Great Outdoors RV Resort in Titusville is a 3000 acre community centered and surrounded by their golf course. Other features include a luncheonette, a fine dining establishment, its own post office, neighborhood laundries, neighborhood pools, lending library, etc. All the sites are owned privately and most include extended structures. Those structures can be as simple as a shed or gazebo. Many are home extensions with double garages large enough to house the dinghy and RV (and everyone has a golf cart). All sites are almost blemish free.

Notice the tiled driveway. The height of the garage would probably be close to 13 feet.

In order to maintain property values restrictions and rules are ever prevalent, none so onerous as a 15 mph speed limit enforced by the communities own speed Nazis. We renters are at the bottom of the privileged castes. For us there is no cable, no WiFi (except at the Welcome Center), no picnic tables (unless provided by owner) and no attendance to the many clubs (at least that was what I was told about attending the Sawdust Club for woodworking).

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There are positives to this area. You are close to Titusville which has a small but active historic downtown including a super bakery, brewery, live theater, restaurants and an excellent cobbler. Also nearby are big box stores (Target, Walmart, etc).

We’re catching up on our postings for you all. We’re going to cover a whole range of subjects since we’ve been here and have saved it all for just one large post!

Woodpeckers

The pileated woodpecker is the second largest woodpecker in north america. It can be as long as 19 inches and weigh close to a pound. We had two of these pecking away at a rotted tree just behind our RRRRV. This was the first time we’ve seen these beautiful birds.

Pileated Woodpecker

Bread

We really have been craving for some homemade type bread. A quick Google search discovered Sunrise Bakery in downtown Titusville, 5.7 miles away. It had glowing reviews plus it was near the library and we were ready for more DVDs. We had visited the small, quaint town center last year and were eager to go again. Sunrise Bakery did not disappoint. We bought three different types of breads: a cheddar cheese loaf, a multi-grain (really dense), and a very heavy 4 lb. loaf of a pumpkin nut bread, which is to “die for”. We froze portions of all three loaves. Notice the artwork on the building. Many of the buildings here are decoratively painted.

We next discovered…

Beer

Playalinda Beach is to the north of Titusville, but Playalinda Beer is right downtown in the former Hardware Store, complete with an old Sherwin Williams paint sign up high. They are a craft beer brewery open since 2014 and have since expanded to further south in a beautifully renovated factory serving fine food as well as their beer. The restaurant is called the Brix Project. They are planning on starting a distillery there in 2017, too. We ate dinner there yesterday and Ken also enjoyed their flight. He was wild about their strawberry porter.

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The Enchanted Forest Sanctuary

About 7 miles away lies the county park known as “the Enchanted Forest Sanctuary“. It’s a protected area that has several areas of differing habitats and is part of the county’s Environmentally Endangered Lands (EEL) Program. We planned to arrive there around 3:00 PM hoping to catch animal sightings before sunset, but the park closes at 5 and we never did see any as it doesn’t get dark until after 6. It was a rather gray day, but good for walking and for photos.

Beauty Berries

Tomorrow, we head to Kissimmee to a subdivision known as Solivita to visit with a longtime friend, Steffie. We’ve known Steffie since before Jen was born and I haven’t seen her since she moved to Florida in the early 2000’s.

All of our “camping” up to this point has been in either State Parks or smaller campgrounds where we had plenty of grass and dirt surrounding our site. Our site in St. Augustine was in the grass in a big field side by side with other motorhomes and trailers. Here, we’re more like staying at a condo for 5th wheels and motorhomes. This resort is humongous! Below is the sitemap and all those little rectangles are camping sites, thousands of them, all built at an angle on streets, where permanent owners/residents get around via golf carts.
 Our site backs to the preserve. We’re on a concrete driveway and pad with trees surrounding us for shade.

There’s a 15 mph speed limit within the community plus a 15 mph limit in the access road (2.1 miles long) from the main road (rt.50). It takes longer to get out of here than it does to get anywhere we want to go once we exit here. Fortunately, everything we can possibly want or need is not far away as we are in familiar territory: Titusville and the surrounding area from our long stay in Cape Canaveral last year. This place is not cheap on a per night basis and we can’t get cable TV nor WiFi. Oh! No picnic table either. But, they do have a doggie park.

We drove into old Cocoa Town Center today to eat at one of our favorite lunch places: Ossorio Cafe and Bakery. They have wood fired personal sized flatbread pizzas that are fabulous as well as wood fired panini sandwiches, soups and homemade ice cream. Since it was in the low 80’s out and it was after the lunch surge, we sat outside.

Outside dining Ossorio

Side street doors and windows of Ossorio

We also poked around in some of the shops. I didn’t have any room left for ice cream, though.

Next stop was to the public library in town. Ken renewed his temporary county library access card so we can borrow DVDs to watch on our awesome theater surround sound system.

