It was a miserable weather day. The temperature barely cleared sixty degrees and some form of rain came down all day. The rain varied from mist to gentle rain. It never got to the downpour state. I had to run heat to keep the inside of my RV home in the comfortable range.
Football on TV
I stayed indoor all day. The TV kept me entertained most of the day, but not with the football games I wanted to watch. My location is in a dead zone for the local CBS station. Fox had one football game that I watched a little bit. Tonight, I can’t even remember the teams that were playing. Most of my TV watching was the sappy Christmas movies that dominate cable (in my case satellite) this time of year. Every plot seems to be a variation on the same plot theme.
It wasn’t as cold overnight resulting in a warmer start to the day and a higher peak in the low seventies. There was some sun early, but by mid day the sky was filled with clouds. The forecast for tomorrow calls for rain.
Traffic in the area was terrible again today. Every intersection had several cars backed up. I don’t think I got through any of the traffic lights on the first signal. There are just too many homes in the area for the size of the roads. Since I first started coming to this area seven years ago many new high density housing developments have been constructed. More are being built all the time. Areas that were citrus groves last year are now sandy open areas with the roads and utilities starting to be constructed. By next year they will contain a hundred or more houses. The roads just can’t keep up.
While I was out I made my last stop at Walmart for groceries before Thanksgiving. I think I waited too long. The place was very busy. Getting up and down the aisles with a shopping cart was often impossible. After I got boxed in by other shoppers a couple of times, I left the cart at the end of the aisle and went on foot to find the items I wanted. The result was I didn’t get everything I needed. I depend on the slow walk down the aisle to trigger my memory rather than writing a list. It is the non healthy stuff like cookies I forgot, so I’ll survive without another grocery run until after the holiday.
The cool weather is taking some getting used to. I had to add a blanket to my bed in the middle of the night to keep warm. This morning the sun brought the inside temperature up quickly, but the outside temperature remained in the low sixties all day. I know that is nothing compared to the northern states, but it does represent the arrival of winter weather in central Florida.
There is quite a bit of work going on in the RV park. Yesterday they paved some of the roads in the park including the road in front of my site. The roads didn’t look like they needed repair, but they had been ground down in preparation for a new surface before I arrived here at the end of last month. Perhaps because the temperature cooled off or just a scheduling thing they completed the job yesterday. I didn’t receive any notice from the park staff that the roads would be blocked at times during the day. The sad thing is I don’t think it was a very good job. There seem to be little voids in the surface and loose material on the edges that didn’t get rolled in.
I caught up on a few chores around my RV home today. For exercise I walked around the RV park a couple of times. The ducks and sandhill cranes were all in their usual places. The peafowl were missing today. There is an extensive area of pasture behind the park that I suspect is a good hideout for the birds when they aren’t in the park. The cattle that use the pasture probably don’t care what the birds do.
Today’s weather was a dramatic change. The sun was shining bright, but the temperature only climbed to the low sixties. It was more than ten degrees cooler than Wednesday and closer to fifteen degrees cooler than the average over the last couple of weeks.
Ducks in the RV Park.
I slept in this morning. My visit to Disney’s Magic Kingdom yesterday was tiring. It involved a lot of hurry up and wait type activities. The heavy crowds drove wait times up to very high levels and even the non ride activities like watching the parade and the fireworks required a lot of waiting.
Pluto greeting guests from the train station.
I arrived at the park around 1PM and made my way down Main Street checking out the decorations. The Halloween decorations I saw less than three weeks ago were all replaced by Christmas decorations. The town square area was dominated by a huge Christmas Tree. Scarecrows were replaced by wooden soldiers and Micky Jack-o-lanterns became big green wreathes with big red bows on all the lamp posts. It was a very festively decorated.
Shack on the Jungle Cruise decorated for the holidays.
The Jungle Cruise ride is “replaced” by the Jingle Cruise ride this time of year. I waited in line for about eighty minutes to see what the Holiday overlay is all about. Perhaps if the wait was shorter it would have been more enjoyable. Disney has added Christmas lights and decorations to most of the structures along the ride. The decorations fit in well and the boat skippers weave them into the story. The skippers also add a Christmas element to their puns and comedy. It wasn’t bad, just not great.
The Enchantment Fireworks show was at 8:15PM. The crowd was two thirds of the way down Main Street when I locked in a spot to watch the parade at 7:30PM. I didn’t move more than six inches until the show was over more than an hour later. People completely unaware of their surroundings tried to push and bump me out of my place more times than I could count, but I made it through the show. It is really nice show and I was in a very good place.
