Wednesday January 12th 2022

I was up early this morning and was able to watch the 7:21AM sunrise. It was a cool start to the a mostly sunny day. The temperature started in the fifties and peaked in the low seventies. Another cold front with a few rain showers is due to pass through the area tonight. Tomorrow is forecast to be cooler.

My early start to the day was to begin the process of booking next winter’s stays in Florida State Parks. Today was the day first day of the window I’d like to return to Myakka River State Park. There were four possible sites available today, a couple tomorrow and a few more each day after that. I got lucky and got the first site I tried for this morning. The new booking system makes it a little harder than a simple mouse click so it may take some people more than a second or two to complete the action. Overall, I don’t like the new software, but I made it work.

Once I’d booked the two weeks in the middle of December at Myakka River State Park, I went back and booked the previous two weeks at Lake Louisa State Park in central Florida. That park isn’t as popular so I still had choices. I have been monitoring the availability for the last few weeks. The specific sites I preferred at Lake Louisa State Park had been booked since my last check, but I succeeded in booking a good site. I now have four weeks at the end of 2022 booked starting at the end of November. Every two weeks from now until sometime in April I’ll be booking another Florida State Park reservation as the eleven month reservation window opens.

I expect to have difficulty booking the state parks somewhere along the way. There is just too much competition for sites. RV travel and camping in general is very popular in these trying times. The rule of supply and demand are also coming into play. The fees are going up significantly. Many private campgrounds have switched to demand pricing and others have just increased there prices a lot. Sites that were in the mid fifties per night a couple of years ago are now in the mid seventies at the chain campgrounds. Most of the public campgrounds are more reasonable, but more states are charging nonresidents higher fees. I can still take advantage of discounts and senior rates, but my cost per night is much higher than it was at the start of my Rambling Road trip six years ago.