Webster, FL (3/1 - 3/31/26)

Wrapping up our winter in Fl we stayed at a Class A Only resort for the month of March. The Florida Grande Motor Coach Resort in central FL, near the small town of Webster. It is centrally located to several of our favorite FL bike trails and close to The Villages where my Mom and Ron live. We are also not too far from Orlando (east) or Tampa (southwest).

Probably best trail in Fl is the Withlacoochee State Trail just west of the resort. This rail trail goes 46 miles and runs through several quaint towns that have bars and restaurants to enjoy on your ride.

This wide (12'), fully-paved rail trail is mostly shaded and rural and has many rest areas. The Good Neighbor Trail connects to this trail adds another 10 miles and ends in the town of Brooksville that has many restaurants and the Broad Street Brewing Co. which we enjoyed.

To our east, we can ride (16mi) the Southlake Trail that starts near Clermont and runs the shoreline of Lake Minneola for a bit. It connects to the West Orange Trail starting near Winter Garden.

The West Orange Trail (22mi) travels from Winter Garden to Apopka. Both trails are a mix of rural and urban scenes. Along the trail in Winter Garden you can stop at the Hangry Bison where we saw a sign from a distillery we just toured out in Park City, UT. I also recommend stopping by Crooked Can Brewing Company about a block away.

Although this place is now closed, I liked this name since it was similar to our RAGBRAI team name (Tipsy Terps).

Maybe I have mentioned this before, but while in FL I have been on a mission to find high quality oysters at cheap prices. In the nearby Villages, we found a couple of places that hit the spot. We found a good deal at O'Shucks Oyster Bar & Grill. This is a low key dive bar that doesn't even have a website, but is very popular and can be hard to get into at times.

We also found a gem at the Lighthouse Point Bar and Grille. at Lake Sumter Landing. This place is much nicer atmosphere with a lake view and better happy hour prices.

Back at the resort, we had this little guy hanging around our site for at least a few weeks.

We would see him often and he was not at all afraid of us. This perspective shows you just how small he was and I just worried he would find himself in an unsafe location. Glad I looked before I sat my drink down.

The biggest revelation we made while here was that we could live here in the future winters and become FL residents with a homebase. This resort also sells deeded properties that can include a coach house (12'x32') to extend your living and entertaining areas extensively. You can't have a true house for legal reasons, but it came the closest that we have seen.

Many owner RV lot resorts do allow you to create extended patios, add tiki huts or sheds, but this one goes a little farther with this coach house. The exterior and size is the same for all owners, but you can customize your interior to meet your tastes. This place was for sale and this was staged, so we would have different furniture/decor.

This one was close to what we wanted if we had built from scratch, so we decided to purchase this existing lot/house for sale. This one had real tile and glass doors in the bathroom. The interior of the coach house was completed in 2025 and hardly used by the previous owner.

You also have a washer/dryer and storage room to make your RV experience more luxurious for those of us that don't have any other permanent places to stay. Michelle loves the full size W/D and we both like having a larger shower.

On the back you have a patio area with ceiling fan. We plan to build out this area to possibly include an outside kitchen or tiki bar. We also will extend the patio 10' more to the right with pavers.

All of the lots are at least 5,000 sq ft and all have paved 26' x 76' RV pads with full hookups. You can extend around the pad with pavers to make it even larger. We plan on creating something similar to this patio with Adirondack chairs around a fire pit. We also want to add many tropical plants to add to our seclusion. Most of the lots like ours back to rural/wooded scenes instead of views of other lots. We close on our lot in June and will be moving in our stuff in Sept when we come back from the beaches this fall. We will winter here next winter with possible trips to other locations in FL. Michelle is very happy she now has a homebase!

After leaving the resort, we are headed to IA for our son Kyle's wedding to Jobi in May. Check out my next few blog posts on the places we stayed on the panhandle beaches and for rides on HoF rail trails in KS on our way. We also plan on going to the Black Hills, SD to celebrate the 250th birthday of America in June/July...