March 2: We were sad to leave Laura S. Walker State Park and Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, where we had met a lot of nice people and had a great time.
A cold front swept through in the early morning, bringing rain that kept us both awake. However, by morning, it was quite cool but clear. We headed south beside the swamp to Florida and an RV dealership.
We were quite pleased at the dealership to learn that our air conditioner is fine – a wire had disconnected from the control and was easily reconnected. As well, the technician noticed that our fridge, which is supposed to automatically convert from electric to propane when the electricity is disconnected was not doing so. This proved to be another electrical problem, which he fixed. Finally, he quizzed us about our (non)use of our electrical generator, and advised us to ward off potential problems by running the generator while traveling – this also keeps the fridge running and allows us to run the interior air conditioning on the generated power. All in all, we had a much better experience than we expected and happily do not need further repairs in this round. Thank you to the technician (whose name we sadly did not get).
Rumple also had a another new experience today, the DQ “Pup Cup”. I don’t know if this is common practice, but our DQ server brought Rumple a small cup of vanilla ice cream. I think most dogs like ice cream, but Rumple was not impressed.
The Payne Prairie State Park near Gainesville was highly recommended to us by our friend Anne, but had space for only one night. Instead, we headed for the Travelers Campground in Alachua, north of Gainesville. This campground has some eccentricities. For one thing, the office features a large aviary with about a dozen very large, colorful and noisy parrots. They were quite raucous during the afternoon, but settled down in the evening. As well, around the perimeter of the campground is a menagerie including: 1 emu, 2 donkeys, one painted pony, 3 goats, 1 peacock, 1 white peacock and several cows. (The photos posted by the campground are better than any I could take: http://travelerscampground.com/safari.html). I guess the owners like the birds and animals, as there does not seem to be any commercial purpose to these creatures. Another odd thing about the campground is that the RVs are parked on long one-way lanes. It is not clear to me how the RVs in the interior lanes are supposed to get in and out. Our campsite is on the edge of the campground, close to the emu, donkeys and pony.
Alachua is only 20 minutes by road to UFL, so it has been a good choice for us.