From Tent Camping to Car Camping
The next October I hurried straight to Florida because there were Canadian wildfires affecting the air as far south as South Carolina. I was camping at ForeLake Campground the day after the October 7th Hamas attack. As I walk around the campground with my mosquito zapper at dusk, a young woman came running out of her RV, yelling at her sister who had been walking in front of me, claiming that I was going to kill her. She soon apologized to me, saying that she had thought my racket was a machete!
Thereafter, I once again rented a spot on my mechanic’s property, but this time I lived in a huge motor home he had purchased. I was really “glamping” for the first time. The neighbors were still a problem, and my mechanic and his wife were not happy with my boundary setting, he threatened me, and after two weeks I realized I needed to be out of a regular neighborhood with all its smells and noise, and went back to camping at Hopkins Prairie.
After too many cold days and nights, and too much on and off rain, I got tired of drying out all my tents and tarps. I finally decided to have the seats taken out of my car. For sixty dollars, a traveling mechanic came to Hopkins Prairie and took the front passenger seat and the entire back bench seat out. I scoured the entire car, and after spending twenty dollars for two plastic storage bins, was able to stretch out the entire length of the passenger side with my feet touching the glove compartment and my head almost into the trunk. I lay the sleeping pad on top of the bins over some blankets for extra padding, then put my sleeping bag on top and could sleep in my car with no problem. During the day I folded everything up and was able to sit in the driver’s seat with a crate of files on the passenger side with a board on top as a table and eat my breakfast and drink my morning tea. I didn’t regret the decision for one second, and only wished I had done it much sooner. Sleeping in my car helped me to avoid chemical and campfire smells, I barely heard the late-night party campers and I felt safer especially when I was alone on a campground. And I loved seeing the night sky with the moon at different stages and twinkling stars, and sometimes fireflies, none of which I could see when in my tent. On rainy days I felt like I was in a tiny room and could do more activities without the seats taking up all the space.
One Friday afternoon, along with other campers, I was kicked out of Hopkins Prairie with just a few hours of notice when the fourteen-day rule, which had recently changed to thirty days, suddenly changed back to fourteen due to an unruly family, and I had already been there seventeen days. While my friends opted to go twenty minutes north to Salt Springs Campground, I chose to drive four hours south where other campers had told me it was a good ten degrees warmer. I camped at Lake Kissimmee State Park where several deer came right up onto my site. It was more expensive with mostly high-end RVs and vans and I was the only one in a tiny car.
Then I went to Lake Wales State Forest, where I camped at Walk-in Water Campground a couple nights, and checked out nearby Reedy Creek Campground for possible future stays.
I also explored places around Lake Okeechobee and Sebring, where I found a good health food store. I stayed at some free campgrounds, such as Dupuis Family Campground and Istokpoga Canal Campground. How ironic, though; both places required setting up a tent and now I was primarily sleeping in my car. Other car dwellers simply erected a pop-up tent. I liked Dupuis but a young family camping there made non-stop pine wood campfires that blew directly onto my site and there were no other sites available. Istokpoga Canal had almost all RVs. Even though I was in a tent in the very back of the pretty campground the very loud high-speed road traffic was too much for me. However, I got some great photos of the canal and beautiful nature there.
I found by accident, in other words I had never heard anyone mention, Panther Pond Primitive Campground in the Okaloacoochie National Forest. After almost being killed by a truck passing me on my left as I was taking a left-hand turn off the main road, I drove down a two-mile dirt road similar to the road at Hopkins Prairie. There were huge alligators in and out of the pond. There was one guy who seemed to have moved in there, with an annoying generator all day every day. Then came the weekend when a bunch of guys showed up and set up five heavily scented tents on the site right next to me. I moved to another site and had to okay it with the forestry office as this was a reservation campground. Then I got my car completely stuck in the invisible muck when checking out the water pump near the horse stalls. A good Samaritan, a guy who did a podcast about car camping, helped me get out.
I would have stayed two weeks except for the generator guy. Plus, the mosquitoes were very fierce and I would spend a half hour every night in my car batting them away with my racket. Finally, I headed north four hours on Route 27, a most beautiful road with ranches the entire way.
