Good morning! I am up early for me, 7:30 am Mountain time. Was busy trying to make a reservation at Ortona South COE Campground in Florida, and it is VICIOUS out there!!!
Had six sites picked out and clicked on all six but got none. I have this system of starting to click on sites four seconds before they open. I have each open in a separate window with the Select button showing. Somebody beat me to each one!!! But I waited online, continually refreshing my screen until finally one of the sites became open, so at least I got Site 10. Probably someone had selected two or three sites (they must have had a faster system than mine) and discarded this one. Anyway, I got it for 14 nights for $15 per night. Paved sites, grass, nice landscaping, and water and electric, with nice patios and adequately spread apart. Great views and very out of the way, also.
It is a gorgeous campground right on the Caloosahatchee River, which goes from the Atlantic to the Gulf, through Lake Okeechobee. There are three sets of a dam and locks, so you can take your boat through. It is great fun to sit on the bank and watch the cruisers and even bigger boats go through the locks. The people on the cruisers are doing exactly what we RVers are doing, except on boats!! Big problem, however, is that there is a large group of people who bounce back and forth between these three campgrounds and one other, spending the whole winter doing that because they are all so nice and so cheap.
Anyway, the competition is incredible for these and other prime camping spots in Florida. People use multiple computers and have more than one person clicking, which I think is unfair competition!! This year I am going down early so I could get a week at three state parks in the Keys that are extremely difficult to get into: Bahia Honda, Curry Hammock, and Long Key. All are oceanfront sites and cost $43, which is dirt cheap for the Keys! I also snagged two weeks at Gamble Rogers in a prime oceanfront site where I can look over the greenery. (Some sites have big bushes blocking their views, but the one I got does not.) That site was $30, compared to the $100+ you would pay elsewhere for an oceanfront site.
Anyway, headed for Theodore Roosevelt National Park today. Got a $7 no hookup site, so hope I can survive the heat. Found out I can run generator until 8:00 pm, which I expect I will have to do. Going to be 82 today.