Sunday December 11th 2022

The weather didn’t live up to the precedent set by the last week. Except for a brief period around noon it was a very cloudy day. The temperature was slow to get out of the sixties and didn’t climb above the low seventies all day.

My chief task for the day was scouting my escape route for tomorrow’s travel day north. What I was really looking for was the best gas station to fill the motorhome’s tank. All of the nearby stations have poor access. I found a couple of stations up the road a few miles that will work OK and an alternative further north that is on the expensive side, but will work well as a last resort. Gas prices are actually down more than ten cents a gallon from two weeks ago when I arrived at Lake Louisa State Park. It usually doesn’t happen that way. The change is usually to my disadvantage.

There was a lot of traffic on the roads. Initially I didn’t understand why there was so much traffic on a Sunday morning. Passing slowly through an area of several shopping centers it became clear. I was getting stuck in the Christmas shopping rush. It is hard to believe the holiday is only two weeks away.

The campground really emptied out as the weekend came to a conclusion. It was so empty in the early afternoon I didn’t think it would fill up again tonight, but it did. Once again the weekend tent campers from the local area gave way to the RVs from the northern states. I will join the departing guests tomorrow before the 1PM checkout. I have a trip of about 75 miles to the Ocala area to reach my next destination.

Saturday December 10th 2022

The fog and cloud cover hung in a little longer this morning. It wasn’t until noon that the sun started to dominate the sky. The afternoon remained partly cloudy with a few long periods with the sunshine blocked from reaching the ground directly. The temperature still managed to get into the upper seventies.

Just like the weather, my day started slow. I lingered over my breakfast coffee catching up on my internet reading longer than usual. My only major accomplishment for the day was getting some laundry done. It took a couple of hours and this is not one of those places that I am comfortable leaving it alone. I hoovered around the laundry machines the whole time my washing was in them. Thank goodness for earbuds and a cell phone with internet access to kill the time.

For this blog entry, I am going to complete yesterday’s story on my visit to Wald Disney World. In particular my touring of the Christmas Decorations at the Fort Wilderness campground.

After spending about three hours wandering around Magic Kingdom taking in the ambiance, I took the boat to Fort Wilderness. It was still daylight when I arrived so my first order of business was getting some food. I chose to have a hamburger and fries from the take out place at the Settlement. After mobile ordering from the My Disney Experience App I had to wait about half an hour. This is not a quick service location, just a take out place for the campers. While I waited I wandered around the Settlement area and one of the camping loops during the last of daylight.

After an OK hamburger and fries it was dark and my touring began. I walked through most of the first nine camping loops. It is over two weeks until Christmas and the nightly rate at Fort Wilderness is possibly the highest overnight rate for a campground in the country, so most of the people staying there this weekend will be gone before Christmas. Still, about half the sites were decorated. Closer to the holiday it will probably be close to all of the sites. The majority of the decorations are inflatables, but many sites had a few strings of lights thrown in for good measure. Projection lights have been popular in past years, but I didn’t see many this time around. I don’t think I’ve toured these lights since 2018 because of the pandemic and my winter location.

Looking at the lights was fun. I had a lot of difficulty taking pictures. The lighting was very inconsistent and I didn’t want to use a flash to annoy people inside the RVs. I attempted to take about 150 pictures in the campground and probably deleted about fifty because they were just too blurry. Included in this blog entry are about thirty to provide a sense of what I was observing.

Friday December 9th 2022

Today’s weather was pretty much a repeat of the last few days. It starts a little cloudy, but turns sunny and clear quickly. Under the bright sun and next to no wind the temperature climbs to eighty.

I went to Disney World’s Magic Kingdom today. I wandered around the park and road a couple of rides watched a little bit of the castle show and saw the Mickey Mouse Cavalcade. My real goal today was to checkout the Christmas decorations at the Magic Kingdom Area resorts. Included in that mix of resorts was the Fort Wilderness Campground with all of the decorating efforts of the campers. I took lots of pictures. I’m going to hold off on the Fort Wilderness pictures until Saturday’s blog entry. In this entry I’ll show some pictures from the Magic Kingdom and the three resorts along the Monorail route.

The Contemporary resort had a big brightly decorated tree on the front lawn. Inside it had a gingerbread depiction of Cinderella’s castle for the fiftieth anniversary. It was hidden away at the far end of the concourse level. The Polynesian resort doesn’t do a lot of decorating, but it had a nice tree in the lobby. The grand daddy of Christmas decorating on the monorail loop is the Grand Floridian Resort. It has a huge tree in the lobby and a gingerbread house bigger than most sheds.

Overall it was a long second half of the day. I departed my RV home around noon and got back a few minutes before 10PM. In between I did lots of walking and road the monorail more than I think I ever have.

