Travels in a Tin Can

signs in the area advertising the 'California Men's Colony'. This was
justification enough for me, though Emma seemed keen to stay.
Later during our travels we did stay at a government-owned park. This
decision was due to several factors. One, we had been encouraged to stay at
these public-run campsites by a friend before we started our journey. Two,
they were cheap and therefore enabled us to spend more of our budget on
luxury items such as food. Three, we became braver and less fussy as we
became more seasoned travellers. Four, sometimes we had no other choice.
This last reason was the main one when we first tried out this type of
campsite. Barely a few days after our retreat from Morro Bay we visited
Death Valley and stayed in the Ranger-run National Park camp at Furnace
Creek. Unlike the county park, Furnace Creek did not require any coins for
the showers - because there were no showers. The restrooms had cold water
only and all the camping spots had no hook-ups for water or electricity -
referred to as 'primitive camping'. This was the first time that we spent the
night without our lifelines to power and water, and the fact that we survived
gave us the courage to try other public campgrounds.
When we reached the Everglades National Park in Florida we therefore
had no compunction about going 'back to basics' on another primitive
campsite. Again this was partly forced on us by our itinerary, however in
between the two National Parks we stayed in three other varieties of the
public campsite. First, there was the Anastasia State Park in St Augustine -
which was the one that we turned to when the private campground we had
settled on proved too poorly serviced to justify its expense. The State Park on
this occasion did have hookups for campers and had clean, warm restrooms.