December Get-Away

December 12 and 13, 2018

The middle of December always meant two things to me: a time to celebrate the birthdays of my two youngest sisters, Dawn and Sally, and time to put up the Christmas tree.

This year, I called each of my sisters on her birthday (Dawn, December 12; Sally, December 13—two years and one day apart). We won’t be putting up a Christmas tree (we stopped doing that a number of years ago), but mid-December has meant it is time for a December RV trip. We are at Little Talbot Island State Park, just 30 miles north of our house.

Why bother to camp just 30 miles from home? Because when we take the time to make a camping reservation, pay our fee, and actually drive to the site, we commit to taking time off from daily chores and enjoy ourselves. And that is exactly what we have been doing since Tuesday.

An older park, Little Talbot Island State Park has a number of camping spots, but only two that can accommodate RVs up to 30 feet. We could never have camped here with our other RVs, since the first was 38 feet, the second 40. Thor is only 27 feet, a definite advantage for visiting many of the state parks.

This park looks like “old Florida” with its wild marshes and wetland forests. Its roads don’t even show up show up on GPS. And the roads meander everywhere. You could go in circles trying to find your way out of the campground…or to your campsite. (I missed it the first time round.)

The wash houses are old but clean (as have been all of them). The campsite is relatively secluded, with many trees around. In general, Florida has great state parks, and we enjoy the rates for us old folks—half price. So camping is very reasonable.

Little Talbot Island SP is surrounded by water—marshes, creeks, and (of course) the ocean. The first place we fished on December 12 (upon the recommendation of the park ranger) was at a bridge about a mile from the park. We hiked down to a spot on one side of the creek; another couple was on the other side, perhaps a hundred yards (or less) away. I swear…that couple (who was using shrimp as bait, just like us) pulled in a dozen or more fish (mostly speckled sea trout) in the couple of hours we were there. Our luck? Well, the score yesterday was Linda, 1; Jim, 0. I caught a nice 16” black drum. It was a delicious dinner.

My 16" black drum (my first) made a delicious dinner. (The red on its head came from dispatching it with mercy.)

Today (December 13) we went across the road to the marsh, as the tide came in. Jim caught two little black drum; I caught one. After a couple hours in the marsh, we headed back to the bridge where I caught the dinner fish yesterday. This time we fished from the site where the couple was catching all of that trout yesterday. Today? Jim, 2; Linda, 0. Take-home fish? 0. A young man who joined us caught a few juvenile black drum, but he didn’t get any keepers either. I think the weather had an effect on fishing: Although the temperature claimed to be in the lower 60s, it felt very cold, and I suspect the water temperature reflected the drop in temperature.

Jim caught four juvenile black drums today.

The photo looks like this is a big fish, but unfortunately, it was not big enough. It is one of the juvie black drums we caught.

Tomorrow we are heading back home. The journey will take (at the most) 40 minutes. We night do a little fishing if the weather holds. Right now, thought, it is raining, so I think our fishing expedition for December is probably done.

Until next time,

Your Reluctant RoVer,

Linda