Thursday July 21st 2022

This area avoided the afternoon thunderstorms today. There were a few storms in the downtown Jacksonville area, but St. Augustine stayed dry today. The temperature peaked in the low nineties with a comfortable humidity level.

I drove over to the beaches along the Atlantic Ocean for entertainment today. Driving along route A1A in St Augustine beach I saw a new to me pedestrian protection measure. At every cross walk there was a bucket of orange flags with a sign instructing people to carry and wave the flags as they crossed the street. I didn’t see anyone using them, and I can’t imagine what good they really do, but it is a colorful idea. I wonder how many flags they lose to enchanted kids.

Further south along the coast I stopped at a beach just south of Marine Land. There were many areas of sand blocked off with sticks and tape. The enclosures are intended to protect areas with sea turtle eggs. All of the beach goers had to avoid the area between the beach and the dune with the marked off areas.

Overall it was a nice beach day for those inclined to sunbath, swim, surf or just comb the beach. I was on a scenery viewing mission not one of the traditional beach activities. If I was interested in getting in the water I would have been more inclined to jump in the Intercostal waterway. The beach areas on that area had lots of swimmers, boaters and others frolicking in the water. It looked like a lot more fun.

When I got back to the RV resort I had to maneuver around several RVs waiting to check in. It looks like the park is beginning to fill up for the weekend. Traveling to my site at the back of the campground I passed many sites that had been occupied since I left a few hours before.

Wednesday July 20th 2022

Today’s weather followed the same pattern as yesterday. Shortly afternoon a line of thunderstorms arrived in the area. Rain and thunderstorms continued off and on all afternoon. This is a relatively normal pattern for Florida in the summer, so I shouldn’t be surprised. Except, on Monday I heard a forecast for the week that called for higher temperatures and less rain than normal. That forecast was wrong.

Yesterday was a long travel day with the stress associated with a move. As a result I slept into the late morning. I didn’t have much time to get the remaining camp setup tasks complete before the weather started to look threatening. My second activity of the day had to wait until the first wave of storms moved through. Walking around the resort to see what has changed since my last visit in May of 2021 was an exercise in dodging puddles.

There are no new structures, roads or camp sites, but they have put a lot of new gravel down to level out sites. Everything looks a little neater than I remember it. The other nice thing was all the blossoms on the hibiscus bushes around a couple of the buildings. The ground plantings also made the flower beds look well manicured.

The resort appears to be about two thirds full. There seems to be a mix of people living here temporarily, travelers and vacationers. Since St. Augustine is a tourist destination it is not surprising to find a different mix than at the last few places I’ve stayed.

Tuesday July 19th 2022

I was up early to get ready to travel. The nice sunny morning complicated my travel preparations. A few minutes working outside in the sun resulted in dripping sweat. There was enough time before the 11AM checkout that I could take plenty of breaks to sit, drink water and cool off. It was a couple of minutes after 11AM as I pulled out of the campground.

My first stop was for gas before I got on the Interstate. Georgia is still suspending some of the gas tax, so gas is much less expensive than Florida. I paid four dollars a gallon this morning in Georgia. The price in Florida was about thirty cents a gallon higher. There was a little drama at the gas station. The first pump I tried didn’t work. It looked like the computer control crashed and couldn’t reboot. I had to swing around the truck parking lot and reposition at a different pump.

My understanding of the weather forecast differed from reality. I thought it was going to be a rain free day, but as I drove south toward St. Augustine Florida dark clouds filled the southern horizon. As I got closer, I could see a lot of lightening in the black clouds. I drove into rain shortly after that. The center of the storm was not in my path. The rain I had to drive through was not heavy. When I arrived at my destination, Sun Outdoors St. Augustine, formerly known as Compass RV resort, the rain had let up. Plenty of deep puddles showed the volume of rain I missed. Several other periods of rain passed through as the afternoon progressed. So much for it being a dry day.

I have stayed at this RV resort several times in the past. The name change seems to only be for purposes of branding the resort with its parent company Sun Outdoors. They have been the owner for several years, but the name changed this year. Tomorrow I’ll wander around the resort to see what may have changed.

