We spent the weekend at The Old Pavilion RV Park near Perry, FL on our way to a full week stay at Topsail Hill Preserve State Park. We left home at 10:45 AM EST and headed up I-75. We stopped for lunch at the Webster, FL Rest Area and ate the second halves of the Publix Subs we had purchased the day before while packing for the trip.
After bottoming out the tail end of RV while trying to enter a Walmart gas station on the way home from our previous camping trip, we decided it was time to stop trying to save a fortune on diesel fuel and start using Truck Stop fuel pumps as much as possible. Once we made that decision we decided to try out the TSD Logistics diesel fuel discount program. After setting up our account we downloaded their cell phone application which shows their discount fuel prices at nearby Truck Stops. The have agreements with a number of Truck Stop chains, but currently their best deal is with TA-Petro (Travel Centers of America-Petro). The best deal on our route was at the TA Truck Stop in Wildwood, FL. This worked out well. It was the fastest we have ever fueled (usually at Truck Stops we have to go inside and leave a credit card to enable the pump and then go back in an pay after fueling). Our fuel card eliminated the trip inside and Truck Stop pumps are faster than our RV can handle (you have to hold the pump trigger just right). We were in and out in minutes and saved $0.55/gal on 40 gallons of fuel.
After fueling we took US-27 North out of Ocala and then Alt US-27 out of Williston, FL. In Chiefland, FL Alt US-27 joined US-98. We picked up Hwy 358 near Steinhatchee, FL. In Steinhatchee we took SR-51 to cross the Steinhatchee River and then took Beach Rd the rest of the way to Keaton Beach near our campground. The Beach Rd portion of the trip was very interesting. We drove over 15 miles without seeing another vehicle (or human). When we got closer to Keaton Beach we passed some large fish camps.
The Old Pavilion RV Park is directly on the Gulf of Mexico and there are quite a few sites right on the beach, but our site is in the interior. As with most beach campgrounds, the sites are packed fairly close together, but there’s plenty of room to maneuver. The Wi-Fi signal here is strong, but like most RV Parks, there’s no bandwidth (0.32 Mbps download). This gave us a chance to test using Beth’s Visible cellular service. We were originally getting 15 Mbps download speeds, but that dropped down to less than 1 Mbps in the evening (there are no caps, but we get prioritized below regular Verizon subscribers if the cell site is busy). By 10PM the speeds were good enough again to watch television on our Spectrum TV application on ROKU. By the next day, I gave up and turned our Dish Satellite service back on. On a positive note, our Visible service works fine for our normal (non-streaming) internet activities.
Friday night was our maiden voyage in our king size bed. Previously we had an RV Queen (which is shorter than a normal Queen) and always felt like we needed more room. This winter we ripped out the night stand on Beth’s side of the bed and our good friend Raul built a frame that allowed us to place a king size mattress in the bedroom. We both slept great and now have plenty of room for everyone (including 3 very cold cats).
Mercury, Beth, & Phoebe
It was cold and rainy all day Saturday (our second day), so we just hunkered down and watched college basketball. Beth re-heated spaghetti she had made and frozen for days like these.
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