Cedar Key Bliss

Few places in our travels have seriously tempted us into actually looking at real estate during our visit.

Cedar Key was just such a place, and we can totally understand why our new friends Pat & Cindy Bonish took an extended hiatus there after their years of RVing to run the Low Key Hideaway.

Now mind you, we weren’t shopping for real estate to settle down at – heck no.

If we were to ever purchase real estate, Cedar Key comes close to our vision of someday being part of operating a nomadic landing pad.  A place to come back to, switch modalities of travel, converge with peers and kick back for a spell.

Our dream place would need to have a deep water dock for our (eventual) live aboard boat, access to a runway to land & park our (eventual) single engine plane, a couple rooms for hosting couch surfers & a caretaker and have plenty of RV parking for our bus and fellow RVers.

It’s a nice vision, for sure.. but we’re nowhere ready to own or manage fixed property again.

For now, we’ll put Cedar Key on our short list of places to keep in mind for when we are ready… and here’s why.

Beautiful Sunsets

The first part of our stay was at Sunset Isles RV Park, where a few other NuRVers had been staying.

Our landing party, Debby & Bill had gotten sucked into Cedar Key there a few weeks prior when they fell in love with it. Soon after, Maria & Brian of The Roaming Pint… and Jeanette & Dennis of Cheddar Yeti landed as well.

That was enough to tempt us over to take a much needed break from being stationary in Melbourne. We enjoyed many pot lucks, dinners, hang outs, adventures and Tiki Bar fun with these guys.

Upon arriving and seeing the waterfront spots, we were convinced to upgrade our reservation for the week.

Despite the tiny tight spots, it was totally worth it to wake up every morning to a direct water view and experience some of the most amazing sunsets. We had a dock right out our front window, which was perfect for morning yoga and sunset toasts.

After just 3 days there, we realized a week just wasn’t going to be enough.  But Sunset Isles was unable to extend our stay in a waterfront spot.

But no worries, mon.

Low Key Hideway is just a block down the road, and most our gang had been spending the evenings over there anyway at the Tiki Bar.

Low Key is run by on-hiatus RVers Pat & Cindy, and they’ve done amazing things with this property – boasting a few nicely appointed motel suites and 4 waterfront RV spots.  They had just had a cancelation, and were able to get us in for a few nights to extend our stay and sunset views a bit longer.

We moved our bus over and parked with a Tiki Bar out our front door. How cool is that?

Low Key Town

Cedar Key has a very low local population.  There’s one market in town, one gas station and a produce stand that is open only 4 days a week.  There are no stop lights.

The feeling reminded us a bit of St. John in the US Virgin Islands where we wintered for 5 months last year – minus the mountains and beautiful tropical beaches, of course.  However, unlike St. John – Cedar Key is only a reasonable drive away from major shopping and facilities.

It has all the chill quaintness with only moderate isolation from the rest of the world. A perfect mix for getting away without much effort.

Cedar Key does have a tourist component, but it’s done in such a way that is not overwhelming or overdone.  All of the accommodations are individually owned classic motels or condos. There’s a dock on the water with all the tourist themed restaurants and shopping, which takes only a minute to walk through.

There’s plenty to do for the active minded – including kayaking (our crew renting a fleet of them for the afternoon), biking, walking, boating, fishing/crabbing and sipping a brew.

eXceSs and Lycktonite (aka Bill & Debby) even treated us to the first ever Cedar Key Hash, which gave us all a good scouting out of the area by foot.  (Hashing, for those not in the know, is like the classic paper chase – except it’s with beer.  It’s best described as ‘drinkers with a running problem’.)

Everyone we encountered in town was super friendly and chill.  Even the postal office worker was wearing a tropical shirt and a smile.

Accessible & Desirable

While Cedar Key is out of the way, it’s also accessible.  As soon as we announced we were heading there, we were flattered to be contacted by 3 different folks telling us they were re-routing to meet us there during our stay.

During our visit, we got to meet fellow bus nuts and new to full time RVing Clarke & Elaine.  They fit in just swell with all the NuRVers, and we had a great time hanging out with them.

Our dear friends Ann & Elliott (and nomad wannabes) from the Savannah, GA area also made a weekend trip in their Le’Sharo (yes, the same one we borrowed last year after selling our Oliver, and Chris told a hilarious tale of our trials and tribulations) to visit with us. It was awesome.

And 3-year full time RVer and tech guru Jonathan got tempted and headed over to join up with the NuRVer crew too.

We feel that we’d have no problem selling Cedar Key a desirable & accessible stop-in spot for nomads of all sorts to come join up in community.

Wrap-Up

Cedar Key was just what we needed, and we fully intend to return in the future.  Probably many times.

Our visit was possibly a bit more on the social side this time around than we were were prepared for after coming off such an intense couple months with my folks.  But we did manage to get a lot of work done in paradise (yes, we some how found the time, even if we did have to cut some of our evenings short) and get a tad bit of relaxation in.

What’s Next?

We’ve been spending the past several days in Spring Hill, FL – and just saw Chris’ parents off on their return to St. Louis after their snowbird winter. We enjoyed a most excellent Easter celebration with them, and my folks even decided to take a road trip and join us.

From here, we’ll head down to the St. Petersburg, FL area where we’ll contract Chris’ uncle to do some more interior modifications on the bus with us. On the list is re-finishing our front door, installing a new all-electric compressor fridge (we’re installing a marine designed Vitrifrigo to replace our old Dometic 2-way) and some additions to our dual desks for storage.

After that, we’re booked to be back in the Orlando area to take care of some business.  Our plans beyond that are quite fuzzy.