December in Florida

Once I made it to Florida, my first order of business was to find a place to stay until the end of March when it would be warm enough to venture back up north. I was looking for a reasonably priced site that would allow me to see the various areas of Florida coast to coast from about Ocala to Lake Okeechobee. I spent Saturday morning on the computer and the phone checking with places on the Gulf coast. Most of those places were booked for the 4 months I wanted. Following the links on the internet for other parks related to the gulf coast parks I stumbled onto parks in the central area of Florida around Orlando. Surprisingly, these parks had availability and were less expensive than the parks on the gulf coast.
Saturday afternoon, I drove around the area south of Orlando checking out the parks in the area. I narrowed down my choices and made a couple of phone calls. Monday morning I moved to Rainbow Chase RV Resort in Davenport Fl for 4 months. It is a nice older park with a mixture of Park models, trailers, 5th wheels and motorhomes. The people seem nice and friendly and I soon got settled onto my site.

Winter home at Rainbow Chase RV Resort

The remainder of the week was spent exploring the area. The grocery store is less than a mile away. There is a Walmart a few miles in each of four directions. Camping World is a straight shot up the road in Kissimmee. All of these places were needed for supplies and provisions to make my winter nest comfortable.
The week following my settling in at Rainbow Chase, I flew back to New Hampshire. I had a non-stop flight on Southwest out of Orlando International Airport. Getting through security was a long disorganized mob scene, but the flight was uneventful. I spent a week in New Hampshire getting things done on the house and addressing other issues, I returned to Florida the weekend before Christmas with lots of tourists and kids ready for Disney World.
Getting ready for the holidays, I bought a little fake Christmas tree at Walmart and decorated it with some of the bird ornaments I have. It isn’t much to look at but it does set the spirit of the season.

A little Christmas tree for my RV home

During the time leading up to the holiday, I went to Disney Springs. This is the new name for Downtown Disney; the entertainment, shopping and dinning complex part of Disney World. The place is undergoing a major expansion with easily a third of it still in the construction phase. I was looking for holiday decorations, but found mostly wall to wall people. It was decorated but the volume of people made it underwhelming.
I used the Disney transportation system from Disney Springs to tour some of the hotels and the Fort Wilderness campground. My goal was to see the decorations, particularly by the campers at the campground.

Christmas Tree at Disney’s Grand Floridian hotel

Confection Christmas sculpture at Disney’s Contemporary hotel

Decorated camp site at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort

The December weather in Florida was unusually warm. Most days were in the high 80s with normal highs in the lower 70s. Given this heat wave, I got it into my head to go to the beach on Christmas day. I drove about 60 miles over to Cocoa Beach to dip my toes in the surf. Once I satisfied that whim, I spent an hour or so watching the kite boarders and sail boarders on the banana river. It was a day spent the way I would like many days in my future travels to follow.

Cocoa Beach looking north

Before the new year arrived and the holiday decorations came down, I took one more trip to Disney to tour the decoration at the hotels. This time I concentrated on the hotels behind EPCOT.