Tuesday July 11th 2023

It was a much drier day today than Monday. The sun was still hiding behind the clouds most of the day, but the rain was limited to a few widely scattered storms. It was a good day for a road trip.

I set out on what turned into a two hundred and fifty mile round trip drive. My destination was Ocala Florida to arrange to get my new car setup to be toad behind my motorhome. The Hitching Post in Ocala is one of two places in Florida that I would consider getting the job done. Many RV dealers will do the job, but they don’t have a lot of experience. The Hitching Post does several a week. At busy times of the year they do two every day of the week except Sunday. I’ve got an appointment for the beginning of August to add the base plate for the tow bar and wire the lights in my new Chevy Equinox.

The shop is a little over one hundred miles away, but I took the long way south. I followed Interstate 95 to Daytona Beach before turning inland on State Route 40. Traffic wasn’t bad and route 40 is a nice drive through the Ocala National Forest. The only problem with this route is crossing through all of Ocala to get where I needed to go. I returned home on the more direct path provided by US 301. Unfortunately, I drove through some rain on this part of my journey.

While I was in Ocala I stopped at the Ocala Wetlands Recharge Park that I last visited in January. There is a lot more ground water in the holding ponds today than there was in January. The ducks, herons and egrets were plentiful. The pictures in this blog entry are all from my walk in the recharge park.

Monday July 10th 2023

Most of the day was an inside activity kind of day. It started to rain shortly after the breakfast hour and continued through the dinner hour. Some of the rain was heavy with plenty of wind, thunder and lightening, but most of it was just a steady rain.

This was lawn mowing day in the RV park. They got started in my area of the park before 9AM and didn’t get finished before the rain began. The guys got really wet. Not only did they get wet riding the mowers, they got even more wet trying to unclog the wet grass from the mowers. I suspect it took longer to do less today.

I didn’t get out for my morning walk before the rain started. Instead, I watched TV and read to fill the time between indoor activities. One thing I did was cook a pot roast for dinner and the next few days of leftovers. Other than browning the meat and preparing the vegetables, most of the work was done by the slow cooker. Around 5PM I had a nice meal.

The rain stopped and the sun made a brief appearance after 6PM. I got out for my only walk of the day. There was a lot of dodging puddles involved in the walk around the front section of the RV park. The 6PM hour is one of the times during the day that a steady stream of landing aircraft are passing overhead. When you are outside it is impossible to ignore the noise of the passing planes. Tonight was no exception. At least five went by during my walk. The geese were plentiful along the bank of the retention pond. They were huddled in two different groups. The ducks were taking refuge with one of the groups of geese.

Sunday July 9th 2023

There wasn’t a lot of rain today, but it seemed to be timed to get in my way. I have a clear view of the sky in three of four directions from inside my RV home. When I was ready for my first walk of the day each of the three visible directions was bright and almost sunny. As soon as I got outside I noticed the sky in the other direction was black as night. I only got a couple of hundred feet away from my RV home before the rain started to fall. It was over in a few minutes, but my walk didn’t happen.

During the day there were several similar cloud burst style storms, They appear quickly, drop a lot of water quickly and go away after only a few minutes. I was in the middle of my second walk attempt when one occurred. I was more than a little damp by the time I arrived back at my RV home. I clearly wasn’t in sync with nature today.

Most of the rain was over by the supper hour. It was just in time to allow the RV park’s fishing tournament to go on as planned. From 5:30 to 8:30 they were holding the tournament for the kids in the park. About twenty kids lined up along the banks of the big retention pond with their lines in the water. I watched for about half an hour and didn’t see any indication of success. I’ve seen other people fishing in the pond in the past, so I assume there must be something in the pond to catch.

My major accomplishment of the day was restocking the refrigerator and cabinets with food. The Walmart was not as full as I feared. The aisles were not overly packed and the wait at the checkouts was tolerable. I replenished my fluids, meat and breads among other things. The main catalyst for shopping today was that I ran out of OJ, milk and bottled water. It is easy to work around not having fresh bread or unfrozen meat, but tap water gets old fast as an alternative.

Saturday July 8th 2023

I took my morning walk while my breakfast coffee brewed. The goal was to get the first walk in before the temperature started to climb. For the most part I was successful. The temperature was in the low eighties, but the humidity was still very high. The ducks and geese were both awake and active along my walking route.

After breakfast most of my morning was spent on various chores around my RV home. I got the dishes washed and stored before moving on to collecting the laundry. It is all bagged and ready to be washed, but I’ll probably wait until the quiet of a weekday afternoon. The laundry facilities at this park can get very busy.

