The Big Move: Davie FL to Lutz FL and Settling in

March 22, Friday, 2013   

Ok, the big news first, the park we just left is changing to a KOA after over 30 years of being a nudist park! Last night there was an emergency meeting at Seminole for all of the residents and campers where they were told this was the last season as a nudist park. The park is packed in the winter, (November – March), with nudist French Canadians. Most of them have been coming to this park for many years. The owner is not a nudist or even an RVer so he really doesn't have a clue about this park's customers. This change seems very risky to us. Oh well, we weren't coming back next year anyway so it’s OK for us. Changing to a KOA probably puts this park off our future list also. For us, the PROS for this park are its close location to Haulover Beach, being nudist and the weather. It’s CON is that it is managed so poorly. Now as a KOA it will have kids running around and will probably still be managed poorly. This will be difficult on most of the full time residents there. We hope the best for all of them.

Last Monday was our big move day. We hadn't pulled the rig any distance since Mid-November last year, 4 months ago. We took our time and went through our tasks slowly. By the time we were ready to move, we had a good sized crowd watching and saying good bye. As we drove through the park we had people waving good bye and some even followed us to the exit to say good bye.

Here we are at the exit to Seminole in front of the office.  We left them our last bit of trash.

We headed North West to Lutz Florida, 250 miles away. We took the advice of a resident truck driver, Nicki, and took state road 27 up to Tampa. The entrance to State Road 27 is just a couple of miles from the park and runs straight through the center of Florida and around the edge of Lake Okeechobee. SR 27 runs through lots of orange orchards and cow/horse farms. It was a very flat road and the wind was going our way so we didn't need to stop for fuel.

We left Seminole a little after 10 am and arrived 5.5 hours later, 3:30 pm, at Paradise Pines RV Park in Lutz Florida. We will be here at Paradise Pines until after Memorial Day when we move to Disney World for a vacation with the Grandkids. Paradise Pines is also a gated co-op nudist RV Park. All of the sites have individual owners who either rent out the sites or they use them for themselves. The park is situated next door to the Lake Como Nudist Resort and Paradise Lakes Nudist Resort. It’s less than a 10 minute drive to either of these resorts. The Caliente resort is also close at 8 miles north.

Entrance to Paradise Pines RV Park

Paradise Pines is an upscale park with many permanent RVs owned by Snow Birds from all over the country and Canada. The park has a club house and a brand new swimming pool which we have not had a chance to use yet. All of the streets are paved and 90% of the sites have a concrete pad with paver driveways.

Our site for the next 10 weeks in Paradise Pines.

Another view of our site.

So far the weather here has not been so nice. Only one day so far has it been in the 80’s. Most days it has been 50 over night with just 70 in the afternoon. As I’m writing this at 10:30 am it is 58 outside. We also have had on and off rain the past couple of days. This area seems to be a little less tropical than South Florida but it is still windy this time of year. With the winds here, we still like to have our awning out all of the time so we need to put hold down bracing on it . The first time we did this was at our last place in South Florida. There we had holes already drilled into the concrete patio to put the hold down straps. Here it is paver stones which are not conducive to doing that. All around us people are using large flower pots with concrete poured in them to hold down their awnings. Most are decorated with shells or plastic Flowers. We went to the local WalMart and got a couple of plastic decorative bucket/baskets and bags of pea gravel to put in them. This seems to be working for us. We didn't want to use concrete as we would then need to leave them behind; too heavy to carry around. We can pour out the gravel and then refill at our next stop with more gravel or just rocks.

Our homemade awning tiedowns.

Wednesday night is Karaoke night at Paradise Lakes with no charge to get in the resort after 5 pm. So we took advantage of that and went over to have dinner and see what the resort was like. Just a note, all nights after 5pm Paradise Lakes is free to enter. First we had drinks in the large tiki bar by the pool and then dinner in the restaurant that opens at 6pm. The restaurant was a good value for the price and the menu had a good selection.

After dinner the karaoke started in the main dance room next door to the restaurant. As with most karaoke places they seem to have a following of regulars. This means if you want to sing you need to get there early and sign up. Patty went up a few minutes after the start at 7 and got a time of 9:12 to sing.

I'll try to describe the karaoke scene here. There is a fairly large permanent stage with a KJ at the far side. Center stage is a stand with 3 mics on it for the singers. In front of the stage is a large dance floor, 400 sqf, with a large rectangle bar on one side and multilevel seating around the other 2 sides. The idea here is to sing dance music.

The very first singers were very good and we all danced. Then came the people singing very old and depressing slow songs, many we never heard before. There is a lively crowd here so there was still a few dancing. The evening ended up costing just under a $100. Not bad for drinks, dinner, dancing, and a little karaoke. We ended up leaving around 8:30 pm. We will go back again.

We will probably do the much more expensive Caliente next. Caliente is never free with exception to their “free” day pass where you have to participate in a sales pitch for a vacation package. Otherwise it’s $100 per couple for the day or $30 after 6 pm. They do have a special on the Thursday evening Ladies Night. On Ladies night the cost is $10 per person after 6 pm and drinks are half price until 7 pm and then ladies drink for free until 10 pm. We will do a Thursday night first and then probably do a regular $100 day pass. We have done the sales pitch thing before other places and it is really not worth it. We would just rather pay and not be bothered.

Yesterday we went on a 10.5 mile bike ride on the Suncoast Trail. The trail is 41 miles long and starts in Lutz. The trail head is 7 miles from our site so we need to drive there. We got a lot of exercise but the trail was not scenic. We are going to ride another trail in a few days that goes through the forest which should be more scenic.

Sign for the entrance to the Suncoast Trail.

They have a parking charge to help maintain the trail of $2.00.  Not bad.

Patty went to the clothing boutique called Under the Sun about 2 miles from here.  They gave us wine while we she shopped.  This was the waiter to put your glass on while you shopped.

This pic is a guy thing.  They are cutting down some overgrown pine trees in the park and we happened to be there to watch this one take it's fall.

Next, we hope to finally get some golf in.


Stay tuned!