This was the last holdout on our Wildlife Bingo card
Before we set out for our full-time RV travels, we made a board for our fridge that had a few different configurations: a dry erase board, various seasonal "Rollin with my homie" posters, and our Wildlife Scavenger Hunt. We thought it would be fun to check off our wildlife sightings as we roamed the country.
We chose some animals that we expected to see in our first year (Season 1), like popular species in Florida. Others would need to wait until we were out west. Back in 2022, the notion of seeing animals like bison and big horned sheep seemed so far in the distant future. We weren't traveling west in our first year...and if we didn't enjoy our first year, we wouldn't be traveling west at all.
But we did enjoy our travels, and over time, we accumulated check marks on what we now called our "Wildlife Bingo" card. After checking off 5 animals in Season 1 alone, we thought this would be a piece of cake! We'd travel west the next year, check off the rest, and get blackout bingo in no time!
Never in a million years would we have thought that we'd be in Season 5 of travels, still without blackout bingo. We started out so strong, getting 10/12 sightings by the end of Season 2. Our final 2 holdouts were Florida species that eluded us the first year, and that we didn't prioritize the second year. Season 3 was our window. We booked more time in Florida and purposely sought out our remaining animals. We went to places that were their popular hangouts. We went at the right time of day and year. We succeeded with one species, but the other...no dice.
Then last year, our Wildlife Bingo card hung on our fridge, taunting us. Well, not really. It was buried behind our other posters. But the sense of failure was real. We didn't want to display our Bingo card because that one remaining holdout stood out like a sore thumb. WHERE WERE THEY?!
In a completely shocking turn of events, we had seen every single animal on our Bingo card...except a dolphin.
To be perfectly honest, we thought the dolphin was a contender for the first check mark. We didn't need to wait to see them in Florida. They're all up and down the coast! But Florida would be a guarantee. Dolphins live there year-round, and our non-RV experience has granted us many, many sightings. But it was not a guarantee. After 2 years with no success, we upped our game. We went to T.H. Stone Memorial Park on the FL Panhandle, where we heard that dolphins like to swim in St. Joseph Bay. In the mornings, we set out on the walking trail, binoculars in hand. Then we waited and watched for any signs of movement in the waters.
No sign of them.
It is true that sometimes wildlife spotting takes extra patience and diligence, but we've come to learn that, when we're camping in one place for a while, sometimes that stillness is enough. Looking back, our biggest downfall was probably that we didn't have any oceanfront campsites until September 2025, and therefore no ability to step outside our RV at the optimal times and look. But even still, we spent many hours walking beaches, taking photos of sunrises and sunsets, and watching birds and other animals. Here are all the places we visited where we could have spotted dolphins, but didn't:
Daytona Beach, FL (March 2022)
Lovers Key, FL (April 2022)
Sanibel Island, FL (April 2022)
Marco Island, FL (April 2022)
Estero Bay, FL (April 2022)
Myrtle Beach, SC (January 2023)
Hunting Island, SC (January 2023)
Navarre Beach, FL (January 2023)
Tarpon Springs, FL (January 2024)
St. Joseph's Peninsula, FL (February 2024)
Freeport, ME (September 2025) – our first official oceanfront campsite
Acadia, ME (September 2025)
Assateague Island, MD (March 2026)
And that's not even counting all the times we hang out on the shores of coastal MA when we're at our home-base.
But we admit, besides our St. Joseph/T.H. Stone attempts, we never actively set out to see any, until this year. Frankly, we didn't think we had to. Before RV life, they had just popped into our lives, over and over again.
In 2013, we visited Anthony's family down in FL, and a dolphin casually swam under the pier as we took an after-dinner walk in Naples.
Then on our East Coast Road Trip in 2017, dolphins were so prolific that we wrote not one, but two blog posts about them. And we're not counting our "dolphin encounter" at Theater of the Sea where the dolphins are in captivity. We don't even have to count our Key West dolphin cruise, where our guide knew their hangout spots...but we do still count it because it's the closest we've ever been to dolphins in the wild. One even sprayed me with its blow hole! But if we want to go totally unsuspecting, we saw a group swimming along the shore of Virginia Beach early one morning. We just looked out the window to take a couple pictures of the sunrise, and there they were. The lady at the front desk was less surprised. She said the dolphins come around most mornings.
This year, we headed back down to Key West, and we were on a mission. We had a bayfront campsite that gave us views of a sandbar, and dolphins love to play in sandbars. If we didn't spot any there, there was only one logical explanation. They must be extinct!
Whenever we were near a bay or ocean this year, we kept our eyes peeled. Word is that drivers can see them going over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel System. I looked and looked, but saw nothing.
Same thing as we traveled the Overseas Highway down to Key West.
By this point, I didn't know if we needed to up the ante. Did we need to book another dolphin watch cruise? We were already spending so much money at Bluewater Key Resort, we hoped we wouldn't need to shell out even more just to get bingo. We became superstitious. On our East Coast Road Trip, we randomly came across a song about dolphins on Spotify – a song so annoying, I banned it from our playlists from that point forward. It's been a thorn in Anthony's side ever since because he finds the song less annoying and more humorous. He went so far as to theorize that, if we listened to the song again, it might beckon the dolphins. And I will say, once we got to Key West, I was starting to think he was right. Perhaps the dolphins heard that I hate the song, and they mistakenly thought it meant I hate them! But I don't! I REALLY LIKE DOLPHINS!
We made a deal. Wake up early on our first morning in Key West, sit outside to watch the sunrise over the bay, and bring the binoculars to look for dolphins. If we didn't see any, we should consider going on a dolphin watch cruise the next day...and maybe I'd consider listening to that song-trocity for good luck.
The sunrise that morning was gorgeous. At first, we feared it might be a bust due to clouds, but a small gap allowed the sun to pop through, creating an array of vibrant colors in the sky, and a gorgeous deep teal in the water.
The sunrise watching was great. The birdwatching was great, too.
But we've seen sunrises and birds hundreds of times in our RV life. We needed to see a dolphin!
As per our Bingo rules, if one of us sees the animal, it counts. While we prefer to get a photo or video of the animal, it is not required. Shortly after sunrise, Anthony went inside the RV to get the pets' breakfast ready. I kept watch, convincing myself that no matter what, this view was gift enough. I snapped this panoramic, and afterwards, spotted something in the water in the same direction.
A fin! A fin! There it was, my first dolphin sighting in 9 years, and finally, blackout bingo.
Listen to my overly-excited-but-still-trying-to-be-quiet-because-it's-early "yay"
I didn't want to lose sight of it, but I couldn't risk Anthony missing out on this moment. I quickly ran over to the trailer and banged on it. He didn't come out. I ran back to watch the dolphin some more, and as it started to turn away from the sandbar, I knew this was Anthony's last chance. I ran back to the trailer, and finally he was coming out. "Come on! Come on!" I squealed.
Then together, we both got to witness a little bit of playtime on the sandbar.
At times we weren't sure if there was one or two, because often they form groups of two near sandbars, but one was all we needed to check off our last wildlife sighting. We didn't even need any expensive dolphin cruises or annoying song beacons, either!
What a long road it has been, to finish Wildlife Bingo during a time we didn't think we'd still be traveling, in a place we didn't think we'd be. Perhaps this was one of our reasons to continue full-time RV life for another year, so we could close the chapter of our "wildlife scavenger hunt" that we created before we had any idea what this life would bring us. Staying on the road for this experience was a win.
In our next post, we'll recap our entire Wildlife Bingo game, and talk about some of our most memorable sightings and encounters with the animals on our list. We have some WILD stories and can't wait to reminisce with you.
