Monday April 18th 2022

Today’s weather was far from comfortable. Yesterday’s late day severe thunderstorms missed this immediate area. Most of the rain fell to the east in the Orlando and Kissimmee areas. This area stayed cloudy and humid into the morning hours. There was a brief period of sunshine in the late morning to the early afternoon, but most of the afternoon was cloud covered hot and humid in the mid eighties. Just before sunset the clouds magically disappeared and the humidity started to drop. The front most have made it through the area.

I ventured out of the park this afternoon without a real plan or destination, but soon found a purpose for my travels. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve gotten out of sync with my grocery shopping. Instead of one or two visits to Walmart. I made what amounts to one and a half grocery shopping trips. The half trip just replaced a few key items that proceeded to run out again before everything else, so today I restocked everything with am unplanned stop at Walmart.

I didn’t expect the store to be so busy. Maybe people put off shopping on the holiday to celebrate or just be with family. Every aisle was filled with shopping carriages and people. You really needed your patience to navigate the store. I almost got run over by impatient people on more than one occasion. At least the staffed checkout counters were all open, even if they had three or four people in line.

Back at the campground I took a long afternoon hike around Hammond Lake. There are many different wildflowers in bloom along the trail. During my January visit to the park they were experiencing their first freeze of the winter. All of the blossoms disappeared, so it is nice to see them back.