Tuesday April 13th 2021

The weather was beautiful today. The low humidity and gentle breeze kept the near 90 degree high temperature from feeling oppressive. The humidity is forecast to increase the next couple of days, so the heat may start to be an issue.

What wasn’t great today was the noise. I grew up in a city so a noisy environment is a familiar thing. This winter I’ve been in pretty quiet locations since September. I’ve gotten comfortable with quiet. This RV park is located at a major intersection with Interstate 4 southwest of Orlando. Road and traffic noise are constant. They quickly become part of the background. Today a couple of other elements brought the noise of the location to the foreground.

Before I got out of bed this morning a steady parade of police and fire vehicles with sirens blaring passed by. They continued off and on for ten minutes or more. I still managed to get back to sleep after the interruption. While I was having breakfast the next part of today’s noisy environment sounded off. The lawn crew was here.

When you’re a weekend camper you never think about the need to mow the grass at the campground. It gets done during the week. As a full timer you get to experience it every week. Some campgrounds are nice and wait until everybody is awake and some don’t. This campground didn’t start until after 9AM and only mowed the areas that needed it. The really noise part was the guy with the leaf blower. For some reason he walked slowly down the middle of each road blowing the leaves off the paved surface. With all the little leaves on the ground in the campsites it didn’t take long for the roads to be back to leaf covered. The guy with the leaf blower had ear protection. The rest of us didn’t.

Later in the day I experienced another drawback of the location. Traffic on Interstate 4 often turns into a parking lot. I made the mistake of returning to my RV home along the Interstate. About ten miles before my exit, the message boards were warning of a total highway blockage at the exit just beyond mine. Traffic started to slow two miles from my exit. The last mile took over half an hour. Many people were getting off the interstate at my exit to attempt to drive around the highway blockage. They really can’t make the roads big enough to handle all the traffic around here and more people are moving here every year.