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Author: Anna

Spearfish, SD

Spearfish, SD

Spearfish, South Dakota is a lovely town and we really liked staying there for a week. The Black Hills begin just south of the town and is such a beautiful landscape. The historic Main Street was great to walk thru with boutiques, coffee shops, restaurants, antique stores, a visitor center, and various other businesses that were all fully open, not boarded up as have other historic districts we have been in. The Fall Festival which occurred while we were here was a lot of fun also with lots of booths, fresh produce and performances from the local dance studio and lots of proud parents in attendance.

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Brazos Bend State Park, Needville, TX

Brazos Bend State Park, Needville, TX

Wow, Brazos Bend State Park is just gorgeous. The park is very remote and so lush with massive oak, pecan and many other trees with Spanish moss hanging in them. Upon entering for our 2 week stay, we were surrounded with swamps, five lakes, many hiking trails leading all over the park and lots of wildlife including alligators! Yes, we saw over 30 alligators while hiking around the lakes. Thank goodness our campsite was well away from the lakes so we did not have to check for alligators constantly.

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White Sands National Park / Alamogordo NM

White Sands National Park / Alamogordo NM

While staying in Las Cruces, NM at the end of February, 2020 we took a day trip to White Sands National Park and Alamogordo. This is the largest gypsum dune field in the world and is so large it can actually be seen from space. White Sands has been a National Monument since 1933 and in January, 2020 became the 62nd National Park. So, of course, I had to get a t-shirt with the new White Sands National Park on it! The visitor center sign out front will be changing soon!

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Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park

A clear and sunny day allowed us to have a wonderful visit to Big Bend National Park in March, 2020.

We were late making reservations to camp in the park so unfortunately Big Bend was completely booked along with all the RV parks in the small towns just outside the park. We found out that spring break is the busiest time for Big Bend likely due to the milder temperatures that time of year. We ended up staying in Marfa about an hour and a half north and taking a long day trip.

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Christmas RV Park, Christmas, FL

Christmas RV Park, Christmas, FL

We came to Christmas RV Park in Christmas, FL to settle in for a month, do some sightseeing and to leave our trailer safely for 5 days while we went on a Disney Cruise with our family.  Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans… Hurricane Dorian decided to throw a kink in ours.

New terms such as ‘Cone of Uncertainty’ and ‘Evacuation Plan’ soon became very important to us. 

We followed all the weather news projections, read the hurricane prep websites and created the important Evacuation plan!  This meant sitting in lines at gas stations, hunting for a propane refill center that had not run out, enduring the grocery store as the last pallet of water was fought over and stocking up on food.  We booked the last spot at the Jennings, Florida KOA at the Florida/Georgia state line and evacuated there.

Now a new term to us is ‘Hurricane Fatigue’.

Dorian has strengthened to an incredible Category 5 and is crawling along. We’ve extended our stay at Jennings to ride out the storm with hopefully only tropical storm conditions. We hope to reserve a spot in an RV park in Orlando later this week so we can meet up with our family and still go on our Disney Cruise. 

Stay tuned!

Rating: ⭐⭐1/2
Site Quality:  Dirt/gravel road with quite a few pot holes and mud puddles. Grass/dirt pads with some having gravel pads. We got lucky and had a wood deck but as it wasn’t tied down so we were very concerned about safety in hurricane force winds.
Type:  Commercial Park
Access: From Interstate 95 take FL-50 west to the park.
Staff: Friendly but indifferent. Not helpful when we called to make original reservation and took a couple of calls to reserve site. Manager called us crazy when we left early to evacuate.
Amenities:  Heated pool, mail service with TV/game room, community fire pit, shuffleboard, meeting halls and kitchen, 2 very clean laundry rooms, 2 very clean restrooms/showers, dump station, onsite well and sewage treatment. Lots of planned activities during the busy winter season.
Cellular/WiFi:  Verizon and AT&T were both decent at about 4 Mbps.
What we liked:  Our site was D-1 on Dasher Lane. Many friendly long-term residents stopped by to visit, invite us to Friday happy hour and make us feel welcome. Lots of trees. All the names of the roads in the park and buildings were Christmas season names. Nice sunsets.
What we didn’t like: This park was all mostly dirt which made for a soggy, swampy mess during the summer wet season. All sites are dirt and grass with a crushed shell mix on a few. The mosquitoes and no-see-ums were relentless. Being here in the wet summer season was not a good idea but the drier winter season is likely better.
Verdict: Despite the friendly residents we would not return.