Monday August 29th 2022

The weather pattern of the last few days held true today. The day began with heavy cloud cover, lots of humidity and very little wind. As the day went by the clouds broke up some, but as the afternoon progressed the clouds returned. It was followed shortly be a line of thunderstorms. The only real difference was in the direction of the storms. The last few days have moved from southwest to northeast. Today the storms moved from southeast to northwest.

I stopped at the Ocala Wetlands Recharge park again today on my way home from touring the area. The bird pictures in this blog entry are from my visit.

Gas prices seem to be bouncing all over the spectrum in this area. Early last week I filled the tank of my SUV for $3.39 per gallon, but many of the prices were twenty cents higher. Did I just find the right place or were prices on the way down? Late last week all of the prices seemed to be around $3.59 per gallon including the station I think I bought gas at earlier in the week. Today, most of the stations have moved off the $3.59 price to around $3.43 per gallon. My uncertainty is a condition of full time RV life style.

When you travel all the time, you don’t have a solid base for comparison. Living in one place habits are established. One passes the same gas stations everyday and you learn the prices. It is easier to understand if the trend is climbing or decreasing. The same can be said about any price from groceries to clothes.

There are many other observations that suffer from the same lack of a solid base. For example, you are at the mercy of the TV weather forecasters to know when the current weather is abnormal. Are they being dramatic for ratings or reality? For really significant weather like hurricanes I’ve learned to balance local commentary with the Weather Channel, but next day’s thunderstorms that isn’t possible. All of these things are part of the “fun’ of travel, but they can easily become part of the stress. Right now I’m depending on the calendar to remind me that fall is right around the corner. There is nothing in my current experience or the environment that clues me in to the change of season, even if I did hear a TV weather forecaster call the current pattern a sign of fall.