St. Lucie Lock

My lovely wife and I are set up at the campground at St. Lucie Lock, Florida. It's a small campground, eight RV sites, three tent sites, and a handful of marina slips. The RV sites are very hard to get into. In fact, we are staying in our tent. It's funny, as most of our stuff is staying in the van, which is just across the road from the tent site.

The tent sites are probably the prettiest, as they are right along the river. They have nice covered picnic tables, fire rings, and grills. There is no electric. I've set up my small solar electric system to provide power for things like the computer I'm writing on.

The day started with a minor problem. One of the front tires on the van was low on air. Those huge tires take about 80 pounds of pressure. My little air compressor was able to bump it up to 65. I was able to drive to a PEP Boys about 15 miles away. The tire guy found a nail in the tire. It cost less than $13 to fix.

My lovely wife picked up some breakfast sandwiches from a nice little Cuban place. We had just enough time to finish breakfast before they took in the van and quickly fixed the problem. It was less than twenty miles to our campsite so we were not rushed at all.

We had the spaghetti Mountain House dehydrated meal for dinner. We really enjoyed it. All the Mountain House meals were good. My assortment bucket contained the spaghetti with beef, rice and chicken, and chili mac, a bean, beef, and macaroni noodle concoction. I think our favorite is the rice and chicken. However, a lot of people praise the chili mac. One thing I noticed on the spaghetti, the ingredients say it may contain up to 2% soy powder. For those avoiding soy, that's something to keep in mind.

One big advantage of the Moutain House is the ability to prepare it in the bag. We discovered it keeps the food warm for quite a while. One time we could not get to the meal right away, and it was still piping hot thirty minutes later.

After some primitive camping we really enjoyed the hot showers. We are booked for three nights, but I'm told if the government shuts down again,this park will be closed and everyone kicked out. There will be a lot of people looking to make other arrangements, at a time when all the campgrounds are full.

Let's hope for the best.

-Sixbears