Sunday February 28th 2021

It was another above average weather day. The temperature peaked in the upper eighties under a mostly sunny sky. Unfortunately, it is also getting more humid. Showers are a possibility tonight into tomorrow. Just in time for my next travel day.

Today is my last full day in Starke Florida. The last week has been a break from my series of two week stays in Florida State Parks. The trend resumes tomorrow with my return to the Bradenton Florida area. When I made the reservations eleven months ago the plan was to be back in the baseball Spring Training area to attend a few games. With the pandemic that isn’t going to happen. Most of the spring training venues are selling up to twenty five percent of their tickets, but only in groups of two, four or six. Previous year season ticket holders get first choice so there aren’t a lot of options available. I don’t think I would be comfortable attending anyway.

This campground didn’t empty out this morning as much as I expected for the end of the weekend. Many of the RVs that came in Friday are still here. Unlike other days last week many new arrivals came in this afternoon and evening. I think the park is close to full again tonight. Most of the new arrivals are from northern states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York. It may be with the COVID numbers down and many seniors having been vaccinated that people are hitting the road for a little warm weather vacation.

I have most of the outside packing tasks done and the inside ones that don’t impact sleeping and breakfast completed as well. Unlike most of my last few moves that were short distances allowing for later departures, tomorrow is a long travel day. I have about two hundred miles to travel, so I want to be on the road by 10 or 10:30.

Saturday February 27th 2021

This morning’s fog wasn’t nearly as impressive as Friday. It wasn’t as dense and it was gone about the same time the sun broke the horizon. Today was labeled as partly cloudy by the meteorologists. I guess that equates to the clouds block the sun once in a while during the day. The temperature peaked in the upper eighties. It was a very nice day.

I didn’t have anything planned for today, so it turned into a real do nothing kind of day. With the exception of two walks around the campground, I pretty much sat around my RV home all day. I did a little reading, a little TV watching and I even caught a nap this afternoon. With so little activity and the nap I’ll probably end of watching
TV half the night and will have to force myself to get up at a reasonable hour Sunday morning.

Friday February 26th 2021

The day began with dense fog. When the fog dissipates sometimes we say “the fog lifted” and other times we say “the fog burned off”. Today was a “burned off” day. It went from dense fog, to fog near the ground with sunshine above, to no fog at all within a few minutes. Blue sky with a few clouds and high temperatures above eighty followed the burn off.

I was out of bed earlier than normal this morning, but consumed all of the extra time and more during a very leisurely breakfast. While sipping my coffee and eating my toast I caught up on some of my internet reading. There is one thing about using the internet for news and information; it is never ending. Eventually I moved away from the table and got ready for a day of touring.

Every time I stay at this campground I go in search of parks or trails in the area to explore. So far I haven’t found any place of interest within thirty miles or so. Today I ended up thirty miles to the east on the west bank of the St. Johns river. I’m familiar with area. It is nice to sit and watch the river, but today there didn’t seem to be any activity in sight just lots of open water.

When I returned to the campground this afternoon a lot had changed. Many new RVs have arrived for the weekend. It looks like the park will be full. Many of the RVs that have been abandoned all week had people swarming around this evening. I think many of the RVs are weekend and vacation escapes for people who live and work in the Jacksonville area. This park is about the right distance from the city.

Thursday February 25th 2021

This campground seems to have more than the usual number of work campers. There is always someone running around in a KOA golf cart or doing some form of work around the campground. The problem is they get started early. Every morning I’ve been here some form of power equipment has greeted the start of the day. This morning I think it was a pressure washer around 8AM.

I’ve noticed similar work camper activity at this park in the past, but there may have been an added reason this time. On my walk around the park I spotted a fifth wheel trailer fully painted in KOA advertisements on one of the sites. Later in the day the couple from that KOA were walking around the park with a clipboard in hand. I suspect they were one of the teams that tours all of the KOA franchise locations to inspect or rate the facilities. Every year franchises try to win awards from the corporation.

Today I got back into summer travel planning mode. I’ve been dragging my feet trying to anticipate how quickly I will be able to get a COVID vaccination. I want to get it done before I leave Florida. This morning at a news conference in Jacksonville, the governor indicated that the eligibility pool will be expanding in March to people of lower ages. They seem to be planning on dropping the age requirement by five to ten years at a time and adding in some significant occupations like teachers. So I should be able to get on a list by April.

With all that in mind I started to plan my escape to the north. My first priority was booking the Memorial day holiday weekend. The other days in April and May don’t represent a problem provided I stay in commercial parks. The weekends are all booked in the state parks. I’ll be just north of Jacksonville over the line in Georgia for the week leading up to and the Memorial day holiday weekend. I’ll leave a gap in my plans during the first part of June in case I need to continue to hover in Florida. The plan is to head up the east coast into South Carolina before veering northwest toward the mountains. How far north I go is to be determined. I want to be in Tennessee in September and the beginning of October. Florida can wait until after hurricane season this year.

On this day last year I left my four month winter hibernation in Las Vegas with most of the year planned and reserved. Within three weeks all of the those plans were falling apart because of the pandemic. This year, with the exception of holiday weekends, I’m only going to plan about a month ahead. It will probably mean more moving with fewer longer term stays and thus a more expensive travel year. The two week planned Florida state park hopping will resume in November.