Monday July 18th 2022

The weather was very uncooperative today. It was bright and close to sunny this morning, but it didn’t last. I usually kick off the lethargy of a leisurely breakfast and internet surfing around noon. Today the rain was on the same schedule. The first line of storms for the day moved into the area just after noon. Any thoughts of going out went out of my head as the rain hit the roof. The rain slacked off and stop after a couple of hours. A second round of rain arrived at the dinner hour.

I got a few travel preparation tasks completed today, but for the most part it was a very lazy day. During the lull between rain events in the afternoon, I got in one walk around the campground. The noise and activity of the weekend were over. There were far more empty sites than occupied ones. As the day went by only a couple more RVs arrived. It will be even more empty when I leave in the morning (not that anyone will notice). I am traveling to St. Augustine Florida as I continue to tread water in northeast Florida.

Sunday July 17th 2022

Most of the day was nice and sunny with low humidity and a low high temperature in the upper eighties. The exception to that norm came as the sun was setting. A thunderstorm started to rumble to the southwest. Shortly after dark a light rain started to fall on the roof of my RV home. It is still raining as I am writing this blog entry.

The campground emptied out quickly this morning. My immediate neighbor departed before I was ready to get out of bed. That left a neighbor two sites away to depart. They were late departing because of a mechanical difficulty. Their patio awning wouldn’t stow into travel position. It turned into a real production between the camper and a couple of the campground staff. Basically, they had to disassemble one of the support arms to get the awning retracted. I’m not sure how they ended up securing the support arm for travel, but they were on the road after an hour or two delay. While I sympathized with their situation, it was an entertaining morning.

During the afternoon I returned to downtown Historic St. Mary’s. There were many other people that had the same idea to walk along the river and sit in the park watching the action in the river. While I was there several pleasure and fishing boats were launched at the boat ramp. I am always amazed by some of the antics people go through to launch their boats. Today I saw one guy hanging by his knees over the bow of his boat to disconnect the cable from the trailer. Why he didn’t do it before he got in the boat is a mystery. I spent a couple of hours getting more entertainment from people watching.

Saturday July 16th 2022

The sun didn’t make an appearance today. It remained behind a thick layer of clouds. The good news is it didn’t rain on my RV home, but my car wasn’t so lucky. I made the mistake of driving south toward Jacksonville into some even thicker deep black clouds. My outdoor plans were rained out. I turned back to the north and drove out of the rain before I reached the Georgia boarder.

As I expected not as many RVs departed the park this morning. More people are here for the weekend rather than a single night. I’m really not good at guessing the intent of my fellow campers. I expected the people in the RV next to me to be leaving this morning, but they didn’t. They are from Massachusetts and didn’t disconnect the trailer from their truck when they arrived Friday. On the other hand the people a couple of sites down from Florida setup a whole outdoor kitchen when they arrived Friday. They were gone before 9:30 this morning.

The park pool got a lot of use today. It is a good size pool with a water slide and a refreshments stand. All of the families with kids seemed to be over there at one time or another today. The park tried to provide entertainment late in the afternoon. They sent out a text message announcing a musical performance by “one of your fellow campers” on the stage near the pool starting at 4PM. I wandered over their around 4:30 and they were packing their instruments away. It may have been a little too impromptu.

Friday July 15th 2022

It turned out to be a nice weather day. The forecast at the start of the day called for rain at any point during the day. It was cloudy in the morning and sunny in the afternoon. The temperature peaked around ninety with plenty of humidity and a gentle breeze. The threatened rain never arrived.

Today was a grocery shopping day, but I went the long way. My first stop was back on the river in downtown St. Marys. There was more wildlife around today. There were seagulls on the piers and a confused juvenile alligator in the river near the boat launching area. Alligators do not usually live in the brackish water of a tidal zone river. It was getting a lot of attention from the people trying to fish for crabs. From the gator’s perspective the crabs the people were trying to catch were the center of attention.

The grocery area of Walmart was very busy in the afternoon. Part of the community the store serves includes the Kings Bay Submarine base, so there were a few military families in the crowd. It is a well stocked store, but suffers from some the issues I’ve observed at other Walmart stores in the northeast Florida and southeast Georgia area. They don’t seem to be stocking as many alternatives as I expect. Fore example, they don’t have all the flavors of Rice-A-Roni or microwaveable rice dishes. In another area, one thing I’ve been putting off buying for the last few weeks was coffee. I have been waiting to find the larger sizes. Today I finally had to buy the smaller size container. Anything is better than running out my morning elixir. It still cost nearly as much as the larger one cost a few months ago.

