Saturday, October 28

It’s chilly this morning – about 28°, brrrr!  I eat a quick breakfast and then break camp to drive down to Santa Rosa Lake State Park.  Santa Rosa is on I-40 which is the route I will take when I start on my way to Florida Monday morning.  Since it is a little further south, it will also be somewhat warmer.

I arrive around 11am and drive to the one campground that is open.  The B loop is closed.  Only the A loop is open and it is electric/water sites which I don’t want.  But I’ll go ahead and drive through.  Every site is taken or is only available for one night.  Also there is some motorcycle club having a meetup here and there are about 30 Harleys parked on the loop road! I could barely get through. Now I like motorcycles, but I don’t really want to hear 30 of them firing up all at once where I am camping!!!  So this is definitely out!

I drive back to the visitors center to inquire about the primitive camping area.  I don’t need hookups, but I do need to fill my freshwater tank.  The park employee tells me there is a water faucet in the primitive camping area.  Excellent!  I head over there to investigate.

At this park the primitive camping is basically pull off alongside the road and there is a picnic table on a path about 30 yards away.  No shelter or fire ring.  Not the greatest but I just need a spot for a couple nights until I head out on Monday.  So I make use of the water spigot then find a spot down at the end of the road.  There were two other campers here. I was level front to back so since I’m not planning to go out of the park, I don’t need to unhook.  I don’t like this park as much as Storrie Lake.  The only positive is they do have a functioning dump station.  So on the way in I emptied the gray tank.  Now I can take a full shower and not worry about the tank.  I will empty again when I leave. And the fee is covered by my annual camping pass.

Neither the developed campground nor the primitive camping area have access to the lake – in the photo below you can just see the lake in the background.

There were lots of birds and also butterflies!

When I am going to be traveling for a few days in a row, I like to cook something that will give me leftovers to eat for a couple days.  So I made a big pot of pasta sauce and grilled some veggies to go in it.  I have enough sauce for a couple more meals.