Thursday November 3rd 2016

I moved to another campground about 6 miles south on Interstate 95. It sounds simple, but it was a little more complicated than you’d think.

The first complication was the weather. The day started out cloudy and dry. About the time I needed to finish up the outside tasks it started to rain. The last 45 minutes of my travel preparations were done in a heavy rain. By the time I dumped the tanks and stowed the sewer hose, water hose and electric cord I was socked. The rain continued and I still had to hook up the car.

The site I was parked in was on the end of a row with one way roads that required a short turning radius to get out of the site heading for the exit. Keeping in mind that once I hook the car to the motorhome, I can’t backup, I decided to move the motorhome out onto the campground road before hooking up. It was the right decision as I did need to backup. Walking back the 200 feet or so to get the car coincided with an up tick in the rate of rain. Once I completed the hookup process, I took a minute to dry off before driving away.

The second complication was that I left the campground right at the 11AM checkout time and the new campground had warned me that I wouldn’t be able to get in until after 2PM. I was told that the office isn’t staffed from 10:30 to 2 and the gate is locked. It turned out there wasn’t a gate, but the point was made. I shouldn’t arrive before 2PM.

To kill time I drove to one of the outlet malls and parked in the parking lot. The lot is divided by many plantings and concrete curbs. The result was that I was parked in a very awkward way. To keep from getting boxed in I was taking up way to many spots. Around noon the influx of shoppers was making my location less and less attractive. I chose to move on. I went south on the Interstate beyond the exit for my new campground to a rest area. There is plenty of space for RVs in Florida rest areas. The good news is about this time it stopped raining.

After having lunch and watching some TV, it was 2PM and time to travel back to St Johns RV Park. I needed to go south to the next exit and reverse direction on the Interstate. All total to relocate 6 miles, I traveled more than 20 miles over 3 hours. I was setup on my new site by 3PM.

My RV at night on site A8 at ST Johns RV Park

This is not the best site in the world. It isn’t even the best in this campground. There is an emergency boat service operation setup in the field across from my site. They are working on small boats damaged by the hurricane. During the time I’ve been here three or four boats have been dropped off. At quitting time 5 or 6 workers returned with trucks and a couple of boats. There was a real parking lot in front of my RV.