After saying goodbye to Stuart, it would be a 150 mile drive to our next destination Lake Louisa State Park in Clermont, FL, a park we had stayed at many times before. We’ve always liked what was the relatively quiet Clermont area, even considered perhaps buying property there after our RV-ing lives. But after this visit we quickly crossed it off our potential places! Our last visit to this area was in 2019, four years ago – at that time, it was a relatively quiet, very pleasant but growing area. But on this visit we were totally shocked by the massive housing and retail developments that had occurred in such a short period of time. Across from the State Park entrance what used to be just a field was now a sea of apartment buildings! And naturally, development breeds lots of traffic! Wow!

Luckily the State Park campground itself is located quite a good distance from the main highway and thankfully the development had not had any impact on the serenity of the park. Our reservation was for a one night stay on pull thru site #11 – an okay site but pretty close to the main campground road and didn’t offer a lot of privacy.

 

 

After settling in, we took a walk over to Dixie Lake, stopping to say hello to a turtle basking in the sun on a log.

That evening we enjoyed a campfire.

During one of our previous stays here, we had eaten at The Friar Tuck British pub so the next morning we headed there for breakfast since check out time wasn’t until 1:00 p.m. But on our way out, we stopped at the office and reserved another pull thru site #25 for an additional night.

Anyway, back to breakfast. When we arrived at the Cagan Crossings area, we expected to find the restaurant at the same location we had visited previously but nope, to our surprise the restaurant was now housed in a much larger building.

 

In fact, what used to be the very small, corner restaurant was now a separate room that was a small store selling an assortment of British products.

We both had the Lil Friar ($9.99), which was one egg, one rasher of English back bacon, black pudding, Heinz beans, tomatoes, one pork banger, mushrooms, one hash brown patty and toast. Lot of food, glad we didn’t order the Full Friar which had two of everything.

Returning to the campground, we passed by a citrus stand that we had visited a number of years ago. Once we moved to the second pull thru site #25, located in a quieter loop, away from the main road with more privacy, we headed out again to the Showcase of Citrus which is located on a 2500 acre estate where over 50 varieties of citrus are cultivated.  Much different than what we remembered!

Instead of being a fruit stand that sells fruit and a variety of local products, today it is labelled as “Florida’s Fresh Air Attraction” offering Monster Truck adventures, U-Pick Fruit, gem mining, an Old Time Country Store and a variety of animals that you can feed with a purchase of animal feed.

Fun watching the chickens, goats, pigs, a miniature horse, donkey, camel, kangaroos and other friendly creatures wandering around inside their pens, all of course looking for a handout.

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Inside the Country Store, we expected to find some fresh fruit that we could buy. Surprise, that was a wrong assumption! Perhaps it was because, according to their website, they experienced 2 hurricanes, 2 freezes, and 1 devastating hail storm and had to replant 80% of their grove. So maybe there wasn’t enough mature fruit available to sell. Disappointing for sure!

Back at the campground, we prepared for our departure the next day, then finished the day enjoying another campfire and watching the sun set.

 

Leaving the next day, we headed to our next overnight spot, Casey Jones RV Park in Lake City where we had a reservation for a pull thru site for a one night stay. It was okay for a quick one night stay. Convenient to I-75 with long and fairly level, grassy sites. Not much to report about our stay here.

Over the years, our next destination has earned the #1 spot on our list of favorite campgrounds. At East Bank COE Campground in Lake Seminole. near Bainbridge, GA was our next destination where we had a four night reservation on site #A8.

Despite having visited this campground on numerous occasions, we have never tired of having a site right on the lake, watching beautiful sunsets, enjoying a campfire and taking a drive to the dam! Not much else to do in the area so it’s a great place just to relax. Can’t beat it!

Temperatures were pretty chilly during our stay with highs only in the low 50’s and lows in the high 30’s and low 40’s. That’s me snuggled in a blanket next to the campfire!

See more photos of these stays here.

Before we knew it, our very relaxing four night stay was over. Stay tuned to find out about our next stop, another favorite!