Tuesday December 27th 2022

The really cold weather is slowly leaving the area. It only got down to about thirty overnight. Today was bright and sunny with a slight breeze out of the north. The high temperature was around sixty degrees. The average daily high for this time of year is in the low seventies. The New Years weekend is forecast to have high temperatures back in the eighties, but with the probability of rain.

This morning I resumed the search to get my motorhome fuel leak fixed. I tried the business cards from the park office and numbers I found from internet searches. Today I got actual answering machines and a couple of real people. I left four messages and got one call back. The call back was via text message. The end result was a possible appointment for Saturday. I continued my search. The second actual person I made contact with said he could look at the motorhome tomorrow afternoon, so I’m going to give him a try. He has good reviews for his mechanical skills online, but is faulted for not showing up when scheduled. This is going to be interesting.

To give me enough time to get this “little” problem fixed, I’ve more drastically restructured my travel schedule. I’m going to stay here until the 9th of January. This cancels my second set of two weeks in the Sarasota/Bradenton area. While I’m going to miss my visits to the state parks, this change makes sense. Going 150 miles south for two weeks before returning right by here to go 40 miles north to the Gainesville FL area already seemed wrong. The shorter the stay the more wrong it felt. In a way this is just one more ripple in the cancellation of my Myakka River State Park reservation because of hurricane Ian. I still have reservations in the Sarasota/Bradenton area for March and April.

While working with the park office staff to extend my stay I learned that ten to twenty new RVs are arriving most days over the next couple of weeks. Their phone lines have also been ringing continuously with people looking for extended reservations. Before Christmas they weren’t getting a lot of interest, but starting yesterday they’ve been busy answering queries. The park is starting to look much more occupied. The power company was here today to put in additional transformers so that another section of new sites can be opened soon.