The motorhome is in the shop in Jacksonville getting some things fixed (and new flooring! Woot!), so we're staying in St. Augustine in a beach condo for two weeks. We got a 2 BR, 2 BA fully equipped condo, on the beach, with two heated pools, a fitness room, and a bunch of other stuff for $500/week. So if you ever want to vacation in the St. Augustine area, check out Ocean Village Club.
It's chilly here, but supposed to warm up tomorrow. It was fairly steamy in Charleston when we left, then the temp dropped rather abruptly about an hour down the road. Got windy and cold - I say "cold" but it was around 60* and the Georgians and Floridians were wearing heavy coats.
One of the things I like best about being a homeless person is living in a variety of environments. I always wanted a condo on the beach, but I also always wanted a cabin in the mountains, and I also wanted an apartment in the heart of a bustling city. Oh, and an apartment in a quiet neighborhood with a wonderful market you can walk to every day like the Europeans. In the last year we have lived in all those places. When we leave somewhere, I'm always sad (except that crappy cabin in Bar Harbor), but excited to get to our new home. Even in the motorhome, our home remains the same but the campgrounds vary dramatically.
TripAdvisor has been my BFF these past couple of years, although one of those flighty friends who is mostly sane and lucid, with brief bouts of psycho. Mostly the reviews are reliable, and many people are quite generous in their detailed descriptions. You have your bitchers who want to complain about something that's their fault (like bringing their two large dogs to a "no pets" facility) or pick about something insignificant (like only having four bath towels in the room and they had to call housekeeping to bring them more), but you learn how to weed past those cranks. Yelp censors their reviews, which makes their ratings unreliable, but TA is pretty solid and has only let us down once: the Bar Harbor cottage had great reviews that it turned out they didn't deserve, but then I looked closer and saw that all of them were like 10 years old. My fault.
I've learned to look past the traditional hotels and resorts when planning our motorhomeless stays, and look for cottages and private rentals. They're cheaper and many times you get better amenities. We're not people who want to be pampered and have our sheets and towels replaced daily, and in fact we prefer not to have them bothering us every morning. We're fine with taking out our own trash. At our Sonesta in Burlington we were there for a month, so we set up housekeeping once a week and that was plenty. We always travel with basic cleaning supplies anyway for day to day stuff. We also like at least a mini kitchen so we can prep our own meals; even better if we can get a full kitchen.
Here's our digs:
That last one is the view from our balcony; you can see the dunes, and the beach is just past that.
It's chilly here, but supposed to warm up tomorrow. It was fairly steamy in Charleston when we left, then the temp dropped rather abruptly about an hour down the road. Got windy and cold - I say "cold" but it was around 60* and the Georgians and Floridians were wearing heavy coats.
One of the things I like best about being a homeless person is living in a variety of environments. I always wanted a condo on the beach, but I also always wanted a cabin in the mountains, and I also wanted an apartment in the heart of a bustling city. Oh, and an apartment in a quiet neighborhood with a wonderful market you can walk to every day like the Europeans. In the last year we have lived in all those places. When we leave somewhere, I'm always sad (except that crappy cabin in Bar Harbor), but excited to get to our new home. Even in the motorhome, our home remains the same but the campgrounds vary dramatically.
TripAdvisor has been my BFF these past couple of years, although one of those flighty friends who is mostly sane and lucid, with brief bouts of psycho. Mostly the reviews are reliable, and many people are quite generous in their detailed descriptions. You have your bitchers who want to complain about something that's their fault (like bringing their two large dogs to a "no pets" facility) or pick about something insignificant (like only having four bath towels in the room and they had to call housekeeping to bring them more), but you learn how to weed past those cranks. Yelp censors their reviews, which makes their ratings unreliable, but TA is pretty solid and has only let us down once: the Bar Harbor cottage had great reviews that it turned out they didn't deserve, but then I looked closer and saw that all of them were like 10 years old. My fault.
I've learned to look past the traditional hotels and resorts when planning our motorhomeless stays, and look for cottages and private rentals. They're cheaper and many times you get better amenities. We're not people who want to be pampered and have our sheets and towels replaced daily, and in fact we prefer not to have them bothering us every morning. We're fine with taking out our own trash. At our Sonesta in Burlington we were there for a month, so we set up housekeeping once a week and that was plenty. We always travel with basic cleaning supplies anyway for day to day stuff. We also like at least a mini kitchen so we can prep our own meals; even better if we can get a full kitchen.
Here's our digs:
That last one is the view from our balcony; you can see the dunes, and the beach is just past that.