South Florida Museum, Bishop Planetarium and Parker Manatee Aquarium, Bradenton Florida

We spent the morning at the South Florida Museum. This museum included the Parker Manatee Aquarium and also housed the Bishop Planetarium. With our ASTC Travellers passport we received FREE ($66 savings) admission! Regular admission would have been $19 for adults and $14 each for my girls. Kids under 3 are free. The Planetarium is extra...$4 each. All prices current as of March 2016.

This museum is a small little museum but it was the perfect size for my girls and had a couple fun components.

Learning about prehistoric animals

The museum was full of interesting facts about early local area inhabitants culture.

I love how Sierra is having a zen moment
in front of this portrait of hard working women.

A fun and educational game about tools

Learning about first tools made of shells

I finally learned the actual difference between alligators and crocodiles. Something I've often wondered about but had never actually tried to solve the mystery. Crocodiles have longer snouts and toothy grins where as alligators have shorter/stubbier snouts and their teeth are in their mouths. I'm sure there are other differences but this is the main characteristic difference that we learned here.

Aayla compared her snout to the crocodiles. Talking about the differences of her snout and theirs.

There was a fun little educational hands on room that the girls played in while we waited for the planetarium. Sierra enjoyed acting out how she thought each culture would act in their daily lives.

By far their favourite thing was exploring the ancient older technology.

"Mom is this a phone?"  

"How does the wire come off?" 

"Is this the first computer?"
"How does the internet work?"

Oh yeah they had fun with these... and boy do I feel old now! You should have seen their faces as I tried to explain what a "party line" was! 

Aayla and daddy loved the Planetarium.

After the planetarium we had a quick tour of the court yard and sample house. This area was a bit lacking and held their attention for maybe a minute. They were hoping to walk through the whole house so were disappointed with the little mock show rooms in the entrance.

Then we headed up to the Parker Manatee Aquarium. Currently they had two manatee being rehabilitated.

As well as "Snooty" their resident Manatee who is 67 years old and has been at this aquarium since he was 11 months old. He has been in captivity so long that he can not be released. He gets well taken care of here as you can see by his size! He has even taught himself some tricks like pulling himself up on deck for snack.

Snooty gets fed by hand while the other two manatee are not hand fed. The hope is that when rehabilitated, they will not become dependant of people for their food and then in the future can be released back into the wild. These two are here due to suffering from cold stress which is much like frost bite for humans.

A manatee skeleton

Aayla found Nemo...but couldn't find Dory :)

Then it was time for lunch! This was an interesting spot for about 1 1/2 hours. It's small but was fun and informative. The little hands on room was by far their favourite spot. 

Overnight at Palmetto, Florida, Walmart

We had an extra night between leaving Peace River and our new reservation at Terra Ceia RV Park and stayed at Walmart in Palmetto. We use RV Parky (mainly use the App) a lot to find over night spots on travel days. We always call to confirm with the location before we arrive as we want to hear it right from the store to ensure we are allowed and are parked where they want us to park.

508 10th St East, Palmetto, FL

When I called Terra Ceia to see if they had room and we would come a day early I was told they were full and they had no overflow area. So imagine my surprise when we arrived and I saw an over flow parking area. It's hard to see the sign but it states on it "Overflow area".

Not sure why we couldn't park there but glad we had a Walmart to fall back on until it was check in time here at Terra Ceia.

We love using Walmarts when we are passing through areas. We hate to pay to basically just sleep somewhere. We can easily spend the night unplugged with our solar system. Plus staying a night at Walmart allows me to get some shopping done without making a special trip, thereby freeing up more time to explore or relax when we get to our destination. So Thank you once again Walmart! We certainly appreciate you!!!

REVIEW Peace River RV Campground Resort- Thousand Trails, Wauchula, Florida

Peace River RV Campground Resort was our first time staying in a Thousand Trails park with our new zone pass membership... and we LOVED it!

Location: 2555 River Rd, Wauchula, Florida. You can get actual directions here.

Value 5/5
For us we give the value a 5 as we stayed here for FREE with our new membership. In the future our cost will only be $3 a night which is still awesome! (see how much we saved in camping fees HERE when we bought our membership) Sites here are normally around $35 a night to start I believe.

Site Quality 4/5
Our site was a bit muddy in a small area under the very back of our camper so it didn't bother or effect us at all. It had been covered with some straw before we arrived and even after it rained again the muddiness did not get any worse. Our site was grass but very flat and level. It had water and 30 amp at site. We had no sewer on our site but we didn't care because we were on the river. The sewer sites are generally taken all the time and are given away by a lottery system. We found this a bit odd but it seemed to work well for the park and many people would give up their river sites to go get a sewer site when one came available. No internet at the site. Internet could be used at the Rec Hall and by the pool area or it could be purchased. Fire pits at all the sites but picnic tables only at some sites. We were told if we want a table, pick a site that already has one. Seems to me like everyone should just get a table. Our site was very large and spacious and we had just enough room to put out the awning beside the palm tree pictured. There was still about 10 feet behind the camper before the river as well, where our fire pit area was.

