Day 5 - First Night Camping, FL

Bahia Honda State Park was our first night camping on the trip. It was make or break time for our marriage and luckily we came through it although it was close at one stage!

We did a lot of research before the trip to find the perfect tent. We wanted something that could cope with the different climates and terrains we were going to be seeing as we travel across America, it needed to be hard wearing as it was going to be used for 3 months and it needed to be easy to put up and take down as most of the time we are only camping for one night at a time in each place.

We chose the Boondocker Hotel by Eureka

I have learnt that there is no such thing as a tent that is easy to pitch, they are all difficult in one way or another. I only hope that we quickly become experts! The instructions were in Spanish and in English although you couldn’t tell as neither made that much sense at the time. Once the tent was up, we did have the ‘oh yeah’ moment when rereading the instructions and realising what’s they were telling you do to. It took about 1.5 hours to pitch, most of this time we spent looking at the side polls which were facing horizontal wondering how we were going to get them into the ground. Turns out you bend them, a lot, and hope they don’t snap!

With the tent finally up, our camp beds assembled and our chairs out the car, we finally relaxed with a beer and a BBQ, which included BBQ bananas (John and Jules style) and toasted marshmallows.

We decided to put up the fly sheet to make sure we knew how to do it in case we were caught out in the rain. As it happens, it rained unexpectedly that night, but we remained dry inside the tent. The next day it was still raining so we quickly became experts at getting the tent down quickly and without letting the inside get wet.

All in all, after a little stress with putting up the tent, it was a very relaxing night and a successful first day camping.