Thursday May 11th 2023

Most of today’s weather was a clone of yesterday. It was sunny and humid with a high temperature a little above ninety. Late in the afternoon the similarity ended. The thunderstorms that missed this area yesterday were much closer today. The sound of thunder with dark clouds were in the north east and the south east sky. The brunt of the storms never arrived here. Just three or four minutes of very light rain after the majority of the storms had moved on. There is a chance of additional rain later tonight from the west.

Today was my last visit to Disney’s Animal Kingdom for the spring. I’m moving out of the central Florida area tomorrow. I was up early with a plan to get to the park early, but the traffic gods had other ideas. On the morning news the traffic report indicated that there was a major accident at the intersection of US 27 and US 192. Traffic was stopped in all directions to resolve the issue. Unfortunately, there is no viable route to Disney from here that doesn’t go through that area. I delayed my departure until 9AM. When I got to the intersection traffic was moving but the turn onto US 192 was blocked by down power lines. All of the traffic had to find alternative routes. Most of the traffic just went to the next intersection and reversed direction. I chose to go about three intersections south and proceeded east on local roads through various neighborhoods. Other knowledgeable drivers took a similar approach. The bottom line is it took additional time.

I got in line for the Safari ride at 10:15AM with an indicated one hour wait time. It was a good safari. The wait time was about right and the animals were cooperative. There were a lot of animals close to the safari truck. Including one ostrich that might just have been too close. The lady in the row in front was close to a full on panic trying to climb into her husband’s (?) lap to get away from the side of the truck the ostrich approached.

After the safari I wandered around the park looking at the various animal exhibits and the flowers in bloom. My timing for the shows was wrong and I wasn’t really looking to ride any of the attractions. Both the Lion King show and the Finding Nemo show have gaps near the lunch hour that I was caught in. I got some lunch to take a break from the heat and recharge my energy. After lunch I made another half lap of the park. The wait time for the safari was over an hour so another ride wasn’t in the cards. I gave up around 2PM and headed for my RV home. It was a good visit to Animal Kingdom.

Late this afternoon I completed a few of the travel preparation tasks, but more than usual remain for tomorrow morning. I plan to leave around 11AM tomorrow, but have until 1PM to check out. It is about 130 mile to my destination in the St Augustine area. I am planning more of a cross country travel day as opposed to an Interstate highway travel day.