Living as an RV Family in Central Florida

While we’ve been sharing snippets of our travels as an RV family on Instagram and Facebook (have you clicked to follow us yet?) we thought it would be a good idea to give you some background information by explaining what it was like for us to live as an RV family in central Florida.

Moving to Florida

We drove the RV from Maryland to Florida a few days before Christmas.

We stayed with family through the holidays and didn’t actually move back into the RV until January 1st. Since we waved goodbye to central Florida on April 1st, we lived there for 3 whole months! If you are stationary, I know this seems like a very short amount of time and if you travel fulltime, I’m sure this seems like a l-o-n-g time. For our family this felt just right!

A huge part of why we’re splitting our roadtrips up with longer periods of stationary living is because of the good experience we had living as an RV family in central Florida. (Another reason is because we’d like to go on eating, and food for eight is expensive, so having a paid job is a little bit of a no brainer.)

In our three months we were able to discover great parks and museums, visit the local library, find a wonderful church, participate in a vibrate Awana club, and even search out the cheapest laundromat and the most convenient free wifi 🙂

Where We Stayed as an RV Family

During our stay, we lived exclusively in the Three Flags RV Campground in Wildwood, FL. This RV park is made up mostly of retirees with a few families coming and going every once in a while.

We were blessed with wonderful neighbors who took our kids in like adopted grandchildren, teaching them skills,  preparing meals for our whole family, and even celebrating our first birthday away from family.

The other campground visitors and residents were very nice to our family and oohed and aahed over our kids. The campground also plans gatherings for holidays and special days. Our family loved watching the Super Bowl and eating Easter dinner with our neighbors!

What We Did in the Campground

Because this park wasn’t built for children, there is no kid’s pool or playground. While our kids love playgrounds, we actually enjoyed the quietness of this park. While living here, Eliya and Amelia both started riding their own bikes (as opposed to riding on the tag along attached to the back of Tim’s bike).

We also enjoyed crafting several different afternoons and even learned to make wooden bowls and pine needle baskets (even though I never finished mine).

We even watched a newborn calf take its first wobbly steps in the pasture directly behind our RV site!

By staying in the same spot for a little while, Tim and I finally figured out an exercise setup that works for us and became more consistent with our morning devotional time (more on both of these to come).

We also had time to figure out the logistics of how we could travel more and how to have unlimited data as an RV family on the move. Our family also started the Full Gaps Diet (we never would have figured this out while moving every few days) and we got a glimpse of the type of life we want to have when we grow up 🙂

What We Did Away from the Campground

We explored a few local parks and found a very nice playground nearby in Wildwood, that we enjoyed playing at numerous time.

We also found a church that we LOVE and the five older kids started participating in a local Awana program.

The kids enjoyed visiting the Lego store at Disney Springs.

We all spent a cool, drizzly afternoon at a local Native American Festival. The kids loved watching the dancing and the fry bread was a big hit!

We also purchased a reciprocal museum membership from a museum that participates in the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC for short) Passport Program that allows us free access to hands-on science museums across the country.

While living in central Florida we used our pass to visit the Orlando Science Center. The kids loved this experience. Tim and I enjoyed their enthusiasm and even had quite a lot of fun ourselves!

We also went to MOSI (Museum of Science and Industry) in Tampa. This is another ASTC Passport Program participant and was really a lot of fun. Tim even got to ride a high wire bike…with purple tassels 🙂

Before packing up to head on our big road trip we also braved the “cold” and went to the beach (Gulf side). Unfortunately, the water was too cold and the breeze made it more than a little uncomfortable for the soaking wet kids. Hopefully, we’ll get a chance to go again when it’s a bit warmer.

Final Thoughts

Overall, our three months living as an RV family in central Florida was a great time of growth and gave us a slower pace with room to figure some things out. We enjoyed the time to be together as a family without feeling too rushed to see or do things in the area. Staying in Florida for three months showed us the way we want to travel…less of a sprint and more regional travel.

How do you like to travel? Do you like to pack in as many stops and experiences as you can or do you prefer to travel slow and savor the moments?