2017 Long Point Park

Tuesday, April 4, 2017:  Jeri and I decided we want to take short trips in April and May prior to leaving around June 24th on "The Trip" (Florida to Dawson Creek, BC where we will take the Alaska Highway up to Alaska and spend a few weeks seeing different places prior to heading back home to Florida.  We also want to take our youngest Grandsons, Jack and Max for a short camping trip before we go to Alaska.  Anyway, Jeri booked us into Brevard County's Long Point Park for Tuesday, April 4th through Thursday, April 6th.  We will head back on on April 7.  This campground is only a little over 130 miles from home.

We brought the trailer home from storage on Saturday to make it easier to get ready for the trip and I had a maintenance item or two to do on the trailer, like sanitizing the freshwater system.  I got all this completed and we finished packing the trailer Monday, so we could head out for the campground around 10:00 AM Tuesday morning.  Unfortunately, Tuesday was a day of some intense thunderstorms and monsoon rains, so we waited and pondered what to do.

We had about decided to just wait until Wednesday morning to leave, but around 2:00 PM it stopped raining.  We quickly hooked up the trailer, put our dog Sugar Belle in the truck and got underway around 2:20 PM.

The drive down went pretty good, although we did run into some fairly heavy rain a few times.  It was also pretty windy, but the truck and hitch handled the trailer without any problem.  During the last hard rain we ducked into a rest area off I-95 and sat out the worst of the rain.

We arrived at Long Point Campground around 5:00 PM, checked in (it was raining lightly), found our campsite (#75, right on the Indian River), and got to work setting up the trailer (did I mention it was raining lightly?) which we accomplished quickly.  We had read a few reviews about the campground saying the water coming from the faucets had a sulphur smell, so we are just using water from our 43 gallon onboard freshwater tank.  Plus we have bottled drinking water and I brought an extra five gallons of water from home.

It stopped raining just as we got done setting up.  After getting everything squared away and the camp chairs set up we sat down to relax and enjoy a cold beverage.  The temperature was around 75-80 and it was pretty breezy, but then that keeps the bugs away.

We had hot dogs, pork and beans and beets for dinner and watched a little TV before going to bed.

The blue dot is our campsite

Our campsite

Backed right up to within about 6' of the Indian River

The view out our rear window--nice!

Wednesday, April 5, 2017:  Cereal for breakfast this morning and then we took Sugar on a long walk around the campground. She loved the big open area in the middle.  We drove south over the Sebastian Inlet bridge and drove into the Sebastian Inlet State Park to check it out.  We asked the lady ranger if we could just look at the campground without paying to get into the park and she gave us 10 minutes.  It's a very nice campground and campsites 52-56 would be great and sites 5-14 would be okay, per Jeri.

We got gas and drove back to camp to relax, then we drove 10 miles north to the Publix supermarket and Jeri rented a couple of movies from their Red Box.  For dinner we had one of our staple camp dinners; grilled chicken breasts covered with shredded cheese and green sauce, with grilled potatoes and onions (cooked on the grill in foil).  Very tasty!  We went for another walk and since it was still windy, so no campfire, we watched a movie before going to bed.

Thursday, April 6, 2017:  We woke this morning to overcast skies and a quick check of the weather online and on the TV (we had several stations coming in quite well) indicated a very severe thunderstorm was coming in from the west and moving east.  LOTS of lightning with 3,000-4,000 strikes per 10 minutes!  Fortunately, all the worst of it passed just to the south of us and we only got hit with the north edge of it. 

Storm view out our rear window

After the storm passed it cleared up and because a nice day.  We drove south and went to the town of Sebastian and had lunch at Black Fins restaurant, located in Captain Hiram's resort complex.  I had grouper and Jeri had oysters and both were pretty good.  We were stuffed.  After lunch we bought some souvenirs in their gift shop.  I got a nice T-shirt with "Living the Dream" on the back.  LOL

Jeri at Capt. Hiram's Blackfin

Bill dining at Capt. Hiram's Blackfin, right on the water

For dinner we just grilled a couple of cheeseburgers.  It was a nice evening, but still windy.  We saw dolphins every day by our campsite, sometimes they were very close in, too.

Friday, April 7, 2017:  This morning was cool and beautiful and still quite windy.  After a breakfast of eggs and fruit we packed up, dumped the tanks and leaving around 10:45 AM, had an eventful trip back home.

This was a nice trip, in spite of the rain, wind and storm.  The campground is pretty nice.  It stayed peaceful and quiet, in spite of being pretty full.  While almost all the entire island is surrounded by mangroves, almost all the campsites are on the water and the owners have cut out the mangroves at most sites to allow a decent view of the water (see my photos above).  We had electric and water hookups.  We used our onboard freshwater the entire time and I never did smell or taste the supplied water to see if it smelled and/or tasted bad.  I planned to, but forgot.