Uncategorized – Kelly Kamping & Travels

Biking Fun in Florida

Posted on February 10, 2021February 10, 2021 by kellykamping

The Fred Marquis Pinellas Trail currently extends from St. Petersburg to Tarpon Springs and was created along a portion of abandoned railroad corridor.

The Trail is a protected greenspace for walking, jogging, skating, and biking and the main reason we are spending the winter in this area of Florida.

We are currently in Dunedin which is the most charming small town and full of non-stop things to do, things to see, and places to eat or drink.

We recently completed two separate 20+ mile bike trips with new friends we met at our RV Park. We are all over sixty, so our bike trips are full of stopping to check out wildlife, visit various parks, or water breaks – we are not on a timeline!

We visited the Tarpon Tavern where the food is delicious and the service is great. We prefer outdoor dining these days and they have plenty of accommodations. You can even watch other bikers zoom by as you enjoy your meal and favorite beverage.

If you enjoy biking, we cannot encourage you enough to visit the area and ride this trail or parts of it (as we do).

Office Space in a 5th Wheel

Posted on January 28, 2021February 9, 2021 by kellykamping

Whether you have a full time job or enjoy cruising social media on your laptop, everyone seems to be interested in RV work space.

Below is the free standing table, bench seat and two chairs that came in our 2021 Grand Design Reflection 337rls.

After removing the table, chairs and bench seat, we purchased an electric adjustable-height desk from Office Depot and placed it so we could look out the dining window. We felt the view out that huge window was underutilized.

The desk is only 24 inches wide which allowed for substantial room for our office chairs and would not crowd the dinette space. There are 4 preset buttons to customize your desired heights from 28.36 inch to 46.06 inch. We chose this 63″ desk to give us more length for office items and it utilized the space from the wall to the Loveseat.

(Amazon FEZIBO Electric Height Adjustable Standing Desk with Drawer, 63 x 24 Inches Splice Board $350)

In the photo above, you could see the bench seat that came with the dining set which is also an ottoman with storage. After removing the padded back for the bench seat and putting in storage, we moved the bench seat in front of the sofa to be used as a coffee table. See photo below.

This is the set up when we both need a workspace.

We eat outside as much as we can, but when we need inside dining, my laptop is packed away, the keyboards/mouse are packed away, and the large monitor is moved to the left near the small slide window. We have plenty of room for a plate of delish food and beverages. (note: we removed the sides of the interior window boxes)

We are thoroughly enjoying our work space.

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Mr and Mrs Crab – Clearwater, FL

Posted on January 24, 2021 by kellykamping

We are foodies and truly enjoy all the terrific food in the St. Petersburg/Clearwater area.

Today we visited a restaurant we found on our trip to Florida last winter, but we never had the opportunity to try – Mr. and Mrs. Crab Juicy Seafood. Quite a name, right?

It’s Covid time — so we were a little hesitant to eat inside, however, all the waiters wore masks and we were seated no less than 20 feet from anyone else. I must admit we were at the door when the restaurant opened at 12 noon so perhaps we beat the crowd.

We eat seafood ‘boils’ of any kind whenever we can because it is one of our favorite meals and this place does not disappoint.

Our snow crab, shrimp and lobster tails along with corn and potatoes arrived in huge steaming bags. We were instructed to untie the top, let the steam escape and then massage the seafood lightly to make sure the delicious butter and cajun seasonings coated the food. The photo at the top is Hubbs expression when the food was delivered to our table.

We ordered a Combo platter existing of snow crab, lobster, shrimp with corn and potatoes. It was mouth wateringly delicious. It is not cheap – $35, but worth every penny.

If you are in the Tampa/St Petersburg area, we highly recommend this restaurant. There are 3 located in the area. We had great service and even better food. https://mrandmrscrabseafood.com/

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Blackstone Griddle Cooking

Posted on January 21, 2021 by kellykamping

We heard a lot about the Blackstone propane griddles and finally bought one. While it is very different from ‘smoke’ grilling, we have thoroughly enjoyed it while RVing here in Florida.

Taco Bowl – Rice, grilled peppers & onions, mushrooms, shrimp

We’ve made a lot of Asian or Spanish dishes. Stir Fry veggies with beef, chicken or seafood on a bed of rice with seasonings of course is delish. Mexican seasoned meats with fresh onions, peppers, and rice topped with green onions and sour cream is one of our favorites. Of course you can have corn chips, or flour tortillas with your dish, but we are trying to limit our bread intake and do more rice and vegetables only.

We’ve grilled fresh sliced tomatoes with Provolone cheese on top, and grilled sliced pineapple is absolutely delicious !! Try it.

