Sunday July 11th 2021

It rained a little overnight, but this morning was sunny. There weren’t any real clouds overhead, just the haze associated with the high humidity. When I was out exploring the park I found the level of standing water had decreased. I could use paths that were flooded earlier and I even managed to cross a couple of soggy lawn areas. That luxury went away later in the day. A very heavy thunderstorm with lots of rain visited this afternoon. The good thing is that’s a normal fair weather pattern for this area in the summer. The cloudy rainy days I’ve experienced since I arrived last Thursday are over for a few days.

Today was another day of exploration in the Fontainebleau State Park. The campground emptied out this morning as expected. The occupancy level tonight is similar to when I arrived last week. The day use area of the state park was the site of the action today. Many families were gathered to have picnics. Church buses arrived in the parking lot this afternoon bringing groups of people that looked like they came straight from the service. The beach area and the kids splash pad were filled with people.

I took a hike on another of the hiking trails today. Navigation was still an exercise in puddle avoidance. It probably wouldn’t have been possible yesterday. Today’s trail was mostly through swampy forest. Huge old trees draped with Spanish Moss were dotted along the trail. The hike was good exercise, but not particularly photogenic.

My second walk of the day was to the beach area during the early afternoon. I wanted to checkout how busy the area got. The parking lot was less than half full and most of the picnic goers were using the pavilions. Many of the standalone tables were in the middle of the soggy lawn areas. While I was at the beach area a very black cloud was on the northwestern horizon. I decided the prudent thing to do was head for my RV home. The first black cloud passed by to the north, but about an hour later darkness descended on the area followed shortly by heavy rain. Thunder and lightening were very close together. It took about three hours for the storms to clear the area.

Saturday July 10th 2021

Today’s weather was better than it could be, but not as good as it should be. It was cloudy morning and a threatening afternoon. From about 1PM on there was thunder in the air. Clearly storms were in the area, just not overhead. In the early evening a few short duration showers arrived.

This morning I set out to explore some of the trails in Fontainebleau State Park. Parts of the trail were difficult to navigate around the puddles that blocked most of the trail. I had to play hopscotch between rocks and high spots without slipping on the mud to follow the trail before I found a nice boardwalk out into Alligator Marsh. I didn’t see any gators in the marsh, but there were plenty of wildflowers and a few birds.

After making a stop at the beach to checkout the across the lake, I returned to my RV home. The view across the lake was a little better than yesterday, but still very hazy. I did manage to spot a sailboat well out into the lake under full sail. The retreat to my RV home was driven by the sounds of thunder. While I didn’t see any approaching thunder clouds, the rumble was clear. I spent the remainder of the day close to the cover provided by my RV home.

The state park is very active this weekend. While it isn’t full, there are lots of families here enjoying the park. I suspect most are from close by. Many arrived late yesterday and have been in party mode since they arrived. Some have even had a number of day visitors. It is all good times, nothing is out of control. Tomorrow is likely to be a mass exodus day.

Thursday July 8th 2021

I was up early to prepare for a travel day. For a change, the weather cooperated by staying dry most of the day. I pulled out of the Milton KOA about 10 minutes after 10AM.

Today’s journey was primarily on Interstate 10. It involved driving in four states. Starting in Florida I completely cross the states of Alabama and Mississippi to get to Louisiana. The route passes to the north of Pensacola Florida and Biloxi Mississippi. The Interstate is far enough away from the city centers to keep traffic light, but I also pass through the center of downtown Mobile Alabama. Approaching Mobile from the east you pass along long causeways over marshes and open water. At the end of the causeway is a tunnel under parts of the city. Traffic slows down to a crawl in the tunnel before picking up in the urban area west.

Overall the 200 mile journey was uneventful. It didn’t rain and I didn’t pass through any major construction areas. The only surprise was the high number of law enforcement officers on the road. Most of them were engaged in issuing a citation as I passed, but a few passed me on the road as well. I wonder if there is an enforcement campaign in progress.

I arrived at the Fontainebleau State Park in Mandeville Louisiana just before 2PM. The park is located on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, but the campsites are in the woods well back from the lake. So far, I have to take it on faith that it’s there. I’ll check it out during the week that I am here. The park isn’t very busy. There is a lot of standing water around from all the rain. My site isn’t the best. It looks like it may be in a big puddle at times. Since I’ve been here one small shower has passed through and it didn’t get to flooded.

Wednesday July 7th 2021

Today was a travel break day. I didn’t fully settle in here. I moving on tomorrow. It was a day to stop and smell the roses. I actually tried to smell the roses on a bush I found at the campground, but it wasn’t very odoriferous.

It didn’t rain more than a few sprinkles in this area. The area I escaped from yesterday wasn’t so lucky. The track of the tropical storm was more to the west side of the cone. The southwest corner of Georgia was in the rain shield ahead of the storm. The area along Interstate 75 near the Florida Georgia line where I was a couple of weeks ago was dead center on the storms track. Jacksonville, my home at the beginning of June, had heavy rain and winds along with a possible tornado. For once, I was in the right place today.

The holiday at the beginning of the week, traveling a day early and the transition to the central time zone have me in temporal confusion. It doesn’t really register that today is Wednesday. I want it to be Monday for some reason. The time change means that I can’t trust all of my time keeping devices. Some of them auto adjust to the change in time zone. Others I have changed and at least one takes a lot of effort to change that I haven’t put in yet. When you add in the one hour earlier start time for most TV programs on broadcast TV, I’m still adjusting.