Back to Hopkins Prairie where this time the Rainbow people were literally camping along the road into Hopkins Prairie. I had seen many Rainbow people over the previous years. Supposedly they were the original hippies who would come south from everywhere and meet up in various places in Ocala Forest. Recently, they weren’t all peace-loving beings but some were trashing the forests, stealing from camp stores. I heard stories of shops keeping their doors locked and you’d have to call ahead of time to buy a bag of ice, and after they all left the area bulldozers would come in and bury their trash. Sometimes, they would come to Hopkins Prairie and disobey the rules and have too many vehicles per site. One time I saw a group of women and children walking toward the bat house past my site and their dogs ended up running in and out of my car. This particular year they would bang on my car as I drove by. Children and possessions were literally in the road. Some adults were naked. One woman had chickens running around outside her bus.
One day, while camping on my usual site 21, I was hurrying to check out other possible sites for my friend Ben, who was due to arrive that day, and I ended up driving into the low-down metal handle of the fire pit. When I backed up, my whole passenger side fender got pulled askew and the door couldn’t be opened. Luckily my friend Jerry, a handsome man my age who often pulled into Hopkins Prairie, slept in his van and left the next day, almost like a ghost, did an amazing job repairing the fender. He was an incredible artist and musician, making all kinds of instruments out of gourds, and wind chimes out of ceramic teapots and apple shells, and spent two months every winter making a small fortune at the Renaissance Fair in southern Florida playing a one stringed instrument. This time he was in his large RV, which he had improved immensely due to his being a carpenter. There was a huge window along almost the entire roof so you could see the stars, and squirrels run across, and birds could bathe when he washed the window. Anyway, he is the one who fixed my fender. An artist/musician, not an auto body expert! And it was perfect, with just enough creativity to add charm to my car full of hardly noticeable dings. My car certainly had character. Being the consummate matchmaker that I was, I thought he’d be perfect for Carol Lena, and introduced them, but he liked being a loner, I think.
In April, I had a couple intravenous detoxing treatments an hour from Hopkins Prairie. After the second treatment I was so tired I was not able to participate in watching the amazing eclipse. Instead, rare for me, I lay in my car resting on my campsite, where at least I saw the day darken briefly.
For two weeks Ben and I, for the first time, shared a site at Salt Springs Campground, one of his favorites due to a popular swimming place in the springs. We had often camped on adjacent sites but not on the same one until now. It was pretty good, except he wasn’t fond of my hanging laundry to dry, no matter how much I followed the rules of putting cardboard around the trees to keep the trees from getting crevices, which could cause bug infestations and eventual death for the tree. Dave and Brett were also camping there, and we met Kim originally from South Korea. She was such a sweetheart and extremely generous. At night we’d all sit around Dave’s amazingly perfect campfires. During the days they’d all swim in the springs but I wasn’t a swimmer unless at the beach in very hot weather. I would walk the trails and go into downtown Ocala, which I was liking more and more, with its incredible health food store and an amazing historical neighborhood.
Not every host enforced the fourteen-day limit, but when they did, we had to find forests other than Ocala National Forest to camp in. I lucked across Indian Lake State Forest, only fifteen minutes from downtown Ocala instead of 45 minutes. And no long dirt road for a change. It became another favorite. I have lots of photos of the snow-like white sand around the lake, the cypress trees, the dead ones looking like amazing sculptures. There were five primitive sites and about eight newly built concrete sites for RVs. I loved site 1, where I wanted to live forever. I could see the lake from there. I would bring my sketching pad and sit on the sand and hike all the trails. One night I watched two events in the day use area, a sunset wedding and a Catholic confirmation.
Unfortunately, while rushing to tell the camp host about an ill woman on the trail, I backed my car with door open into a tree on my site. My friends tried to fix the fact that the door no longer closed flush. Dave called me “Crash.”
Then I was once again camping at Salt Springs on Ben’s site for one night only. The next day I was on Dave’s site because Brett had left. And the day after that I had the entire “honeymoon site” to myself. It was the most private site on the entire campground. I don’t know what the hosts and office workers thought of my moving from one man’s site to another, but it was all totally innocent, and the end result was great. Privacy for myself.
By my fourth season camping, most campgrounds had gone cash-less, which I hated. Making reservations ahead of time on-line or by phone might be fine for regular people on vacation, but I hated it. I liked to drive around and check things out before paying. I’d usually change campgrounds the beginning of the week when there were many more available sites. Against my better judgement I reserved seven days at Big Bass. I couldn’t stand the loud traffic, even with headphones. The bathroom fragrances bothered me. I called the forestry office and the booking site recreation.gov, and told the camp host. I was allowed to leave that day and still receive a refund (which turned out to be half the amount). The male host, a very large chain-smoking man with a tiny dog drove a golf cart onto my site as I was packing the last of my possessions, and circled around me, making sure that I was leaving. Very unnerving.