Last but not least, I feel breakfast is the BEST thing you can cook on the Blackstone. You can cook a whole pound of bacon in no time, sausage is delicious, and eggs take on a whole new flavor. It has to be the cast iron cooking surface that creates a unique flavor. We use mostly olive oil to cook with but sometimes butter or avocado oil can change the flavor and make it more yummy.

It is easy to clean and has changed our way of cooking in the RV. Anything that ‘smells loudly’ (i.e. fish, salmon, shrimp, very aromatic dishes) is cooked outside to reduce odors inside the RV. And clean up is a breeze.

We prep everything ahead of time – slicing vegetables, preparing the rice, flavoring meats – inside the RV. We place it all on a large serving tray and it all goes outside. After eating (usually outside), we put all the soiled utensils, plates, etc on the tray and it comes in for a good washing.

I wash all these items while hubbs scrapes down the griddle top, cleans it, and prepares fo the next cooking adventure.

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Fabulous Foods in Clearwater FL Area

Posted on November 12, 2020November 10, 2020 by kellykamping

Fabulous food is one of the many things we like in the Dunedin, Palm Harbor, and Ozona areas of Florida. These small towns have much to offer and are located north of Clearwater, west of Tampa.

Joey’s Italian not only offers delicious authentic Italian food but the servings are large enough that we always take home enough for another meal. Their pizza, greek salad, lasagne and seafood dishes are the best. Wait staff wore masks.

The Lucky Dill, a Jewish Deli is much more than that. Many hot dishes are mouth watering and excellent. They have a bakery connected that is most awesome. It has an atmosphere that is inviting yet different from the normal eateries in the area. Prices comparable to area restaurants. We were pleased that wait staff wore masks and there is outside dining as well as pickup.

Bogota, is probably our most favorite restaurant we’ve found this winter, so far. “So Far” being the big word here. We’ve only been in Dunedin a week. But we’ve already visited Bogota twice. It is Latin American food and Fabulous!

They have a great outdoor dining with good ambience, music, and wait staff with masks. A super friendly waiter on our first visit mentioned 3 Daughters Brewery in Clearwater and that Bogota offers their Key Lime Cider. We’re hooked !! It’s divine.

That’s me in the gold shirt enjoying the atmosphere, music and a glass of sweet tea.

Bogota has hands-down the best Reuben sandwich I’ve ever had, and I’ve had a lot of Reubens. There are great plantains, black beans and yellow rice, and a Ybor salad with thinly slivered ham and cheese and a dressing that is creamy and excellent. I’m hooked on this salad!!

If you are in the area by all means visit Bogota. The prices may be a tad higher than some restaurants in the area, but more than worth the extra couple of dollars.

That’s it for now, but I’ll have more restaurant reviews and suggestions in the coming weeks.

Bon Appetit !!

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Running from a Tropical Storm

Posted on November 10, 2020 by kellykamping

We were settled nicely into our 6 month site in Dunedin, Florida, enjoying our new friends and the beautiful weather when we heard a name, “Eta” followed by the word “hurricane”.

We looked at each other in shock — A hurricane or tropical storm this late in the year? It’s only 2 weeks until Thanksgiving.

But as we began to watch the weather reports we were shocked to find out that indeed there was a rogue storm brewing and projected to strike Florida. We thought “surely it will not come into Tampa”, and as we watched, indeed they were projecting it to come ashore in west central Florida near Tampa.

We were worried. You see, six months ago our two year old travel trailer was destroyed in a freak storm. We did not think our insurance company would be happy with another claim. The wind on Monday was 20-25mph gusts that would catch our slide toppers and shake the RV. We could not imagine 50-70 mph wind gusts.

Tuesday we made the decision to head back to Panama City (Florida Panhandle) where we were spending a few months in a friend’s house. On the drive we caught the latest weather reports which had the storm moving more northward. By the time we arrived Tuesday night to Panama City the weather reports had Eta coming ashore in the Panhandle closer to where we just arrived.

What??? We were astonished, and just had to chuckle at our luck.

At this time we are enjoying long hot showers, and catching up on laundry at the house while keeping a close eye on the storm. But it looks like Eta will meander out in the Gulf making us guess what her plans are before arriving on land this weekend.

I’ll update my story after she decide what she’s going to do and when she’ll arrive.

In the meantime be safe out there.

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Winter Camping in Florida

Posted on October 21, 2020 by kellykamping

Our summer in the Florida panhandle has been fabulous. We relaxed after a fast sale of our home of 10 years, continued to socially distance due to Covid, and enjoyed the water, sun and seafood.

We also purchased a new 3500 4×4 diesel dually, and a new 2021 Grand Design Reflection 5^th wheel.