After the fireworks many people left the park. I pushed through the crowds deeper into the park. It was open until 11PM. Most of the ride wait times had not improved. I got a chance to ride the People Mover with only a twenty minute wait, but other rides still had waits in excess of sixty minutes. Even some of the theater style attractions were backed up.
The castle and Main street buildings complement the fireworks.
After the People Mover, the cold temperature got to me. The temperature was in the sixties and I had a short sleeve shirt. Earlier in the evening I looked to buy a sixty dollar sweatshirt, but I couldn’t find any in the correct size that weren’t pink or adorned with a character graphic I wouldn’t be comfortable wearing. It was time to head home.
Getting home was another adventure. The waits for the ferryboat or the monorail were long. I finally got on the second ferryboat across the Seven Seas Lagoon. My next adventure was finding my car. It wasn’t where I thought I parked it. Luckily, I always take a picture of the row number when I park. My memory said I parked in row 316, but the picture said it was 314. Grey vehicles in dimly lit parking lots become invisible two rows away.
For my trip home I took yet another route. Traffic was some of the worse I’ve seen leaving the Disney World area. I couldn’t get across four lines of traffic to take a left turn onto a road I knew was going to be plugged with traffic because of construction. I went further west before turning south adding five to ten miles to my trip home. It was after 11PM when I got home. It was a fun, but exhausting day.
Today’s weather started overcast with an occasional rain shower and ended overcast with the sun threatening but not succeeding. The temperature peaked in the mid to upper seventies. After dark the temperature started a nose dive. It is close to sixty as I write this blog entry shortly before midnight.
I went to Disney’s Magic Kingdom today with two goals in mind. First I wanted to see the holiday decorations and second I wanted to see some fireworks. I achieved both. Since it is late and I am tired, I going to include lots of pictures in this blog entry and write more about the day in tomorrow’s blog entry.
The sun never made an appearance today, but neither did the rain. The day started overcast and it continued that way all day. The temperature peaked in the low to mid eighties.
Fallen Blossom of the Day
This afternoon I drove north to the southern edge of Orlando to do some shopping at the outlet malls. There are plenty of outlet stores closer, but I went to the area with some of the original outlet stores in Orlando. It goes without saying if you have a tourist area you have outlet malls. I avoided the congestion on Interstate 4 by using local streets to get there. It was a real adventure.
Traffic and the behavior of motorists in metro areas is always interesting. This area is no exception. Today I saw my fair share of accelerating to make the yellow light at intersections and weaving in and out of lanes to get around slower traffic. I even saw one instance where the behavior was combined almost leading to a major accident right in front of me. Two cars in the outside lane were rushing to get through the yellow light the first car tried to duck into the second lane to get by a slower car, but a car in that lane decided to stop for the yellow light. The driver swerved back into the outside lane in front of the other car trying to race through the yellow light. The second car had to hit the brakes hard and didn’t make the yellow light, but the first guy causing all the issues made it through the light.
Between the volume of traffic, the impatience of the drivers and all of the road construction it can be a real challenge driving around. I’ve been in this area enough over the years to know the roads, but not necessarily the traffic patterns. I don’t know what times of day to avoid which roads. Night time is also a whole new challenge. The landmarks I know aren’t necessarily visible at night, so I need to slow down sooner to find the turns. Coming back into this RV park after dark is one of those difficulties. The first few nights were a real challenge, but I think I’ve got it down now.
About noon today I ventured out to Disney’s Hollywood Studios. My goal was to ride a few rides, see a few shows and generally checkout the Christmas Decorations. I partially fulfilled my goal.
The park was very crowded. Wait times for rides were in the triple digit minutes. I got to see a couple of shows including Frozen Ever After with its Christmas flair. The waits for rides were a real problem. I got into the Toy Story Mania line with an expected wait of fifty minutes. It was over an hour before I got off the ride. About the only thing that didn’t have a wait was lunch and that was only because I mobile ordered ahead.
The one thing I was completely successful with was checking out the Christmas decorations. They were plentiful, colorful and well enjoyed. The only place they didn’t decorate for Christmas was the Galaxy’s Edge Star Wars land. I guess the fictional planet of Batuu doesn’t put up Christmas decorations.
