I was growing tired of Florida so knew it was time to move on, but first I needed to escape into the wilderness to ground myself. My pup Maggie and I went into the Ocala National Forest to enjoy the solitude. We stumbled upon a free camping spot beside a huge pond, which became our home for the next week and a half.
I spent time painting, exploring and having fires at night. It was everything I needed to recharge.
While we were there I made friends with Chet, a regular who came to the pond. I met him while he was kayaking. Maggie was terrified of his kayak and kept barking like crazy at it. He came over to calm her down and show her it wasn’t a threat. We started chatting and hung out for a bit. We ate hamburgers that we cooked over the fire on a little grill he put together.
After a few days in the woods, my friend Mitchell came to join me, bringing my cat Thomas. Thomas always refused to leave the bus, but I wanted him to have a more exciting life than that, and this seemed like the perfect place. I carried him outside, but when I set him down, he panicked and ran straight back for the bus. I brought him back out and put him down right next to the bus and started petting him. He calmed down a little, and even though he was a bit jumpy at first, he was eventually exploring the entire campground and loving it. He had never meowed much before, but as he explored, we would hear random meows of excitement.
Our friend Dennis came out one night to enjoy the woods with us. We hung out by the water all day and enjoyed a nice fire at night. It was the perfect place to camp other than the nighttime bugs. The mosquitoes and biting flies were so bad that the only safe place was by the smoke of the fire.
Chet came back out to visit again, and this time brought his girlfriend Hope and their new baby Rider. Rider was only one day old when I met him, and he was the most precious baby. We hung out with them multiple times while we were there, having fires, eating tacos, and going swimming. They used to do the van life and travel all over, but had to stop with the new little one. I so wished they could have traveled along with us. It was nice to have more people and especially a girl to talk to.
Camping in Florida made it seem as if I was living the Discovery Channel. I saw my first baby rattlesnake; it was so small its tail sounded as if it was vibrating. I saw two dragonflies get into a fight mid air, and as they scuffled, they crashed into the pond below, only to be eaten by a fish that jumped out of the water. A dead cockroach was carried off by a colony of ants. I saw a little green caterpillar hanging by a web mid air. As I was observing it, a giant ground wasp flew up, plucked the little guy out of the sky, and flew off with him. The entire thing was fascinating, but seemed so brutal.
We took advantage of the pond a lot. It wasn’t quite deep enough to swim, but we still dipped in the cold water to cool off. Maggie liked to play in the water and one day swam around as we threw her ball out.
We even used it to do laundry. We filled a bucket with water from the pond and soap, and washed almost all of our clothes and hung them up on lines to dry.
Thomas even loved the water. He enjoyed watching the fish and would paw at it. One day when we were there it started to rain. We ran for cover, but not Thomas. He enjoyed the rain, and ran around in it getting soaking wet.
When it was time to move on, we stopped in to see Chet and Hope one last time, and then we were off! Our destination was Crystal Beach, Texas, and we had a 13 hour drive ahead of us.
As I got closer to the beach, I noticed all the houses were on stilts. It was the coolest thing ever, little houses way up in the sky.
When we finally made it to the beach, it was wild. We drove right onto the sand with the other lines of cars. It was a narrow beach but there was enough room for vehicles to drive down the middle, and there were people parked on both sides. The water side was lined with cars and people, and the other side next to the sand dunes was lined with campers and tents. The place was packed, but we were able to find a nice little spot to set up.
We sat in chairs outside the bus and watched the endless parade of vehicles go by. For fun out there, people decked out golf carts, dune buggies and whatever else you could think of with lights, flags and giant speakers. They drove back and forth on the beach all day, blaring music. Occasionally people on horses would even trot by.
The entire thing was really neat, but at the same time, it had the feel of a bustling city, not the quiet beach we had hoped to relax on.
We enjoyed it as much as we could, along with the little town we were in. We went out to a carnival with live music. It cost money to get in, but we found a small split in the fence surrounding it where we were able to slip through unseen. Once inside, we found tickets for rides on the ground, and enjoyed two free rides. We gave the rest of the tickets to a family with young children so they could enjoy them too.
We spent three days in that spot before a man came asking for our beach pass, which we did not have. He told us about a free beach nearby, so we packed up and went on over. The new beach was set up the same as the other, where we could drive down the middle and camp on each side. But this beach had fewer people and no heavy traffic. We found a nice spot to park that was right next to the ocean. We had waterfront property right out the bus door.
This place was much quieter, more like what we were hoping for, and we were able to enjoy the beach in the way we wanted. And by the next day, Monday, we essentially had the entire beach to ourselves. It was glorious.
Thomas loved roaming freely on the beach and rolling in the sand. Maggie enjoyed running around in the water and chasing the birds.
We spent a few days there, and before we left we took a few hours to pick up the trash on the beach. We had started a new thing where we pick up the litter anywhere we stay in order to say thank you, and to help save the environment. This beach was littered with garbage, but after we were done, it looked so much better, and we found treasures of interesting shells on the beach along the way.
To get out of Crystal Beach, we took a free ferry over to Galveston, and just like that, we were off again to our next destination: Austin, Texas.
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