Thursday December 8th 2022

Today’s temperature peaked in the upper seventies just south of the eighty degree mark. There was next to no wind most of the day. The lake surface was like a mirror this afternoon.

My sleep schedule has gotten out of wack over the last week. I’m getting to sleep later and consequently getting up later. This morning it was after 10AM when I rolled out of bed. I blame a combination of two things. First, I get home in the middle of the evening from my trips to the theme parks. By the time I get my blog entry written and generally mellow out, it is late. The second thing I’m going to blame is the abundance of Christmas movies on TV. I seem to get wrapped up in watching movies that go to midnight and even sometimes to 2AM. This weekend, I’ll have to start setting the alarm for 7:30AM to attempt to reset my sleep cycle.

Today was another chores day. I got the laundry packed up ready to grab the washing machine here in the camping loop. So far, both of my attempts to snag the machine were met with failure. There is only one washer and one dryer. Someone else was using the machine both times I checked this afternoon. Tomorrow is another day. With everything packed up and ready to hit the machine it is a just a matter of finding the machine available.

Walking around the park today I found plenty of wildflowers in blossom. I don’t know if they all popped in the last few days or if I wasn’t very observant the first few days I was here. My impression, when I arrived, that the wildflowers were missing isn’t true now. I took quite a few pictures today.

Wednesday December 7th 2022

There was a little more sunshine today than the last couple. The clouds seem to come and go several times during the day. The temperature peaked around eighty degrees.

This was a chores day around my RV home. It is remarkable how quickly all the little things accumulate. Later in the day I drove over to the other side of the state park to explore a little. The north side of the park boarders on Lake Louisa.

The water level in Lake Louisa is higher than I’ve seen it. Many of the trails in the area are muddy and a few are under water. I had to play hopscotch on tufts of grass to get through a few areas. Usually I see a lot of birds around Lake Louisa. Today I didn’t see any water birds. Overall I was pretty disappointed with things in the park in the Lake Louisa side.

Around the campground a few more Christmas decorations are starting to show up. The mid week mix of occupants has more travelers than locals. As the weekend approaches that will probably change. People from the greater central Florida area seem to book the weekends at the start of the eleven month reservation window. That is one of the reasons I need to compete to get a whole two week stay. A few days in the middle of the week are a lot easier to book.

Tuesday December 6th 2022

Similar to Monday, today started cloudy and struggled to clear off as the day progressed. Shortly after five as the sun was setting there was enough clear sky to present a nice sunset. The temperature peaked in the low eighties. It was another day warmer than the average for the season.

After yesterday’s afternoon at the theme park I needed a day of recovery. Navigating the crowds takes a lot of energy. So many people forget everything they know about situational awareness when they get into the sensory overload of the theme park. The number of people that walk left while looking right and proceed to cross your path with little to no room to spare is huge. Then there are the groups of six or more that think walking side by side at half the speed of the crowd is a good thing to do. When they get into the middle of an intersection they invariably stop short and debate their direction. Add in a few Electric Convenience Vehicles with novice drivers trying to go to fast and you have a recipe for chaos.

Today’s hike was around Hammond Lake, the smaller of the two lakes bracketing the campground. Much of the area on the back side of the lake was a citrus grove sixty or more years ago. The trees were abandon long before the area became a state park in the 1970s. Brush, pine trees and a few hardwood now occupy the area. There are still a few random orange trees in the area. It is surprising to come across trees filled with orange fruit in the middle of brush and other trees.

Monday December 5th 2022

The sun fought the clouds for control of the sky all day. As evening approached the clouds finally started to clear. Even with the cloud cover the temperature reached the mid to upper seventies.

This afternoon I drove to EPCOT for a Fish and Chip dinner. The Yorkshire County Fish Shop in the UK pavilion is a bit addictive. My other goal was to checkout the Christmas decorations at the resorts in the EPCOT area. I visited six resorts. Three had interesting decorations and three were only average.

My first stop after leaving EPCOT via the back entrance was the SkyLiner. I road the aerial gondola to the Riviera Resort. This is a new Disney Vacation Club resort that I haven’t visited before. Their choice of decorations was very stark. A few trees and wreathes adorned the lobby with clear lights. I didn’t find any gingerbread creation that most Disney resorts create.

Next up my resort tour was the Boardwalk resort after a return trip on the SkyLiner. This resort was nicely decorated both outside and in the lobby. They had colorfully decorated trees and a gingerbread model of the Boardwalk Deli. I think the choice of ornaments on the trees was new, but it seemed to be very similar to previous years overall.

Continuing around the lagoon the non Disney Swan and Dolphin resorts were my next stop. They seemed to have the same decorator as the Riviera Resort. All I found were green trees and clear lights in both hotels.

At my next stop, the Yacht Club, a Christmas tree with sailboat ornaments was located in the middle of the lobby. Off to the side was a model train running between villages in a snow covered mountain scene. This is similar to past years, but I think the model train layout was different this year.