Facility Fun 4/5
The heated pool was warm enough that even I could get in it and the kids made use of it almost daily, and a hot tub. There was an older wooden playground with slide, climbing apparatus and swings. We never saw more then one or two other kids on it with us while we were there. There was an older looking mini putt area and a few walking trails around the park. Fishing also was permitted. We watched many kayaks and boaters go by on the river behind our site. The girls were allowed to ride their motorized Jeep and did a lot of bike riding around the park. Bonus here is we got to spend time with a lot of other fulltime families here so there were always lots of kids around. There were pickle board courts, horse shoes and billiards / games room as well as a library. Lots to keep you entertained. They also had weekly activities planned.

Natural Surroundings 4.5/5
This park felt very natural. The only area I would not have liked being would have been in one of the middle open field sites. The sewer sites near the entrance of the park were mainly in a treed area, and down by the river had many full grown trees and the wonderful river. There were a few trails around the outskirts of the park to walk on or bike ride.

Bathrooms 4/5
The only bathrooms that we went in were the ones by the pool and laundry area. There were two toilets and two showers/changing rooms in the ladies bathrooms. They were very clean and modern.

Staff 3/5
I found the staff to be on the grumpy side. The person who signed us in was very blunt and rushed through everything and then when I had a question he looked at me puzzled like, why didn't I just agree quickly and leave. Perhaps he was just having a bad day. Other people we talked to had horror stories about one staff. We generally just stayed away from the office area and didn't have to deal with the staff very much at all.

Location 3/5
This location is a bit out of the way with not too much around it. There is a Walmart in Wauchula about 10 mins away (which allows over night RV Parking when we were there). There are a few small local places around like the Hardee County Wildlife refuge, Pioneer Village and Heritage Museum. I'm sure there is more around but our kids were having so much fun with all the other families that we didn't venture out much from here. Beaches are about an hour 1/2 away. On my next visit I'd like to go to Solomons castle (30 mins away) and see the Herrmans Royal Lippizan Stallions practice (40 mins away).

Overall 4/5
We loved our time here at Peace River. I think more so because we had a river site. It was spacious and beautiful! I liked a lot of the treed sites too but my opinion of this park would have been less if we were stuck in the open field area. However where we were in site P80 we were extremely happy. We loved the size of the site and the river location. We loved that so many other full time families were here. The only thing we would have liked to have seen changed would be picnic tables at every site and a newer playground. Laundry was available and cost $1.75 and $1.50 I think to wash and dry.

Campground map. The blacked out areas we were told not to park
in as the ground was still soggy from a recent flood.

Weekly activities

We hung our hammock by the river and
enjoyed many a relaxing afternoon

Mini golf area

The wooden payground

Our campfire pit with grill near the river at the back of our site

Ice cream truck came around on Saturdays

Riding the trails on the outskirts of the park

Hardee County Wildlife Refuge, Zolfo Springs, Florida

While we stayed at Peace River Thousand Trails we took a little field trip a few minutes away with a couple other families to explore the Hardee County Wildlife Refuge.

It is located at 650 Animal Way, Zolfo Springs, Florida. Hours are 10am-4pm daily but closed on Mondays and Wed. Admission was $4 teens to adults, $2 age 5-12 and under 5 were free.

It was a small little park but we had a lot of fun learning about all the local animals that lived here. For the very affordable entrance fee you get your moneys worth and you help a worthy cause. My girls made a donation as well. Every animal here was brought here because they had no chance of surviving in the wild again by themselves. Each cage is set up as naturally as possible to replicate their original habitats.

The whole refuge is built with a walkway above the habitats so you can look down into them.

Everyone looking in at the cougars

Cougar relaxing in the shade

Aayla looking at all the cougar info

A soft shell turtle

A raccoon enjoying the lazy day in a hammock

Vulture. there were many of them and not all of them
were residents

A sleepy bear

Discussing some of the animal species here

Searching for the bobcat

The largest alligators I have ever seen! The picture really
does not show his size. He was HUGE!

Deer

Night Heron (he was probably wild)

Tortoise

Our own WILD gang

We went during Pioneer Days and it was a bit crazy to get to but we made it. Some of us had to sneak by the guard while others had to get a police escort as the guard collecting fees for parking for the Pioneer Days thought the wildlife refuge was closed and we were sneaking into the park. I'm sure on a normal day you wouldn't have the issue we had, but we came away with a story to remember forever.