Yesterday afternoon we crossed the border into Alabama, ending our 5 month and 17 day stay in Florida. While we were roaming around quite a bit in Central Florida, that definitely ranks amongst our longest being in one geographic area during our 6 years of nomadic travels.
While there was little more than a road sign marking the crossing, it was quite the emotional border. It feels like the closing of a chapter, and the start of a new one.
The past several months have been quite intense for us, dealing with my father’s health (and if you read yesterday’s post – it’s also been wrapped up in our work life).
As I’ve said many times before, I can’t express adequately how blessed I feel to have a lifestyle where we could pull in and really be there.
It’s definitely been a time of shifting our focus inward towards family and ourselves, and thus – not much on a personal or adventure level to report here.
We extend our thanks to you – our followers and readers and friends – for being kind and understanding with the shift in content posted these past few months. We hope to have more variety to share again as we begin a new chapter of roaming, exploring and adventures.
We have a lot of work projects on our plate right now, so we’re carefully balancing long work days with a slow transition to Austin. This generally means we travel 150-200 miles, then park ourselves for a couple days to hyper focus. We’ve decided to concentrate on finding scenic and peaceful state parks during this segment to work from, and thus far – we’re quite pleased with the results. We’re taking lots of photos to share a wrap-up post later.
I write this from Gulf State Park in Alabama, which is a pretty ideal spot. While we’ve only made it a few miles from the Florida border, it was a big milestone for us. Our next stop will be the New Orleans area, which we just discovered is coinciding with Jazz Fest this coming weekend. So much for peaceful focused work time. Oh… darn.
We’re on track for arriving to Austin by mid-May, and will stick around for a couple weeks attending to some business meetings – providing we can string together enough RV space available for our time there. That’s proving difficult.
Anyway, that’s all to report for now..
We have some other upcoming events coming together. But for now – if you find yourself roaming around the midwest during the time period, then please save the dates of June 7-10 to join us in Dixon, MO for a little rally-type thingie. We’ll follow-up with details soon.
We stayed there once as well and kind of the same story, never got a chance to really explore Mobile. We did a drive through though and it seemed like a really cool city, I’m sure it would’ve been a beautiful reprieve as I can’t say I was always in love with the deep South.
Just outside of New Orleans we stayed at the Bayou Segnette State Park… loved it. It has good wifi and FREE laundry. http://www.crt.state.la.us/parks/ibyusegne.aspx
As for Austin … just behind Pecan park you can find good street parking (Us & the roaming pint did for several nights!). You can plan this between your Pecan grove RV stay. Oh, and we chatted with the Pecan folks and it’s seems they just want to get to know you a bit before having you stick around for too long. So your “luck” might change once you’ve made contact. 😉
Cheers! Enjoy Louisiana and Texas!
We’re actually at Bayou Segnette right now… after reading about the NuCrewe staying here and enjoying it! It is quite lovely, and wow… free laundry?? State Parks keep amazing me!
And yeah, totally true about Pecan Grove. Last time we stayed there we got a nod to keep staying there, but that was 2 years ago. For now, we’ve got a base camp lined up at NuRVers central (Gonzalez), which will work out quite well for us as it turns out we’ll have business stuff in Houston, San Antonio and Austin to attend to. Unfortunately, we’re not quite street camp enabled in the heat without a way to generate power (generator needs works, no solar yet). We do have some driveway surfing options lined up, but thinking commuting in from Gonzales will be the best.
Good luck for your next chapter! I just hope you can keep us posted with your next journey.. Thanks for this as well!
Gulf State Park is cool. I grew up in Mobile nearby. Make sure you stop by and see the battleship USS Alabama and Bellingraph Gardens near Mobile; both are excellent. Daphne and Fairhope are a couple of nice little towns; they’ve gotten a bit yuppified in the years since I grew up but there are still some nice places for lunch. If you’re in Mobile proper; Wentzel’s Oyster House near the Loop area is a great place to get them fried, stewed, or nude as the owners put it.
We really enjoyed Gulf State Park.. really well laid out spacious sites and great amenities. Perfect spot to park for a few days and get some work done. Hardly ever left the park tho before we headed on (now in New Orleans)
Pecan Grove in Austin is one of my favorite parks ever. One of the rare RV Parks actually in a city, but doesn’t feel like you’re just in a parking lot. Have fun in the South, you sound like you’re about to get deep in it!
Agreed.. Pecan Grove is a one our favorites ever too! I mean.. who can resist being next door to Chuy’s happy hour, and Town Lake, and beer, and vegan cafe and crepes?? We have a ressie there for the few nights they could get us in during our time span in the area. We also love McKinney Falls.
I grew up in Austin, one of my favorite towns to visit 🙂
Right on! We’ve been told they don’t have space before too, by Robert himself and also his wife…but somehow they always seem to find a way to let us stay longer (but we’re in a considerably smaller vehicle than you guys, too). I was never able to find anything else in the area that was very cool (since by comparison, nothing ever could be), but some friends of ours (do you know the Bare Naked Family?) told us this place off of Mopac, near a Waffle House, was a cool spot, too. Much further out and unfortunately I don’t remember any other details about the place…