We departed from The Old Pavilion RV Park near Perry, FL at about 09:00 EST and went across country (Beach Rd to US-98 to SR-267 to SR-20 to US-331 back to US-98) to Topsail Hill Preserve State Park. These were all good roads with interesting old Florida scenery. We wanted to get there as early as possible in order to get setup to watch the Tampa Bay Bucs Win the Superbowl and arrived at 12:30PM CST (2.5 hours prior to check-in). Our site wasn’t ready, so we had to hangout in the parking lot for about 30 minutes. We used that time to unhook the Tahoe and go purchase firewood at the park store.
This was our second time at Topsail Hill Preserve State Park. This time we were in site #57 which had a clear view of southwestern sky. Our roof top satellite dish worked fine the first night (although it couldn’t seem to get all 3 Western Arc satellites, so we operated in Hybrid mode). The second day we couldn’t seem to get 3 satellites in either configuration, so we broke out R2D2 and used it all week until Saturday at which point it couldn’t seem to get all 3 Western Arc satellites, so we switched back to the roof which worked just fine (go figure).
We had good access to the Verizon Wireless cell phone towers, but Beth’s Visible phone seemed to get de-prioritized regularly during busy hours. It was barely acceptable for surfing, but would not have worked for streaming. We ran into similar issues at the previous campground.
We were close to the laundry facility and it had 8 washers, 8 dryers, and a bill changer. The washers and dryers were $1.50/load each.
Topsail Preserve SP Site #57 
Topsail Preserve SP Site #57
Beth’s brother Dick joined us at our site on Monday evening and stayed with us for the week. We parked our Tahoe in a parking area behind our site and he parked his converted Ford Transit Van in our driveway and slept in it. He has been doing the van conversion himself and was using this trip to shakeout any issues and help determine what direction to head in with the remainder of the conversion. We definitely enjoyed his company.
The weather wasn’t much to write home about (we rarely saw any sun), but it was generally kind enough to stop raining early in the morning and not start up again until around supper time. We managed to walk to the beach several days (2 miles round trip) and cook several dinners over the fire. Dick took his new drone to the beach several times and got some great video.
Wednesday afternoon we went to Harry T’s in Destin to confirm that their food was still as good as it was when we ate there during our 2018 visit. It was still delicious! Beth and I had the Grouper Strip Platter while Dick had the Blackened Redfish Entree. Everything was delicious.
Harry T’s – Caesar Salad 
Harry T’s – Grouper Strips 
Harry T’s – Blackened Redfish with a Creamy Snow Crab Meat Topping 
Floating Bar
Thursday evening we cooked a Filet Mignon, Porterhouse, and Ribeye steaks over the campfire along with twice baked potatoes. Another excellent meal (thank goodness the beach is a 2 mile round trip walk).
Beth and Dick Enjoying a Fire
Late afternoon and evening on Friday was very rainy so we had to cook supper inside. Beth was cooking chicken and vegetables in an electric skillet and then fired up the microwave to heat some water and our power went out. After some diagnosis it looks like the inverter/charger went out. It still appears to charge the batteries, but all of our outlets on inverter are dead. Unfortunately, that includes the refrigerator, so we had to run an extension cord from the utility post to the outside access panel for the refrigerator to get it running again. For the rest of the evening we had to live like our forefathers by reading books and talking to each other. I downloaded the electrical schematics from Winnebago and discovered that we have one electrical outlet in the bathroom (intended for a washer/dryer hookup) that is not connected to the inverter, so we ran extension cords from it up to the entertainment center so we could watch TV on our satellite dish (we were “glamping” once again). I also determined that I could move the refrigerator connection in the breaker panel back to it’s original position (before we upgraded it to a residential A/C compressor) which is not connected to the inverter. We will investigate replacing the inverter when we get back to Tampa.