Our Favorite Places

People ask often ask us what our favorite place is from all our travels. What they are asking is, what place did we find the most beautiful, or striking, or memorable. We have several favorites areas but there are also favorite places that appeal to us for reasons other than they are beautiful.

We're currently in Port Clinton, Ohio at a private member park. I love this park. Why? Because it was the first campground we stayed at after my orthopedic surgeon released me to travel after my knee surgery. The joy we felt being back in our own home after living with my mother for the two and a half months following my surgery is indescribable. The fact that I could walk without crutches and a full leg brace made the walk to the river at the edge of the campground infinitely more precious than if we had come here for the first time in a totally healthy state. The indoor heated pool meant that I could finally do my water aerobics routine, which helped in stretching the tight tendon in my knee. So in our minds, this became a favorite place.

There was the campground in Warrenton, Georgia that was so isolated, so dark and so quiet that many folks refused to stay a second night because it was TOO dark and TOO quiet. We loved it.

Perdido Key, Florida has a tiny, crowded little campground that in January of 2000 was run by an aging hippie couple that we just loved. There was music and deep fried oyster cook-fests and the Gulf of Mexico just across the street. We stayed here while awaiting the arrival of our truck to pull our newly purchased fifth wheel and spent a month enjoying sun, the beach and the friendships.

There's another tiny little campground on the beach in Florida (I'm keeping this one private)where we pulled the nose of our Bounder motorhome right up to the beach and waded into the clear water of the Gulf of Mexico where we could see a horseshoe crab just a few feet off-shore. There was a wooden swing next to our site that we confiscated for the duration of our stay, where we could sit and watch cedar waxwings squabble in the tree next to us. Utter relaxation.

This past week we stayed at the Delaware State Park in Delaware, Ohio. As noted by Darby, there were only electric connections at the campsites, no water or sewer hookups. That meant a walk to the bathhouse in the chilly mornings where I rushed through my shower to avoid the many mosquitoes poised to take their morning's quota of blood from me. We normally avoid campgrounds like this, but it was close to my son and he came over several times last week just to "hang". So not only were we in a quiet setting surrounded by trees and visited by deer, but we were able to spend more time with Darby in one week than we have in the past three years. So yeah, this one will go on the list of favorites, too.

So where are your favorite places?