My plan was to stay for the Fantasmic nighttime show. It returned after two plus years at the beginning of the month. The show started at 8PM. At 6PM there was a line twenty feet wide all along Sunset Blvd and growing. They don’t open the seating area until 7PM. I wasn’t prepared to wait in that line alone. Boredom was sure to win the battle before the show started. I decided the show could wait and I headed for home. Unfortunately, it was the end of rush hour. It took close to an hour to get home. Except for the drive home it was a fun day.
More people were arriving at the park as I departed.
Today’s weather was not ideal. It never rained, but it seemed like it would start at any minute for most of the day. After a foggy start the day warmed up into the low eighties with plenty of humidity.
My tentative plans for the day were put aside because of the weather. I didn’t want to get into outside activities that would be interrupted by rain. Instead I watched some TV and read for a diversion. For exercise I got in a couple of walks around the RV resort. The Sandhill Cranes were particularly photogenic today. The Peacocks and Peahens were not being as cooperative.
The park is close to full now. There are only a small handful of empty sites. The people level is not at maximum yet. Many of the RVs and Mobile Homes are still empty. The occupants haven’t returned for the winter. The fifth wheel trailer on one side of me is such an RV. Its slide out rooms are still pulled in and there is no outside paraphernalia. I wonder if they will arrive before I leave after Thanksgiving.
On my other side, my neighbor is a family with two young kids. This park is advertised as a 55plus park, so I’m not sure what that’s all about. The kids aren’t a problem. You hardly know they are around. During the week they are at school and on the weekends they seem to keep busy. When they are inside their trailer I’m more aware of their presence. There is a lot of banging on the walls and the sounds of running coming from the trailer. I think the phrase “climbing the walls” applies more literally to their existence inside the trailer.
After a foggy start, it was another beautiful day in Central Florida. The wind was very light and the clouds were light and fluffy. The temperature peaked in the mid eighties.
In the afternoon I visited Disney Springs the shopping and entertainment area of Walt Disney World. For some reason I thought it wouldn’t be very busy on a Saturday afternoon. Perhaps because it is a holiday weekend, or more likely I just don’t understand shopping patterns, it was very busy. The Orange parking garage only had available spaces on the top floor when I arrived shortly after noon. The other garages and surface lots may have been similarly full, because the walkways and stores throughout the district were jammed with people.
I came to see the Christmas decorations and wander through a few shops. There were also a few performers on some of the stages that kept my attention for awhile. The primary decorations come in the form of Christmas trees scattered throughout the area. Each is styled differently according to a theme. Most of the trees represent Disney movies or characters. There is a map and stickers that you can follow and mark off each tree as you find them. I just wandered from one end to the other looking at the trees and other decorations.
The World of Disney store was filled with people shopping for Disney merchandise. Some of the stuff makes me wonder about the creativity of the market people. Do you suppose that dogs appreciate having a bed with Cinderella’s castle or Mickey Mouse’s head on it? Obviously their owners will buy almost anything Disney. At least the five year old girls with $200 dollar dresses and tiaras enjoy the look for a couple of minutes before playing in the muddy fountains. I’m just amazed at what people spend money on when on vacation.
Tropical system Nicole is long gone from Florida. Today’s weather pattern is back to a familiar pattern. It was sunny and dry in the morning and the afternoon was filled with pop up rain storms. The temperature was a little above normal in the upper eighties. The weekend is forecast to be cooler.
A Peacock and a couple of Peahens.
Today was the first “normal” day this week. Early in the week I was worried about the weather. Then I was preparing for the weather followed by living through the weather. It was a very confusing morning getting back into a normal flow. Later in the day the weather conspired against me. Every time I was about to go out a storm would pop up darkening the sky and soaking the ground. I ended up staying at home all day.
One of the things I did while waiting out today’s pop up storms was review the impact of the latest hurricane on my winter reservations. Hurricane Ian, six weeks ago, put two of my two week stays at Florida State Parks in danger. My question was how much worse Nicole may have made the situation. As of now it doesn’t look like any additional issues have come up.
My biggest concern remains my stay at Myakka River State Park in December. The river was more than five feet above flood stage after Ian and didn’t go below flood stage for several weeks. The river gauge in the park showed a blip from Nicole today, but it remained below flood stage. The original statement on the park web page was “reservations canceled until at least November 20th and probably longer”. Now the statement is “reservations canceled until November 30th and possibly longer”. How much credence should I give to the fact that they only moved it out ten days and changed the “probably” to “possibly”? The other issue is for a reservation at the end of February, so lots of things can dry out by then. Finding an alternative location for December will be difficult. I will probably have to go to northern Florida. An alternative for February will be both difficult and expensive.
Rob's Rambling Road Trip 