Tomorrow I will continue west for about 200 miles. I’m going to stay in Louisiana for the next week. I’ll be at a state park near Lake Pontchartrain. It is a spur of the moment type of decision. New Orleans wasn’t on my radar as a place to travel this summer. I haven’t done the research around visiting the city. Walking around in a city during the hot and humid summer isn’t the smartest travel decision. I really don’t know if I’ll go into New Orleans or just enjoy other features of the area.

Tuesday July 6th 2021

Today was my day to run away from the path of Hurricane Elsa. Most likely I was safe where I was, but why take the chance. I left the Eastbank campground a day early to relocate 140 miles to the west. The tropical system is not forecast to have any impact in the area of my new location.

I was on the road just before noon eastern time. After five minutes on the road I was in the central time zone and gained an hour. The rain held off while I was packing and getting on the road, but my luck didn’t hold. I stopped for gas about thirty miles down the road. I had to circle the pumps several times before a pump that I could access was available. With each circle of the pumps a black cloud was getting closer and closer. While I was pumping gas, mother nature turned on the tap. It rained hard for the next half an hour. It was dry where I was standing at the pump, but when I went to get back in the motorhome I had to leave the cover of the roof. A little damp and $170 dollars poorer I continued on my trip west.

It didn’t take long to drive out of the first rain storm. The second storm arrived another twenty miles down the road. It was far worse than the first storm. Traffic slowed way down and many cars put on their four way flashers. A few drivers even pulled over into the breakdown lane, which is really more of a hazard in the very limited visibility. The storm lasted about twenty minutes of driving torture.

I arrived at the Milton Gulf Pines KOA around 1:45 central time. A rain storm had passed through the area less than half an hour before I arrived. I had to hop across a rather large puddle to get to the office. The campground is nice, I’ve stayed here before and probably will again, but it really isn’t worth the high price they can demand. I’ll be here for two nights.

The rain held off while I got setup on my site. A couple of hours later a heavy rain shower arrived at the head of a line of storms. We get about a half an hour of quiet between the storms. I suspect the pattern may continue all night.

Sunday July 4th 2021

Happy Fourth of July

Today’s weather was a little brighter than Saturday and it didn’t rain during the day. My mood is also improved from Saturday. I have recovered from installing the new batteries on Friday and I have a plan for approaching tropical system Elsa. It looks like the tropical storm will pass well to the east of here on Wednesday. I have decided to leave a day early and head west on Tuesday just to be safe.

The big event for the day was watching the fireworks around Lake Seminole tonight. There were three or four locations that were launching fireworks. By far the best and closest were from Chattahoochee Florida about a mile away. I had my camera mounted to my mono-pole to capture some of the shell bursts. I took more than two hundred pictures during the forty five minute show. Not all of them came out. It is a bit of a guessing game when to push the shutter button and keeping things still for two seconds isn’t that easy. I’ve included some of the interesting ones from the first part of the show. Tomorrow I will include a few more.

Friday July 2nd 2021

Last nights forecast for today called for rain and thunderstorms all day. This morning the forecast had pushed the rain until later in the day. It was supposed to be more or less dry until around 5PM. The day was partly to fully cloudy, humid with a high temperature in the low to mid eighties.

I decided to take advantage of the weather reprieve to replace my RV home’s house batteries. Yesterday, while I was in Talahassee, I bought four new 6 volt golf cart batteries. They are the same exact size, shape and capacity as the ones they are replacing. Over the last few weeks I’ve tried to find someone to do the job for me, but the few techs that would do the job couldn’t do it on my schedule. The task looked to be fairly straight forward and one that I wouldn’t think twice about if the RV was sitting in my backyard before I hit the road full time.

I got everything ready for the job by assembling the tools I needed from various storage areas around my RV home. I also took pictures of the wires along with a diagram of all the cables and connections. All of the power to the motorhome and batteries was turned off. As I took each cable off I labeled it with a code on masking tape. That turned out to be the easy part. I couldn’t get the batteries out of the compartment.

The batteries are located under the steps in the entrance way to my RV home. The step unscrews to access the batteries, but the opening is not big enough for the batteries to come out. I had to figure out how to take the step apart. There were six screws that held a metal rim onto the step box. Five of the screws came out without issue. The last screw was under the riser for the next step. To get to it I investigated more disassembly of the steps, but ended up cutting the offending screw off. I suspect the finish carpentry on the steps during manufacturing came after the battery install.

Getting the cables off took a half an hour. Figuring out the magic to get the compartment lid off took another hour and a half. Mother nature started to get in the act as I manhandled the sixty plus pound batteries out of the step well. A light rain started to fall. Luckily I had put the awning out before I killed the power. I was working in a dry area.

The real rain began as I finished loading the new batteries into place. It got dark and rained very hard. There was water everywhere. The runoff from the RV roof and the awning was a steady flow. Puddles formed all around my site and the drainage culvert about one hundred feet in front of my RV home was overflowing. This is the same campground I got evacuated from last September for flooding from Hurricane Sally. Several very negative thoughts passed through my brain.

Eventually the rain let up enough that I could continue my task. My main criteria was being able to avoid standing in a puddle. Water and electricity have a way of generating unwanted consequences. With a headlamp on my head to provide light and my wiring diagram in hand I started to put the cables back on. I had to stop a couple of times to let another intense period of rain pass through. I got everything rewired. After a double check I powered things back up and found success.

With weather and darkness closing in I put the step box back together enough to allow safe access to the door. In the morning I’ll finish putting things back the way they were before I started ripping things apart. I also have to take the old batteries back to the store to get my “core” deposit back.

I figured the task would take two hours at best and four hours as a worst case time. It was seven hours from start to where I am now. Deciding to cut the screw and actually cutting it took the most unplanned time. Waiting out the rain also added time to the mix. I’m going to sleep soundly tonight. I’m very tired.