Wednesday January 19th 2022

The day began a few degrees warmer than Tuesday. It was a little above fifty when I turned on the heat this morning, but unlike yesterday it climbed rapidly into the low seventies. Today’s high temperature was consistent with the norms for the area. The next cold front is due Friday afternoon or evening.

After a slow breakfast and catching up on my Internet reading I set out on a hike around Hammond Lake. This is a small body of water on the south east side of the campground. The trails around the lake are wide and flat. Today I only met one couple on the trail. It was quiet walk.

Some of the land the state park is on used to be Citrus Groves. My guess is they were abandoned and cleared when the state acquired the land in 1973. On the back side of Lake Hammond a few old orange trees and some newer wild growth trees are filled with Oranges. The small orange fruit seems be pretty close to ripe. I’m not brave enough to find out. Oranges I’ve picked from trees in the past have been a bitter experience.

Monday, the day I arrived, there was a lot of turn over in the campground. Since then there have only been a few changes in occupancy each day. When I was here in December, most of the residents were from Florida. This time around there are many more states represented. My immediate neighbors are probably fellow full time RVers. They have plates from Texas and South Dakota which along with Florida host many of the full time RV travelers. There are also many northern states represented in the park. I saw license plates from Minnesota. Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, Vermont in the north and Colorado, Arizona, California and Oregon from the west as I walked through the campground this evening before sunset.