In yesterday’s blog entry I wrote that the campground was probably filling up for the weekend. I was wrong. It emptied out this morning just like every other morning this week. This afternoon new arrivals filled in the empty space. I am not going to guess if they are here for the night or the weekend. My track record is terrible.

Thursday July 14th 2022

Today turned out to be an inside kind of day. The weather wasn’t bad, but just different enough from the last few days to cause a change in my behavior. The temperature didn’t get down as low last night meaning that it got hot and humid quickly this morning. I had the AC on before I finished breakfast. I ventured out for a couple of walks around the campground, but stayed in the cool comfort inside my RV home the rest of the day. The daily thunderstorms arrived after 5PM. The rain continued for a few hours.

I was busy with inside chores all day. The most annoying task was a carryover from last night. My Windows laptop was applying all of the latest Windows 10 updates. I’ve had updates turned off for the last few weeks, because I was connecting via expensive and limited Cellular Data. At this park there is good free WiFi available. I changed the settings when I was finished updating the blog last night and the updates started to download. I allowed the system to reboot once last night before I went to bed. This morning it needed two more reboots. Hopefully it will be stable for a few more weeks. It is practically unusable while it is updating.

I also got a little bit of cleaning done and got one of two new seat covers installed on the seats in the motorhome cab. It actually fits well and looks pretty good. Anything was going to be better than the pealing fake leather. I’m tired of vacuuming little pieces of vinyl all the time. Tomorrow I’ll tackle the other one.

The campground has a few more residents tonight. It may be the coming weekend of or it may be just a coincidence of travel. How many leave in the morning will provide the answer.

Wednesday July 13th 2022

The temperature got into the lower half of the nineties with plenty of humidity. The forecast had a very low chance of rain for the day, but it managed to rain for a few minutes. I was away from the campground with the vents and windows in my RV home open. There was a little bit of water on the kitchen floor from the open vent when I got home. Overall I was lucky. It only rained enough to wet the ground.

I was along the St Marys River in downtown St Marys while the black cloud was over my RV home. It didn’t rain at all in that area about five miles from the campground. There was a nice breeze along the river. I strolled along the riverfront and sat in the park watching the limited activity on the river. It was near low tide so the small boat traffic was being careful near the shallows along the shore. I was surprised not to see any bird life taking advantage of the areas exposed by the low tide. Strangely, there were no gulls, egrets or ibis around.

When I got back to the RV park I had a new neighbor. Last nights neighbor had departed. The sites on the other side have been open since I arrived, but given that I got the last site available for my period of stay, they will be filled sometime during my eight days here. Probably they will be occupied this weekend. The front part of the park and the sites with lower amperage electrical service have a higher occupancy level.

Tuesday July 12th 2022

Most of the day was sunny and humid without any real breeze. The ninety plus degree temperature was uncomfortable. During the afternoon thunderstorms were all around the area, but none directly impacted this area. Around 8PM one storm got a little closer. The lightening was close and a few minutes of light rain fell. It wasn’t enough of a storm to change the temperature or humidity level.

The plan for the day was to get settled in and find out what’s new at the campground. My last visit was in May of 2021. I have stayed here at least once every year since the Rambling Road Trip began in 2016. There have been many little changes every year and this one is no exception. I think they do a lot of the work themselves. Changes seem to be slow and might get interrupted if higher priority tasks come up. Last year they were working on removing trees from an area between the campground and the access road. I thought they might be working on expanding the campground. This year I found the trees thinned out, but no new sites have been added. The area just doesn’t look finished. Right now they are working on replacing the utilities on a whole row in the campground. There are all new water taps and electrical boxes in place. It looks like they are in the middle of running conduit for the electric lines between the boxes. A backhoe on a little Bob Cat is located in the middle of the row, but in the day and a half I’ve been here no work has happened on the project. All of those sites are no available for use.

This campground is located on Interstate 95 right at the Georgia Florida boarder. Its location means it gets many single overnight stops by travelers. At noon today, after check out time, there were very few RVs in the front transient part of the park. As the afternoon progressed the sites filled in. I didn’t have any close neighbors last night, but tonight I have a small motorhome on my front side.