Hardware Stores

First of all, we want to explain the significance of hardware stores. This dates back to our very early cruising days on our 25 and 31 foot sailboats. Every town we would cruise into, we would check to see if they had a hardware store. And if they did, well, you know the rest. Yes, we’d wander the aisles, especially Ken. We can’t tell you how many things we picked up this way, but trust us that there were lots! So, our trip to the Ace hardware store for the solution to our bike rack problem is reminiscent of our old cruising days for sure. And this brings up another similar topic.

USCG Captain Experience Helping Us?

Our friend and former employee, Rena, asked us if our many years of being a USCG Captain has prepared us in any special way for this adventure. What a great question. The short answer is yes. The RRRRV is so similar to a large boat: 12 volt and 110 electrical systems, self contained holding tanks, miniaturized plumbing, deep cycle batteries and inverters/charging systems and more. That is in terms of systems. But, where things really count is in the organizational mindset towards safety. That’s where the carryover comes into play. We really think that the learning curve for us was so short because of Ken’s captaining experience plus all of our combined years of cruising our 31′ sailboat and our early years in a pop-up camper. These factors all add in to make us adaptable to this lifestyle.

Night Out In St. Augustine Area

We decided to go for a special night out dinner. This would be our first dinner out since we left Annapolis. I chose Cap’s, which is actually a waterfront open air dining place in the northern end of St. Augustine on the intracoastal waterway. Their boat docks were destroyed by hurricane Matthew. Our dinner was extraordinary. I had pecan encrusted seared diver scallops in a fennel broth over mashed potatoes with breaded leek curls. Ken had the freshly caught trigger fish special encrusted as well. We also splurged on their special dark chocolate spicy flourless dessert treat which was rich with a hint of tabasco!

The outdoor heaters were on to help make us warm during the meal. The entire restaurant is outdoors and although you can’t tell in this photo, there were plenty of folks here, but mostly hanging out in the bar and lounge areas.
Tomorrow, we head out to Titusville and the Great Outdoors RV Resort and Golf.

Today’s itinerary was to spend the day traveling 9 miles north to the Fernandino Beach/Amelia Island area via A1A. We needed to run errands for medications and hardware to restore the bike rack to connect properly to Ken’s car. Plus we needed a few more items like a small bucket, large sponge, small wet/dry vac, etc. There were lots of shopping options here. Everything was really close together between the CVS and the Turner Ace hardware store. The hardware store was a real gem for us. The gentleman that helped us figure out the hardware that we needed to adapt the hooks for the wire ends of the rack was most helpful and engaged. His name is Randy. He relished the challenge! He and Ken came up with the solution, and he helped us with the rest of our list. This is a very large super sized store!

Next stop was Walmart for a few items, although they didn’t have everything we wanted. A lookup in Yelp gave us our choice for lunch: Loop Pizza Grill, which was an excellent choice. Ken had a spicy pesto chicken, jalapeno arugula pizza and I had one of the juiciest burgers ever. Yummy!

Fort Clinch was a few miles to the north of the commercial center. The fort was built during the Civil War. Our friend and former employee, Sean Ellis, recommended us not to miss visiting here, and we’re glad we did. The fort stands guard where Amelia Island is to the south and Cumberland Island is to the north. It protects the passage westward to Fernandino.

Florida State Parks photo

Ken will write more about this in his blog entry when he gets a chance! I found one fact particularly interesting that not a single gun was ever fired from the fort.

All in all, this was a great day because we mixed “business” with pleasure. Tomorrow, we’ll explore the area around our campground itself before leaving for St. Augustine.

The fort lies to the northeast of Fernandina Beach at the entrance to the Cumberland Sound (Florida), in the northeast part of the state. The Spanish, in 1736, realized the necessity to guard this key entrance to St Mary’s River and Cumberland Sound. In 1847 the US built and named the present fort. It was used by the Confederacy during the Civil War and then abandoned, then occupied by the union in (1862) until the end of the war.

My intention is not to give you a history lesson but to explain why it is part of our journey. I do find the history fascinating. However, as I stood on the ramparts looking out to sea, I realize I have sailed by this fort when my daughter Jen and I sailed on the Schooner Virginia several Decembers ago as guest crew.

Today, I wander through the fort and become focused on small details. Contrasts between clear blue sky, worn brick, winding passages where in certain places the sun can never penetrate. At one point I am startled to see a small mound of feces left by some creature in one of these dark passages. Was it curiosity or terror that drove this animal up a winding dark staircase to be rewarded by a beautiful vista of sea, brick and cannon?

Ascending stairs to ramparts. Going from darkness to bright light.

Looking up. I like this shot. Notice the how the lower bricks were laid end to end, which would have made the wall thicker. The upper bricks are laid sideways and are brighter and more consistent in color. 

On the rampart, looking at the Cumberland Islands (GA)