Wauchula, FL, and Motor Home Fire

We hit the road at around 10:30 Yesterday morning and had a leisurely drive the 60 miles to Wauchula. Actually, the drive was extended because we took US Route 17 more than half way and we went through every small town for about 40 miles of the trip. That gave us a better feel for Florida towns and none were too impressive. It seemed like only the poor were out on the streets as we saw them everywhere on the drive down.

We arrived at 1 PM, checked in, got set up:

and walked around the campground to get familiar with where everything was. While walking around, we took this picture of the large trees that were all full of moss:

It is a very nice park and we stopped in the office to see if we could get reservations for a couple weeks after we leave the Orlando park on the 26th. We lucked out, and got reservations back here for January 26th through February 7th (12 days) which is more than we expected for this high season with little availability. Anyway, we have from now until February 7th to stay with no cost at parks - Thousand Trails - which is what we need to do without having jobs. Most of the jobs that are available in Florida are "work-for-your-site" jobs, so it's like we have the same benefit but we don't have to work. We'll take it - for awhile.

After driving around the town of Wauchula and going to the local Super Walmart for a few things we came home and relaxed, had dinner and turned in about 10 PM. Then, at 11 PM the knock came on our door. It turned out that the motor home just behind us was on fire. We jumped out of bed, dressed as quickly as we could, grabbed the small camera and headed outside. Sure enough, the rig that is behind us diagonally (see it in the picture above, just over the Jeep) had flames about 3 feet high shooting through the roof:

Everybody was scrambling to get hoses and the gentleman next to us that woke us up climbed on the roof with a hose to try to put out the fire. The fire continued to burn until the fire department arrived in about 10 minutes and they were on top of the fire and put it out in short order. The fire was started behind the refrigerator, and the motor home will most likely be declared a total loss. I know I wouldn't want to live in it after that fire, no matter how much they replaced inside. Below are the shots that were taken as the firemen were doing their job:

Our rig is just behind the fireman on the right, and you can see our blue light from our rooftop satellite dish. I grabbed the wrong camera to take these shots of the fire and it doesn't do well on inside or night-time shots. I apologize, but you get the idea. We just hope it isn't always this exciting here.

We wanted to go to Ft Myers today, and hopefully we will with a later start. It is only about an hour away, so it should be a fun day. So, that's the start of our 4 days in Wauchula, FL...