Thursday, March 16, 2017

#33 - Thursday, 16 March 2017 | Kissimmee Prairie Preserve S.P., Florida

R A N D O M.   R O A D.   T H O U G H T S.

No deadlines, no schedule. The closest thing are campsite reservations.

I "should" be in Everglades National Park right now, for a second visit of 2017, but I'm still camped at KPPSP. Was supposed to receive two packages here yesterday and neither arrived. 

Temperature is a matter of perspective, and it's not always warm in southern Florida.
Woke to 38°F/4°C this morn. Tent campers didn't look like happy campers. Young guys in two tents across the way were bundled up inside their running car.

I don't believe in luck, but sometimes shit works out.
I walked to the camp office when they opened at eight to check on packages. One arrived on schedule after the office closed yesterday. They didn't have it yet but said it would be in shed at the park entrance. A ranger delivered it to my site a couple hours later. The other was a UPS error that caused a day delay. But I was also in need of extending my stay. It turned out that only one site was unreserved, and that was the one I've been on for the past five nights. So not only was I able to stay one more night, but I wouldn't have to move my rig. Keen readers will remember that this already my third campsite here.

Camping experience is also a matter of perspective. I am fascinated by all the different rigs and styles I have encountered already. One woman's glamping is another woman's slumming. One man's roughing it is another man's hell. My perspective is based on my preference for national and state parks, and eventually completely off the grid boondocking. I don't care to experience the RV Park world where people pay more than I like to pay for a one night hotel for a campsite so they have clubhouses to play mahjong, a nice heated swimming pool and 24 hour security. But, in my time on the road thus far, my first night in the Wheelhouse was the day I saw the poshest recreational vehicle. The southern gentleman unabashedly told me that he paid $530,000. It was incredible and a camping version of a rock star's tour bus. Here at the state park there are people in tents and some in trailers that aren't much larger than coffins. One guy has a pop-up tent trailer that is as old and dirty as he is. For one night a guy in a VW bus that I was surprised ran and looked like thirty or so years old junkyard rust camped next to me and wandered about drinking shit beer. When I had my coffee in the morning I watched him emerge from the back of the tiny vehicle in his pajamas and light a cigarette while urinating not one foot from his bus.


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