Our Camping Adventures at Lake Kissimmee State Park, Florida
Our site at Lake Kissimmee State ParkA recent camping trip took us to Lake Kissimmee State Park in Florida. This park is beautiful! Our site was wooded, and we had lots of privacy. It was in the winter, so the temperatures were mild. We had perfect weather and thoroughly enjoyed it! We had a large “backyard” area that was totally wooded. I heard some rustling in there, so I am sure there were critters observing us!
There is a boat launch at the park and an area for picnics. You can easily ride bikes around the park to the water. There are places to fish and enjoy the beautiful birds that are native to Florida. We thoroughly enjoyed the park and would consider going there again.
Visiting armadilloThis campground has lots of wildlife. We saw deer, an armadillo, a racoon and opossum—no gators this time! On our first night there, we had our garbage hanging on a hook on the side of our camper. The next morning, I noticed that something had gotten into our trash. I cleaned up and didn’t think too much about it. We had to hang our garbage higher on the camper. So that night, we decided to put the camera out and see what shows up. As soon as we went into the camper, minutes later the culprits appeared! Our little armadillo friend, together with an opossum and a large racoon decided to visit our site. They must have smelled residuals from our dinner. It was so neat to see them! Sadly, for them, they couldn’t get to our garbage that night! Having the camera outside gave us an opportunity to see these amazing critters!
The little armadillo did visit our site during the day. He was rustling around the wooded area of the site looking for his meal. He seemed totally unphased by humans! That is good and bad! He was safe with us, and I thoroughly enjoyed observing him in the wild. He was young and so cute!
One of our adventures was going to the Florida’s Natural plant where they process the orange juice. This plant is not too far from the campground so we thought we would visit it. They have a visitor center where they have a museum of sorts that had historical equipment used in the early days to get the juice from the oranges. They also had a video of harvesting and processing the fruit. They offered samples of their fresh orange juice. It was a very interesting place. The whole area around the plant has many citrus farms. Apparently, these are the farms that are part of a cooperative that grow the oranges for Florida’s Natural. These farms are all privately owned.
The only negative we experienced with this trip was getting to the campground via Florida’s I-4. You have to pass Disney World, SeaWorld, etc., many of the tourist places to get to the road that takes you to the State Park. The traffic was rough and backed up as you can imagine, but once we got past that, it was smooth sailing! Next time, we will have to find an alternate route! It is still worth the trouble. I highly recommend Lake Kissimmee State Park!