Wednesday February 24th 2021

Today was a routine day in the life type of day. It wasn’t really blog entry worthy. Even the pictures I took today are routine and uninspired. You need days like this to catch up on little things and generally recharge.

The day began as a cool morning. The temperature was in the forties. It slowly climbed into the upper seventies by afternoon. My activity level slowly increased with the temperature. My inside chore list included a little cleaning and an attempt to fix the latch on my refrigerator. The screw hole in the plastic refrigerator trim that holds the latch has stripped. I’ve got a less than permanent solution in place for now. The real solution will be to move the latch a half an inch or so and drill new holes. I wasn’t ready for that complex a task today even if the hardest part might have been digging the drill out of my basement storage compartment.

I did take one walk around the campground. Not much has changes since yesterdays walk. The park has a number of azalea bushes that show signs of the roller coaster winter. They have a few open blossoms, but most are either gone by or still in the bud stage. I think the few very warm days followed by a night or two of very cold temperatures have really confused the plants. I think this is just about the right time of year for the azalea bushes in northern Florida to be in full bloom.

Looking for the sunset this evening all I found was the moon high in the sky. The full moon is still a couple of nights away, but it already looks brilliant in the darkening night sky. The last two or three full moons have been obscured by the bad weather in this area. I hope the weather cooperates for this one.

Tuesday February 23rd 2021

Today was a nice sunny day. The temperature reached a comfortable seventy degrees with only a light breeze from time to time. For a change the forecast calls for a long stretch of nice weather. The temperature will climb into the eighties without any significant chance of rain until the middle of next week.

This was a travel recovery day. Even though I traveled less than forty miles yesterday, I still had all the stress and activity associated with packing up, travel and setup. The actual driving yesterday was easy, but the rest was as complicated as usual. This morning I finished up the arrival tasks by taking the bicycle and towing gear off the car. The rest of the day was a relax and get reacquainted with the layout of this campground kind of day.

I was last here two years ago. The park seems to be just as full as I remember. The pandemic doesn’t seem to have impacted the occupancy. Walking around the park I was trying to get a sense for any change in the type of occupants, but it seems to be very similar. The mix of long term to short term seems to be similar. The license plates on the RVs are from many different states. The only obvious missing origins are the Canadians. All winter long I’ve only seen two Canadian plates. The boarder both ways remains closed to non essential travel, but I believe you can self declare essential. However, mandatory quarantine requirements are increase every day.

Another nice change is the traffic on US route 301 in front of the campground. It used to be very noisy at all hours. A bypass route around the community of Stark has been opened. Most of the people passing through on their way north or south now bypass the downtown area. You also don’t have to wait fifteen minutes to find a break in the traffic before pulling out of the campground driveway. The heavy train traffic hasn’t changed, but for some reason I enjoy that.

Monday February 22nd 2021

Today was a short travel day. The move was only about thirty five miles to Stark FL. For the first time in 14 weeks I’m not in a public campground. When I was booking campgrounds last winter, I didn’t have any luck for this last week in February. I’ll be back in state parks next week. This week I’m at the KOA in Stark Florida. I’ve stayed here several times in the past.

When I got up this morning it was a warm and sunny day. The temperature climbed quickly to the upper seventies and it was very humid. With only a short distance to travel, I took my time getting ready to travel. I pulled out of my site at roughly 12:30. By the time I got through dumping the holding tanks and hooking up the car for towing it was 1:15 as I left Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park.

My route north routed through part of the city of Gainesville. The city traffic was a little heavy, but once I was clear of Gainesville it lightened up significantly. I arrived at the KOA in Stark at 2PM, just before the latest cold front arrived in the area. I managed to get setup before the rain started. Compared to the last few cold fronts, this rain storm was nothing. It lasted less than an hour and didn’t include any lightening. The good news is it dropped the temperature and humidity to comfortable levels.

I’ll be here until next Monday. It is a nice campground, but there isn’t a lot to do here or in the immediate area. I may be doing a bit of driving to find things of interest.

Friday February 19th 2021

It started to rain during the night and continued throughout most of the day. As evening arrived the rain let up. The temperature has steadily dropped from the daily high near seventy at midnight. The forecast calls for overnight lows in the high thirties. It was in the fifties most of the daylight hours.

This wasn’t a very blog entry worthy day. I didn’t get any outside walking in today. The only walking I did was in the grocery store during the early afternoon. Even the Walmart was relatively empty on the rainy day. It was well stocked. I managed to get everything I remembered needing, but inevitably I thought of a couple of forgotten items when I got home. Maybe I’ll make a shopping list before my next trip for groceries.

At the campground this afternoon a new set of residents were arriving for the weekend. This campground follows a fairly predictable pattern. The weekends and longer term stays like mine book early, then people pick up shorter reservations during the week. The result is that lots of people leave on Fridays. The camp hosts had a big job this morning checking all of the newly emptied campsites. They even tried to use the leaf blower to clear the leaves from the sites, but wet leaves don’t move very well. I really think this particular camp host is enamored with the leaf blower. Yesterday morning was a veritable symphony of loud leaf blower noise. It sounds like a chainsaw.

The weekend is forecast to be dry and cool. As I write this blog entry the moon and stars are visible in the night sky. Tomorrow will be lucky to get out of the fifties temperature wise with Sunday a little warmer.