Two Weeks Catching Up in Melbourne, Florida

Ahhh.. returning from our 3-week adventure up to Canada.

A break from routine, even when our normal is pretty variable, is awesome and soul-refreshing. We love the alternate perspective it gives us, which is why we love mixing up our travel styles from time to time.

But returning home always has its adjustment period.

We knew we’d have a lot to catch up on, so despite Florida not being the ideal place in late May – we booked 2 weeks at a local campground. It also gave us some bonus time with my mom before we head north to cooler temperatures for the summer.

So, I’ll try to catch you up on what we’ve been up to.

Wickham Park – Melbourne, FL

Before I met Chris and hit the road, I had lived beachside of Melbourne for 12 years. It’s also where my parents retired. As such, it’s a frequent place we return to, and likely holds the record for most number of RV-nights we’ve spent.

We favor two parks while in the area.

If we’re staying for multiple months, we’ve enjoyed Lucky Clover Mobile Home Park out beachside. It’s right in the same neighborhood I lived for many years, is blocks from the beach and walking distance to shopping & dining. However, their nightly & weekly prices are on the spendy side.

The park we alternate our stays with is Wickham Park (our review) in Melbourne itself.

It’s a huge county owned public park that offers a lot of activities – pavilions, horseshoes, dog park, hiking & biking, archery, disc golf and more. They also have a campground with over a 100 spots, and a few years back they upgraded them all to full hookups.

If we’re in town for stays measured in weeks, it’s usually our top choice – for price & experience. (Although, we have had some past.. umm.. interesting stays here.) And it was our choice for this stay, especially since they now have online booking and I was able to snag a pond-side spot.

What we love about Wickham Park is many of the spots are quite spacious and they have no trouble with you getting creative. Want to point your windows to the best view or privacy? Go for it!

All and all, we had a lovely stay at the park again and it served as a great basecamp for the things we needed to get done.

It was also completely mind blowing that not one, but SIX blog readers & YouTube viewers spotted us camped in the park and dropped us a line (which we alway prefer to knocks on our door.. thanks guys!).

It was fun getting to know everyone, and we even hosted a little get-together to introduce folks to each other.

Chores & Work

One of the reasons we wanted to stick around Melbourne for a bit was to handle some of life’s basic chores.

Routine Vet Care for Kiki

First up, Kiki was due for her annual exam and vaccines.

We long ago established her with Banfield Pet Hospital, the veterinary clinic in most Petsmarts around the country. They keep centralized records for her and she can transfer to any clinic in the network with ease – allowing us to pick up her care wherever we are.

They also offer a Wellness Plan for one low price that includes all her preventive routine care and office visits. It’s awesome.

The Melbourne location isn’t our favorite amongst the many great clinics we’ve been to across the country (they seem to run super slow there), but Kiki is good to go for another 6-months.

Check out our buddy Nina’s recent excellent post Handling Pet Care & Emergencies On The Road for more information on this subject.

Routine Human Care

Oh how I wish healthcare for humans was as easy as Banfield makes it for pets.

I had a fabulous primary care physician when I first hit the road who was excellent at working with me remotely – however he left his practice eventually (wise on his part, bummer for me).

I’ve tried re-establishing myself with new physicians since, and kept hitting brick walls. Finding a primary care physician who I both jive with personally AND is willing to work with whacky nomads who might need routine care in other places – is a challenge.

And I’m frustrated to report, I was not successful this time around.

Despite lots of research and communication upfront to try to select a physician who seemed capable of meeting my needs – I ended up resigning from the practice by the end of the appointment.

I did get caught up some basic exam stuff however, so at least I’m a couple steps ahead.

I’m contemplating following up with a post about the options we’re exploring in finding healthcare on the road – to complement our general article about Healthcare & Health Insurance for Nomads.

We’ll see how inspiration strikes me – as there are a LOT of posts I’d love to write if only I had the time.

Work

While we were able to get in a few work hours while we were galavanting around up north, we knew we were coming back to several impending projects.

At this point, we have successfully transitioned our work life to be around our own projects and all deadlines are self-inflicted. Which is a curse. I think clients can be much more flexible & understanding than I am.

We’ve been working on a new Review Center for our website, RV Mobile Internet (where we focus on just mobile internet topics for RVers).

As the development was nearing completion, we needed to switch gears and start entering in tons of product information & reviews. The new Review Center is now soft launched, and we’ll continue adding in product categories – so head on over if you’re looking for our take on various boosters, hotspots and antennas.

We have other projects we still need to catch up on. It seems no matter how many items we knock off the to-do list, more keep appearing.

Family & Fun Time

Thank goodness our stay in Melbourne wasn’t ALL work and no play. We’ve gotten a lot better about this balance thing and making time for exploring.

There were many evenings spent with my mom for dinner, and helping her with tech-chores.

And we managed to sneak off for some local theater to see an awesome production of the musical Big Fish.

We took a day to visit nearby Kennedy Space Center. I’ve been a space geek since forever, and having lived on the Space Coast for so many years – it’s near and dear to my heart. In particular, I wanted Chris to see the new Space Shuttle Atlantis display – which was as awe inspiring as my last visit.

We timed our visit for the next scheduled Space-X Falcon 9 launch, and got ourselves out to the Banana Creek Viewing area at the Saturn V building for likely one of the best launch views a civilian can score.

Unfortunately, it got scrubbed for that evening (and watched it from the beach closer to us the next evening) – which didn’t make our visit to KSC any less memorable.

We wrapped up our stay in Melbourne by driving south a couple hours to rendezvous with our buddies Nikki & Jason. If you’ve not been following their journey (and you should be following Gone with the Wynns, they’re awesome) they just switched from full time RVing to moving aboard their fabulous new catamaran sailboat.

Since we opted to meet in the middle from where they have the boat docked, we weren’t able to see their new digs. But it was awesome to catch up in person. We last saw them briefly up in Alaska last summer.

What’s Next?

With our two weeks in Melbourne up… we’ve started our northward trek with the goal of escaping the heat. It’s been pretty oppressive for us, and we’re already tired of the numbing sound of air conditioners.

We’ll be balancing adding miles to the odometer while hopefully decreasing numbers on the thermometer.

We hope to find places to visit & explore for a few nights each. If we find somewhere we really like, who knows if we might plop down longer.

We have no real mission (other than cooler temps) or reservations anywhere, and are playing it all by serendipity.