My second camping trip with the Pop Top

My second outing with the Squidget PT was a two-day, two-night camping trip to the Florida east coast. I stayed at the Sebastian Inlet State park, a distance of about 132 miles from my home in central Florida. That is a longer route than necessary, but with much less city driving, although there was a lot of stop and go driving before I got through Lake Wales and onto eastbound hwy. 60, a long, nearly straight, boring stretch of road from Lake Wales to Vero Beach. There are sections of the road up to 12 miles long where there isn’t a single curve in the road. However, on the positive side, there was very little traffic to contend with.

My drive from home to the park and back was a total of 264 miles of trailer towing. I drove a total of 302 miles between fill-ups before and after the trip. That's about 12 miles of city driving, 12 miles of driving on SR A1A at 45-55 mph, and the rest, about 13 miles of driving inside the state park between fishing locations.

While towing the trailer, on a 22 mile stretch of I-95, I drove at about 65 mph, but on the rest of the drive, I rarely exceeded 62 mph, using my cruise control while at “highway” speeds of 55 to 65 mph, keeping the RPMs below 2000 in 6th gear. My Frontier as a lot of torque and doesn’t need high RPMs when towing except when I need to accelerate quickly. I got an average mileage of 16.4 mpg with my 6-cylinder engine and 6-speed manual transmission. So much for the technical details.

Sebastian Inlet is a “cut” or channel between the Indian River and the Atlantic Ocean, near Sebastian, Florida. The park is on a long narrow strip of land separated from the mainland by the 121 mile long Indian River, which is part of the Eastern Seaboard intracoastal waterway.

The park encompasses both sides of the inlet between the ocean and river, with all of the camping sites on the south side, west of the bridge. My campsite was one row of sites away from the inlet. The campground was kept immaculately clean by personnel in carts emptying trashcans and others walking around picking up small pieces of paper or trash several times a day.

My truck and the Squidget PopTop in my camp site.

The weather was excellent for camping. Although the temperature was in the 80s during the day, a cool shore breeze kept the interior of the trailer comfortable and I didn’t have to install the AC unit. At night, I had to close the windows nearly all the way as the temperature dropped into the low 60s, nice sleeping weather.

Speaking of sleeping, my new additional layer of memory foam on top of my cushions provided a great mattress. I awoke both mornings with no back pain at all (that I felt when going to bed).

Fishing is the reason that most folks come to the inlet, although my fishing experience wasn’t so good. As it was my first time there, I didn’t have the “locals” knowledge of how to fish the area or of the best bait to buy. The weather had warmed up and I didn’t see many of the others catching much either. It’s the normally cooler weather of November that brings the fish closer to shore and into the inlet, but this year has been exceptionally warm for the season.

There is a long jetty on the north side of the inlet extending into the ocean, and a shorter jetty on the south side, both used for fishing. There are also catwalks on either side of the inlet, beneath the bridge for fishing in the inlet itself. Then, there are the inlet shorelines to fish from. There were many boats in the river where folks were fishing mainly for flounder. Here are some of the photos of the park.

View of the inlet from the back of my camp site.

Driving along the south shore of the inlet to the campground.

The north and south jetties as seen from the top of the bridge.

The inlet to the west as seen from the top of the bridge.

The south catwalk beneath the bridge.

Folks fishing from the south catwalk.

As from my first camping trip, I added a few things to my “to do” list, such as hooks for dish towels above the sink. And, to remember to add to my camping checklist some of the more obvious things I thought I’d remember to take but didn’t. One of those as my small DVD player that I left at home. So, I didn’t get to watch the two movies I took with me, but did get pretty good TV reception so I could watch regular TV programming.

Despite not catching any fish, it was a pleasure to be out in the fresh air and sunshine, just sitting in a lawn chair holding onto my fishing rod waiting for the big one to take the bait…the one that didn’t cooperate that is.