Posted in: Campground Review, Exploring Florida, Rest Stop/Welcome Center/Visitor Center, Sightseeing

Florida’s Welcome Center and A Stone’s Throw RV Park

The drive from New Orleans to Florida was pretty long. The panhandle always seems small on the map; I think because it is so thin compared to the rest of Florida, my brain tells me it’s smaller, but it took a long time to drive!

We average stopping every 3-4 hours for diesel and/or bathroom breaks. Some of the truck stop bathrooms lately have been rough, so we stopped at the Florida Welcome Center on I-10 near Pensacola, Florida. It was huge! The boys got a kick out of the plane by the parking lot. Nick loves turtles and was happy to find the turtle sculpture by the doors.

There were vending machines that sold both drinks and candy and the Sun Pass for the toll roads. You could activate your pass at another machine. It did take several minutes to go through all the screens and to get the pass activated.

We then went into the main room. They had an astronaut suit behind the desk, along with free grapefruit and orange juice. We all tried the orange juice. The side wall was covered in tourist information and was broken up into the sections of Florida for ease of use. There was a kid’s corner with a cartoon playing on the TV. The front desk had welcome bags already made up with maps, some of the information pamphlets, and a set of masks!

We decided to stop near Tallahassee for the night. We were tired and had been on the road for almost 10 hours. We stayed at A Stone’s Throw RV Park. It was very conveniently located with quick access on and off the highway. They did have bathrooms and an entertainment room (looked like a pool table). The park offered pull-throughs with full hook-ups and WiFi, but we were tired and planned on leaving early, so we only hooked up the electric. The spaces were tight together and so were some of the turns on the interior road. I was glad it wasn’t completely full as it would have made some of it challenging to move in a large rig.

We didn’t get a lot of pictures, as we arrived when it was dark and left when the sun was just coming up.

When we booked online, you could pick your spot and it would show how long the site was. We managed to get one that fit both the RV and the truck. The site wasn’t level, so we did have to disconnect to raise the front. However, the site was long enough that if it had been level, we could have stayed connected up. It wasn’t bad for around $30/night for full hook-ups, but I think it is more of a stay a night or two kind of place. There was some noise from the highways and some frogs.

Posted in: Exploring South Dakota, Newbie Mistakes, Sightseeing

Moving and Exploring Again Day 3 (June 12, 2020)!

Sunday, fun day! Well…a little bit of fun mixed in with a lot of driving.

Tonight as I am writing this, I am exhausted. It was a long day of driving, with some tourist stops thrown in. I got a few blog posts started tonight as well. I had made notes, but hadn’t had a chance to sit down and write things out for posting until now.

Another early morning travel day, this time we finished up heading towards Mt. Rushmore. We had things mostly packed last night and were just going to empty the fresh water tanks (since we would have full hookups) and the black and grey tanks. The black tank valve handle had been in the same position since we bought it. It could be pulled open, but not shut any further, so we thought that was the closed position. Nope. Big stinky nope. Poor Ben. He got sprayed with the black tank before managing to somehow get the valve actually shut all the way. We had the water hose out, so he could spray down and change clothes, but what a shitty start to the day. (Pun intended.)

After cleaning up the area and Ben, we were finally on our way. We had lots of hours of driving to get in so we could arrive at our next stop. The whole point of this trip is to learn and to see things we haven’t seen before, so we did make a couple of stops along the way.

Our first touristy stop was at the Corn Palace. Yes, you read that right. The Corn Palace. It’s another quirky place we found online. It has an interesting history, with American entrepreneurial spirit behind it. Today, it is a permanent building in the downtown of this small town and is decorated each year with a new design. The decoration is made out of corn! Different colors of dried corn are used to create patterns and murals. It was rather busy on the inside (again with limited mask wearing), so we mostly admired the outside. There is a video presentation, but with so many people crowding around, we didn’t stay to watch it.

https://cornpalace.com/

Among our hours and hours of driving, we had seen signs for Wall Drug. (I think we started seeing signs in Iowa.) We had seen probably a hundred signs?! They ranged from banal (Wall Drug ahead) to outrageous (YOLO Wall Drug). In a testament to the tough character of the people of South Dakota, Wall Drug’s marketing never stopped. For literally hundreds of miles in either direction, they broke up the somewhat boring drive with focused, fairly low cost advertising. Along with being funny, you just have to respect the tenacity.

It turned out Wall Drug was on our way to the next campground. So, another win for Wall Drug advertising. We decided to stop and we were glad we did.

It was crazy! We tried to see as much as we could in an hour, but we probably could have spent the better part of a day there. There were a bunch of little shops (bookstores, camping supplies, fudge, ice cream, cafe, souvenir, etc.), a chapel, a splash pad…There was free water near the splash pad, a tribute going back to when the store offered free ice water to travelers in the 30’s. It wasn’t ice cold, but it was cool. We bought some donuts and a slice of cherry pie to share. We also tried the $0.05 coffee. It was actually good coffee! Ben liked it so much, he bought another cup. 🙂

http://www.walldrug.com/

We took a quick video of a walk through at Wall Drug that you can see on our YouTube channel here. https://youtu.be/ZM6fYTvHo2E

RVer NOTE: Stop for gas before the Wall exit if you have a larger RV and/or are towing and need to refuel. There were two gas stations right near the highway exit/entrance, but neither were set up for larger vehicles. The next exit had 1 broken diesel pump. Finally at exits 60 or 61, we found diesel and spaces large enough for us.

We got to see part of the Badlands on our drive. The change in scenery was amazing and beautiful. Ben and I were talking about the settlers who came through. To get all the way there and see just more vast open space, somebody must have just said “Nope. I’m done. Not going anymore.” The sheer amount of openness is daunting to think about crossing on a horse or on foot.

We checked into our campground and Ben finally got to put up his netted pop-up room/clam shell/tent. We got situated, set up, and ready to relax. Our spot is great. It has an amazing view of the mountains and it’s nicely shaded. The laundry room isn’t too far and the pool is open. The boys are excited to go swimming.

~Sarah

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