CJHokie

Have not tried any of those. I did make some homemade fire starters I got on Pinterest. You pack dryer lint inside of empty toilet paper rolls. Only, they didn't work according to my husband. Theoretically they should. Dryer lint is amazing tinder (I learned that when I did Cub Scouts with my boys, plus it leads to many dryer fires), and toilet paper rolls are just paper. He thought maybe they were packed too tight.

According to my friend, the pool is open until 8 right now (still early, I know). Carowinds has a water park that is included in the park ticket (take that, Dolly!), and it is only open until 7 right now. Like I said above, I'm guessing you were here before area schools were out (we go to around June 10) and Carowinds did not have summer hours yet. And Carowinds does close in the summer winter (whoops), but the campground is open all year if anyone needed a quick overnight during the winter.

That is weird. The park is open late in the summer. Must have been early June before schools are out here. My friend is camping there now. I will ask her what the pool hours are.

I just drove through this one yesterday to check it out. My husband has no interest, but one of our camping friends was staying a few days this week so I was hoping to talk him into taking our motorhome down (we are in N. Charlotte, so about 30 min.) It was shadier than I was expecting, so I may be able to talk him into it after all. He thought it was going to be a big parking lot, but it really does remind me of campgrounds I went to in the 70s when I was a kid. We're in season now, and I think it's more like $50-60/night. It was way more crowded yesterday than I was expecting.

ICBW, but I thought the signs say no swimming or wading. I don't think they mention alligators, though.

My husband just called to tell me this. Truly horrible. The first time we stayed at the Fort ('14, I think), we were sitting on the boat to MK and had a gator swim by. The captain radioed someone. I don't remember if it was then or the CM working on the dock this past Christmas when my boys did the little Sea Rays (drawing a blank on their actual name), but some CM told us they get gators all the time, remove them, and still have more. They just can't keep them out. Also, with the little boats, my boys were told not to get in the water nor even to reach over and put their hand in. I as

Thanks for all the advice. Not sure if we will be able to time it. The kids have half day school, which means the middle schooler will get home around 12:30, which would put us there in the very worst, horrible time. Maybe we will let him skip that day. I am pretty sure we hit there last year in one of the suggested time windows and it was still horrible, so not sure about this magical window.

I know I've read stuff here and there on this topic, and I may have asked in another thread but don't remember if I did or not. Getting close to trip time now. Wondering if there is any way for us to avoid going through ATL. Here are the specifics: We are coming from Charlotte area, going to Camp Gulf in Destin area (actual address Miramar Beach) in a 40ft. Class A probably towing a Jeep with 4 bikes on the back. Have looked at various alternatives on Google Maps and our Rand McNally RV GPS (which has steered us horribly, horribly wrong in the past), and there are a lot of of

Huh, learn something new every day. The K-Mart closest me closed in the late 90s, IIRC. There is one about 20 minutes away, but I have only gone there once to look for an elusive school supply. No need with 2 Wal-Marts and 2 Targets closer.

I have not heard of or used those. I use AllStays a lot and found it very helpful on our cross country trip.

Exactly!

Yes, casino is a moot point on Disney. I don't recall for certain about the stores, but you are probably right - I'm sure it's a tax thing. But I can think of a million other things to do than shop while waiting to depart.

That's awesome. The article mentioned everyone on board having to wait too. I'm not sure why anyone would care if they're already on the ship. Not like they had somewhere to be that night or were confined to their cabins. They had all the ship's amenities. The one Disney cruise we did was delayed in departing and no one noticed.

LOL, I know exactly what you are talking about. I even have an accounting degree and was having trouble explaining to my husband exactly what we spent while we were there while looking at the bill.

Yes, that's it!

Interesting. I do not recall that.

That park has a lot of fishing tournaments. I just checked their website for our upcoming trip to Destin from Charlotte, NC, and the price is more than double when we stayed there last year. Looks like there is a big bass tournament then. So, definitely check their calendar of events. BTW, C loop (called Clark) is just water & electric, and D loop (Deer or Deerpark or something) is the full h/u. We are looking for an alternate route this year as we do not want to take our MH through ATL again after last year! Oh, and welcome!

I'm confused by that link. It is KMart but it says "Sold by Sears". Are the 2 related these days? Super cute, though.

Not sure if you can make Eufala on the way, but we overnighted at Lakepoint(e?) State Park, that ended up being a great stop. We called ahead and they gave us the gate code since we weren't going to make it before closing. I think C loop is the full h/u, all pull throughs. We just found an empty one. They told me to come pay the next morning in the marina store. That was a bit of a mess because there was one guy doing campground stuff and he was slow. I wanted to just pay and leave, but they needed all my info for their system (address, email, phone, etc) when we were on our way out.

aka the stink eye

Make sure you pull all the way forward in the hitch/unhitch area! 2 can fit at once if you do. Last time we went some moron stopped directly in the middle. We pulled in as far as we could behind them but our bikes on the back of our Jeep were sticking out in the road and everyone was mean mugging us. And we were finished unhooking before they were.

We overnighted at Hanna Park in Jacksonville before. Not sure what time of year you are going, but we stopped on the way back from spring break, so March-ish, and there was plenty of parking in the beach lots. I will say a) you do have to go a bit off 95 and there was construction with traffic then, so not ideal to hop on/hop off and 2) not the prettiest beach (to be fair, that was after a week at Destin, so we might have been a little spoiled.) Probably not the best, but an option.

Just got an email with some more promo codes. Checked their website and they appear to be different than the special offers on there. For 2/28-4/28 (book by 2/26) Family Suites starting at $149/night + $50 resort credit - SAVE now-4/28 (book by 2/26) FS start at $120/night select Mon-Wed - GR8DEAL These may be the same ones we already talked about but it looks like they opened some more dates with them.

You may have seen on the website, they have a big inflatable water slide. It was only inflated for one day of our stay. It says on the website that they charge a certain amount per ride or for unlimited rides, but they didn't charge that day. That was good because my boys were done after 2 or 3 times down. We didn't really do the pools either. It was a little chilly that week. One pool had a temporary shelter around it, and my husband walked in and said the chlorine smell was overwhelming. The other pool was open but chilly. So basically we did beach and camper. That was our fir

We stayed at Camp Gulf last spring break by ourselves and are going back this spring break with a bigger group. We actually only left the campground 1 time, and that was to go to a seafood market. Not sure what we did, I guess just hung out on the beach and at our camper. Oh, we did do a little drive to a cute town and I'm drawing a blank on what it is called.