I sometimes felt like shouting to the world that not everyone who appears to be homeless is on drugs or breaking the law. There are many reasons for people to live as nomads. Often for financial reasons, as the price of apartments is sky high. Some people have Multiple Chemical Sensitivities and EMF Sensitivities, both recognized by the ADA and Medicare as actual diagnoses, though people often think it’s all in your head.
After my first season of camping, I generally felt safe, as long as I kept aware of my surroundings. However, one time I was hiking on the wooded trail behind Hopkins Prairie and a big handsome backpacker passed me. Then he started calling out foul language in a passive aggressive manner. I got so scared that I considered running through the heavy brush to reach the camp host’s site, but instead I just hurried along to where the trail intersected with the campground’s road. Later that day I decided to “get back on the horse” and went hiking in the same place, this time and forever more, carrying my bear spray.
Speaking of bears, I rarely had the occasion for several years to see an actual black bear though I saw plenty of bear skat, and several times sadly I saw dead bears along the main roads, killed by vehicles. But one sunny noon as I sat on site 21 at Hopkins Prairie eating my lunch including an apple, I heard a loud rustling in the woods behind me. It was too loud to simply be squirrels, I thought. Sure enough, I turned around to see a young bear about 250 pounds behind the metal bin where campers are supposed to store their food. I clapped my hands and yelled to scare it off, to no avail. I honked my car horn and no other campers appeared, nor did the bear budge. It was on all fours eyeing me but half-turned to flee. Finally, I thought to grab my camera as I felt protected by the metal bin between us. By that time, he had moved a hundred feet further away and was staring me down through the palm fronds as I tried to get a photo. I later heard that the previous camper on that same site had found a bear eating his water bottles on the picnic table bench and he had shot a bullet in the air to scare it away.
When sleeping in my tent I often awoke to rustling in the bushes around me and I’d tap on the inside of the tent walls and yell “you’re scaring me” which was usually enough to scare any animal away. Often armadillos were the culprits. I’m not sure if they can actually hear that well but may have felt the pounding on the walls. A few mornings I’d see paw prints of bears on my car; that’s where I stored my food.
One time while sleeping in my car I awoke to my car being shaken and my first thought was of a bear. However, it was a large black cat. It had jumped from the roof onto the hood of the car and turned around and hissed at me through the windshield. I felt like I was in a horror movie.
I headed north in the spring, this time camping with my friend Jackie at a new favorite campground at Parsons Mountain. It had low cash rates, beautiful wooded private sites, a gorgeous lake and hiking trails, a couple going up to an old gold mine and watch tower. We had fun exploring the historical downtown Abbeville and nearby rural surroundings, visiting the Cedar Ridge herbal shop. When taking my shower on my site a humungous black snake was scaring the daylight out of me. Jackie was off somewhere, but at least a boy scout troupe was camping nearby in case I got bit.
I decided to have my rear brakes repaired at a chain mechanic, Mavis, in Greenwood, which was a huge mistake. While the rear brakes were improved the emergency brake became broken, to the point that my car did not pass state inspection back in Massachusetts and I spent a lot of time going to satellite locations and eventually paid out of pocket for a local mechanic to repair it. Ironic, as the point of going to a corporation is to have locations in other states for warrantee.
Then after camping at my usual North Creek in Virginia, where I loved exploring the nearby city Lexington with its quaint downtown and horse arena, I headed to Elizabeth Furnace Campground for the first time and it also became a favorite. It was difficult at times without cell service but I liked the inexpensive cash system, the nearby mountainous trails and somewhat private sites.
I was considering starting an Amish type health food store back in Massachusetts, so I drove through Lancaster, PA and checked out the fabulous health food store there, in addition to seeing large draft horses working in fields, laundry hanging on clotheslines, children running around outside having fun.
Back in Massachusetts I spent a second summer with medical appointments almost every day for five months, but opted not to have any further hand surgeries even though two more of my fingers were triggering. I ended up having a steroid injection in one, which seemed to help. I also had physical therapy for various issues, allergy testing, and another MRI for my sacral area.
It was incredibly cold the entire month of May, so I decided against my plan to open a health food store in New England.