Next door at the Beach Club Resort, the usual carousel made out of gingerbread took center stage in the lobby. Each of the horses on the carousel is dedicated to a Disney Princess. This is also a repeat of previous years, but it is something that people look forward to seeing every year.

Back at EPCOT after my journey around the lagoon, I watched several musical shows and listen to the story of Christmas at the France pavilion. Pere Noel describe some of the French traditions. In the American Pavilion area, I sat behind the theater again to listen to the Candle Light Processional. Today’s narrator was Isabella Rossellini. Unfortunately, even with the amplification system, her voice did not carry well to my location.

I didn’t wait in any of the long lines for rides while I was at EPCOT. I hiked back to my car at the far end of one of the last rows in the parking lot and headed home. I was back in the comfort of my RV home by 8PM.

Sunday December 4th 2022

I had a tough time getting started today. The sounds of my neighbors packing to leave woke me shortly before 8AM. After raising a couple of blinds and completing other first thing in the morning tasks, I laid back down on the bed. The next thing I knew it was after 10AM. The campsites around me were all empty by the time I finally got my day started. It turned into another beautiful day with a sunny sky and high temperatures in the low to mid eighties.

Today I walked around the far side of Dixie Lake in the state park. The water level is high, but not to the level that the path is wet. It looked like the level had retreated from a higher level earlier in the year. There is also evidence of a few trees that needed to be cleaned up after the recent storms. The trunks with clear evidence of chainsaw cuts sat along the sides of the trail. My guess is the wet ground made them vulnerable to the wind.

The park remained very busy with day use guests today. The fishing piers on both Hammond Lake and Dixie Lake were lined with people fishing. I chose to stay well away from the chaos of little kids and adults casting sharp hooks into the water. Most of them don’t last very long before they move onto another activity. It is like the family has a checklist of things they have to do while at the park. Cast a line in the lake three times, fishing check. Throw a Frisbee for five minutes check and so on… That’s the observation of this bystander.

As night approached the park filled up again. The weekend tent campers with Florida license plates were replaced by RVs with out of state plates. Tonight I saw a fair amount from northern states. New York, Ohio and the Canadian Provence of Ontario were well represented.

Saturday December 3rd 2022

It was warm day with a high temperature in the low eighties. The average temperature for this time of year is in the low to mid seventies.

I got a slow start to the day once again. When I finally got out of my RV home to check out the goings on in the campground, I found a very different atmosphere from my last daytime view of the campground yesterday morning. While I was out yesterday many of the empty campsites were occupied by tent campers. It is not unusual to see tents in the state parks, but the sites aren’t well designed for tent camping. On many sites the only place to pitch a tent is on the hard packed stony gravel of the driveway. This morning almost a third of the sites are occupied by tent campers. Usually, there is a handful at best. I suspect a good portion of them are together.

Wandering around the campground and the trails in the park, I came across a lot of day guests. There were bicyclists, hikers, fishermen and kayakers all around. Even the horse riding area down the road from the campground seemed to be very busy. I didn’t get down that far from the campground, but there were plenty of cars parked in front of the horse paddock area. This park is about thirty miles from downtown Orlando. It is about the right distance for day trips for people living in the city.

In the campground I’m starting to see some signs of the upcoming holiday. A few sites are decorated with lights and a couple of blow up characters have appeared. It is early for a lot of decorating to happen. Everybody that is here now will be gone before Christmas do to the length of stay limits. I expect to see more decorations at my next stop. It is also not a state park, so decorating is probably more of a “thing”.

Friday December 2nd 2022

Despite my best efforts, I didn’t get an early start to the day. I didn’t get to Disney’s Animal Kingdom until noon. The park was very busy and many of the animals were napping. Still I had a good afternoon at the park.

Today I brought my camera with a zoom lens to the park. On Wednesday’s visit to EPCOT I only had my cell phone camera. My goal for the day was to take animal pictures. Since I came home with over two hundred pictures (thank you digital technology), I will declare my goal met. I’m only going to include about fifty pictures here.

I really enjoyed the animal puppets that are here for the holidays. The life size puppets of polar bears, a wolf, a reindeer and others interact with each other and the guests in a very lifelike fashion. For attractions, I only road the Kilimanjaro Safari. The other rides and shows had long lines that I didn’t want to wait out. The safari was about an hour wait, but usually worth it. I road it a second time with only a thirty five minute wait. It was only an OK experience today. The driver for the first safari wasn’t the best and I was seated in the last row. The driver managed to pause with the front of the truck in view of the animals, but more often than not the back’s view was blocked. On my second ride later I was in the second row, but many of the animals had already returned to their nigh time quarters.

Most of my day was spent walking around the park and trails watching the animals and taking pictures. Here are some of the better pictures.