On February 1st we drove from the west coast of Florida (Bradenton) to the east coast of Florida (Margate). In our search for the next place to stop for the winter months, we found many RV parks or resort campsite and parks, not available. After staying a month in Bradenton, we wanted to drive further south in the state to see more of Florida. Fort Lauderdale, or the area around it, was of interest to us. After several attempts to find an RV park, we came across Aztec RV Resort in Margate, with available sites. In looking over the information available on the internet we could see that it was one of the higher end RV resorts in the area. We decided to give it a try. It was in the "right" part of the state, southern Florida, which is where we wanted to be for a month to enjoy the southern part of Florida and warm weather.
How FUN to have a lunch stop and meet up with Illinois friends Larry and Joy Johnson on our way south! Look who is holding the ice cream now - not me! That's unusual!!!
This Aztec RV park has turned out to be one of the most beautiful RV parks we've ever been to! Some sites have fun tiki huts alongside the brick paver sites. The site we reserved did not have a tiki hut, we were told there were none available when we called to make the reservation.
Here we are - arriving to a tropical paradise!
There is a guard in the entrance and secure gates to pass thru. What we were about to find out was that almost all of the motorhomes and folks in the entire resort are from - CANADA. We're told about 90% of the resort guests are from Quebec or other areas of Canada. French is the language of the park. As we drove around the next day it was difficult to see any license plates from the US. We were in the minority! Not a bad thing, just the reality for the next month.
This is the first site we noticed once we passed the gate house.
The license plate on the rolls royce on the right of this picture says DROPOUT. There were several "boy toys" on this site, a segway, two cars, a golf cart, a motorcycle, a dune buggy...and a Tiki Hut!
Before I post any other pictures, check out the next picture. This was a news article that was posted on the wall of the office.
We pulled in to the office, it was about 6:30 pm. There were no signs indicating where we should park the 40 ft. bus with car towed behind, so we took up about a dozen parallel parking spaces that were empty along the front of the circle drive. We were greeted by some unfriendly registration folks that clearly were Canadians and just wanted to have us sign in and move along.
We were escorted to our site by a gentlemen in a golf cart. He directed us backing in and seemed okay with answering any questions we had about hooking up. The site is one of the nicest, cleanest sites we've EVER parked in and has a fancy-schmancy lantern post for connecting utilities.
The next day I took a little bicycle ride around the park and this is what I saw. There is quite a collection of fun looking golf carts along with beautiful motorhomes! Only motorhomes are allowed in this park and cannot be older than 15 years old.
Here is a sample of the golf carts in the park.
One of the more interesting carts:
The cars parked alongside the RV's and the golf carts were just as interesting. Quite a collection of Mercedes, Lotus, Jaguars, Lamborghini, Rolls, etc. WOW! Who knew there were this many R I C H Canadians? Yes, 90% of the park is Canadian. We went back to the office to ask for a schedule of events and the schedule was in French - but have no fear - there was a version of it printed in English for the small percentage of Americans. French is spoken everywhere...and the people, for the most part, are NOT friendly! Every other park or resort or campground we've ever been to has been super friendly, you can't walk down a street without folks waving to you or saying hello. Not this place...
This is a pretty typical site with a good view of a Tiki hut. Very fun! Notice the motorcycles...there is quite a collection of motorcycles...mostly Harley's. But quite a few trikes as well as Spyders and CanAms.
There is a huge circle in the middle of the park where all the activities take place and streets flow out from there with many, many courts such as the one pictured below.
I couldn't begin to count the number of sites with motorhomes, cars AND motorcycles...like the one below. Many of the sites had two motorcycles covered like in the next picture.
This is another kind of Tiki hut or ... I'm not sure WHAT you would call it? It's a little patio home and they have kitchenettes, TV's, ceiling fans, etc...
One evening we took a walk over to the pool area and enjoyed the hot tub. There is a lounge area nearby and it was karaoke night. Most of the singing was in french and it was fun to hear some US songs sung in french!
This was a wonderful stop for the month of February. One negative was the area surrounding the park, which is not a very good area and I'm not sure how safe it is as most of the apartment communities have gates. Shopping is limited nearby as well as restaurants...but Fort Lauderdale and all it has to offer is just a short 15 or so minute drive away.
Look who came to visit us yesterday! We enjoyed a lovely visit with friends from Illinois Stewart and Sheila.
Every chance I get I'm taking a little excursion around the park on my bike and enjoying it tremendously!
Are you familiar with this motorhome? A Prevost? They're pretty much the highest end you'll find of the motorhome vehicles. There are quite a few of them here in the resort.
This is a typical site just waiting for the next guest to arrive:
For folks that will do a lot of entertaining your site could look like this:
I'm pretty sure I'll never spend time in a RV park like this one again! It was a lot of fun - even if I didn't speak french!
