Our first few weeks in Florida consisted of getting our license and getting our vehicles registered and insured to be full Florida residence. We arrived in Florida on Friday on Saturday we emptied the Penske Truck into storage then returned the truck. We walked into the Bushnell Tax Collectors office on Tuesday and walked out with two new licenses. It was the easiest thing I have ever done. The woman who helped us was very efficient, she took all our information and paperwork we brought and in less than an hour we were Florida Residence. We couldn’t do our vehicles that day because their computers were down for doing registrations but we did get the ball rolling. In Florida they do vin checks to verify the vehicle is yours and the right one. They don’t expect you to bring them all to you, the Sheriffs come out to you and do the checks. That was done on Tuesday afternoon, on Wednesday we went back to the Tax Collectors offices and registered the motorcycle and little trailer. The camper and truck couldn’t be done because Florida has to get the title from the lien holder. This portion took 2 weeks for the truck and about 5 weeks for the camper, the camper lien holder was not as easy to work with.
When we arrived at the end of September to Bushnell Florida at the Escapee’s Sumpter Oaks Campground it was still very hot, 90+ degrees everyday with 100% humidity. This lasted through most of October. During this time Bill decided to wash and wax all the vehicles. He would do a little everyday and would be drenched doing it. There was a lot of back and forth to the storage unit, deciding what would stay what would go. Moving stuff around almost on a daily basis for the first month.
We also managed to do a fair amount of riding, exploring the area by motorcycle, bicycle, and also Kayaking. The area we were in was central Florida which basically means it was about an hour ride to really get to anything we wanted to do. Towards the end of October we met some really nice people around the campground that also had bikes, they are from the area so they were able to show us places we may not have normally found on our own. We kayaked a lot of the bay areas of the gulf, saw manatee, turtles, lots of fish and birds. We tried out one of the many Florida biking trail systems, these are awesome by the way. We have tried a few local breweries, there are not as many as in the North East, but they are just as good.
We still have the doctor and medically stuff to figure out around here. We have new insurance so not really sure what and what it doesn’t cover. At some point we probably will look into other insurance options.
The end of November we left the first campground as they did not have openings for us to stay through the rest of the winter. We went to Oak Springs Campground in Port Richey. I will get into that a bit more later. As time goes on and we begin to move around and learn more about this life on the road thing I am hoping things flow better. I will talk more specifically about the campground, the areas and what they do and don’t offer, and what we do and don’t like about them. I hope to make it informative and interesting enough that you will want to keep following.
Vagabond2019 