Anywhere we drive around the campground we see farms growing trees and shrubs for nurseries.  What I struggle with is that I have no idea what many of the plants are that are growing around here.  We see orchards of many kinds of trees that I don’t recognize.  I have yet to be successful talking Charlie into stopping to let me out to take a picture of a tree so that I can try to identify it. 

We’re looking forward to exploring the area!  Our campground is only 30 minutes away from Biscayne National Park, 30 minutes away from Everglades National Park, and less than an hour away from Key Largo, so we’re really excited to venture out and check out the natural beauty that south Florida has to offer!

Rebecca