We spent almost 3 weeks in Florida before heading north again with our ultimate destination of Michigan for the summer. Florida was a truly mixed bag.

Our first 10 days were at a brand new “luxury” RV park in Cape Coral. That park had beautiful swimming pools, lovely sites, a spacious community room and amazing sunsets over the lakes. It was also interesting to see there were hurricane Ian refugees still there in trailers supplied by FEMA.

I spoke to one woman from Pine Island who had been there over a year after she lost everything from her mobile home when Ian blew through. She was hoping to buy the travel trailer FEMA supplied. After the hurricane destroyed her home it was also looted. Coming to the RV park in Cape Coral was challenging; apparently the park management and neighbors didn’t initially want them there and all the hurricane refugees had to be carefully vetted. At one point there were hundreds of them in the park, but when we were there, most had moved on. We did see some of the modest FEMA trailers being moved out while we were there.

Our reason for going to Cape Coral was to visit with friends who came over from Britain for their holiday. We enjoyed several fine boat rides with them and some lovely meals, and it was so great to catch up with them again -so it was completely worth the 2,000+ mile trip.

But we also wanted to do some spring diving in Florida, so we spent a week at O’Leno State Park after Cape Coral. What a contrast that site was to the Cape Coral RV park! The state park sites were lushly forested, private and most of all QUIET. It had been some time since we were able to spend a night without road noise waking us. The unfortunate part of all that nature was that the place was teeming with TICKS. I’ve never had a problem with them before, but we certainly did at that campground. Olive was well protected from her flea and tick medicine she takes, but they probably hitched a ride on her to get at us. Yikes!

One good part of the trip was one of the best kayak trips ever, down the crystal clear Ichetucknee River. It was a bit of a challenge to figure out putting my kayak in and getting it out since the takeout point access was controlled by a park concessionaire who charged an arm and a leg. It was an amazing paddle though – I saw hundreds of large fish below me and dozens of them jumping all over the river. Birds and turtles were everywhere. What an amazing experience!

We also had a disappointing dive at Ginnie Springs. It was really crowded there and after so many years of not diving I was overweighted and couldn’t seem to find neutral buoyancy in the 15’ entrance to the cavern. Still, it was nice to suck compressed air again!

We were eager to leave Florida with hopes of finding fewer ticks on our travels north. I’m still itching all over!