That is a lot in 4 short months, so after we brought home the new RV in Sept, we were busy organizing, making some modifications, and getting everything ready to head to central Florida for six months. Yes, SIX months!

While we spent four months in central Florida last year, we split the trip into three locations as we experimented with which areas we preferred. Of the three we absolutely loved the gulf coast/Clearwater area and the small town of Dunedin in particular.

Our RV Park, Dunedin RV Resort, is actually on the city limits line of Dunedin and Palm Harbor. It’s about two blocks from the Dunedin Causeway that leads to Honeymoon Island, and is also on the Pinellas Trail which is a fabulous 45 mile bike path from Clearwater to north of Tarpon Springs. Last winter we enjoyed this bike trail so much which afforded us convenient stops to coffee shops, restaurants, bars, pharmacies, groceries, etc.

We will be leaving soon and I’ll be posting photos, and travel updates.

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Covid Camping or Not

Posted on September 25, 2020September 22, 2020 by kellykamping

I realized that until last week I had not updated my Blog since last March when we returned home from Florida. We came home a week early for grand baby #5’s arrival, and then Covid hit like wildfire.

We are 60+ and I’m diabetic, so we hunkered down. We had also made the decision to put our house on the market and used the time to clean up and make repairs. As the virus ramped up, we were certain no one would buy a home during a pandemic, but we were wrong !! We sold our house in 5 days.

Our plan was to move into our 28’ travel trailer while looking for a small ‘home base’ to rent as we hit the road and traveled for two years. But God had another plan, or Mother Nature for sure did, and our travel trailer was totaled in a horrible hail storm the following week.

So, we have found ourselves staying on a small lake in the Florida Panhandle which belongs to friends in Tennessee. We’ve continued to be vigilant against Covid. We wear our masks (which are mandatory in most of Florida), we try to stay away from large crowds, and do all we can to stay healthy.

As I write this, we are preparing for our winter in Dunedin, Florida, near Clearwater and St. Petersburg. I wrote an earlier post on this special little Paradise and we are excited to return for a longer stay this winter.

Stay tuned. I plan on doing a much better job with my Blog.

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Less is More for RV Decor

Posted on September 22, 2020 by kellykamping

I have begun to decorate our new 5th wheel to make it a little more ‘homey’. Here are the before photos last month when we purchased.

I learned something about myself with our past two travel trailers (personal preference) .

1) Don’t mix together too many colors. Choose one or two accent colors and this time I chose teal. When living in a confined space (around 400 sq ft), too many colors stress me out. Here’s my teal Keurig, the first inspiration I had to choose this color. Besides teal seems to go with the Pebble interior.

2) Although our Reflection has a good bit of dark wood, I’m trying to coordinate with dark/black & cream.

While so many are painting their RVs in creams and whites (and yes, I’m envious), the supposed resale value goes down. It makes sense to me. When we were shopping for a new RV I looked at a few used units and those with customized paint schemes and drastic decor changes were not for me.

The cream/black print rugs are tucked away in the ottoman since the RV is parked for us to organize and decorate. I love the black & white buffalo plaid accents.

3) Don’t OVER decorate. Again, I found in a tiny space “less is more” is the way to go. Last Winter when we spent 4 months in Florida, I removed several decor items from the walls, and decluttered. I needed a more clean, uncluttered look.

My decorating is a work in progress with things to be hung after I decide where they go. I’ll post photos when I have everything in it’s place which will be in a few weeks before we go to central Florida for the winter.

Thanks for reading. Be safe out there on your travels and free to comment.

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Roxanne’s Reflection

Posted on September 9, 2020 by kellykamping

Here I am – Reflecting.

I’ve always had some “wanderlust” in my soul. All my life I wanted to travel but never had the means to accomplish my dream. One of the last things my father told me before his death was “get out and travel”, and he regretted they didn’t do more of it.

Since retiring, we’ve dreamed of traveling much of the country and are finally able to do it.

Last week we traveled to Tampa and picked up our Grand Design Reflection 337rls. We narrowed down our choice of recreation vehicles to a 5th wheel and then chose Grand Design because of the excellent Customer Service reviews. Later I will cover more on why we chose a 5th wheel and why Grand Design, but for now I wanted to get this post published.

This is not our first RV. We had a couple of travel trailers and made mostly short trips (three weeks was the longest). We were total newbies to the world of Camping (Glamping is more what we do), and there were mishaps along the way.As in past posts I’ll cover things we wished we had known, things we learned, some DIY hacks for organization (we had almost no storage but now do), planning trips as well as where we went and photos. I’m an amateur photographer and will have LOTS of photos!

I hope you will follow along as we begin this journey!! Adventure awaits !