I was surprised to see another neighbor depart this morning. The motorhome two sites up from me looked like it would be here for the duration of my stay and then some. The row I am in is now almost empty of RVs. The row behind me is still well occupied. The row in front of me seems to be used primarily for short term stays. The occupancy turns over every few days. Overall this park has fewer residents than it did last summer when I was here. Going forward I can’t comment. I departed this park about this time last year.

The weather cooperated today. There were no afternoon thunderstorms in this area. The storms were further south along the Florida peninsular. I was able to get in a second walk around the park.

Friday July 7th 2023

After spending four days traveling up to North Carolina and back at the beginning of the week, my daily routine is out of wack. In my head, the trip was over the weekend, so this should be the start of the week not the end. How dare the fourth be on a Tuesday. Getting settled back into a pattern of preparing meals, taking my walks around the park and generally getting on with life is the challenge at hand. I didn’t succeed yesterday, but today was pretty much back to normal.

I got my first walk of the day in early before the heat of the day really settled in. The ducks were back in their normal place in the front retention pond and the geese had moved back to the more sheltered pond at the back of the park. The park was its normal sleepy self for a weekday morning. My second walk of the day was cut short by a thunderstorm. It looked bright and dry when I departed my RV home, but the sky was dark to the west. I cut my loop much shorter than normal, but it still started to rain before I got back home. A few seconds after I shut the door to my RV home the rain opened up at full blast.

That was the second time today that the rain got in the middle of my plans. While the sky was still bright and only moderately threatening I headed east about fifteen miles to the Betz-Tiger Point Preserve. This is a nice county park on the tributary creeks to the Nassau river. My intent was to walk one of the trails, but mother nature had other ideas. Thunder and dark clouds were rapidly approaching forcing me to retreat to the car. The return trip to my RV home was in a very heavy downpour. There was limited visibility, lots of air to ground lightening strikes and surprising areas of standing water. It was not a fun drive home.

Thursday July 6th 2023

After putting almost 1200 miles on my new car over the last few days, it is time to resume my daily blog. On Sunday I drove a little over five hundred miles from Jacksonville Florida into North Carolina to attend a family gathering over the holiday. The drive north took around seven and a half hours. Traffic was fairly light most of the way. I didn’t have any slow downs or delays along the way. It was an easy drive mostly on Interstate 95.

Yesterday I returned to Jacksonville. The return trip took a few minutes over eight hours. Traffic along most of the route was heavy. The big trucks that had been absent from the road on Sunday were a constant obstacle on Wednesday. The speed of travel was still quick, but it took more concentration. It wasn’t a pleasant drive. I arrived back at my RV home shortly before 4PM ready for a good rest.

I used most of the fancy new features in my new vehicle. I was able to listen to podcasts via my smart phone with Android Auto in the car. The Sirius XM radio got a good exercise as well. For driving, all of the new safety features like blind spot monitoring and lane change alert got a good test. Some of the features are going to take some driver training.

This morning I walked around the RV park and found a few changes over the three days I was gone. First a couple of my neighbors were gone. There is a whole area of open sites between my site and the front of the park now. I suspect there will be new occupants as time goes by. Perhaps because of the open sites, or more likely because of random roaming, the Canadian Geese have moved from the retention pond at the back of the park to the bigger pond at the front of the park. Walking now becomes an exercise of avoiding their cylindrical green calling cards on the grass, campsite pads and roads.

I only managed to get one walk in today. The afternoon thunderstorms kept me inside. Even when it wasn’t raining late this afternoon, there was plenty of lightening in the area, so I played it safe and stayed inside. The storms did managed to drop the temperatures a bit though.

I got a very early start to the day. I departed my RV home shortly after 6AM for North Carolina. I’ll be visiting family over the Independence Day Holiday. The blog is going to take a break until later in the week.

Saturday July 1st 2023

It was another nice weather day. The wind was out of the east bringing in a little bit of cooling. Inland the temperature was reported in the high nineties, but here the coastal breeze kept the temperature around ninety.

Taking advantage of my restored mobility brought about by my new car, I spent some time on the banks of the Nassau River today. One area was in the bright sun of the tidal marsh and the other was in a tree lined corridor. Both were getting plenty of use for general boating, kayaking and paddle boarding. People didn’t hang around the open marsh area boat launch. They headed inland for areas with more cover from the sun. At the more sheltered boat launch there were plenty of people hanging around the immediate area. Possibly this is because they were new to the activity having just rented equipment from one of the several boat rental concessions.

Traffic was very heavy on the intestate highway today. The major construction activity two exits south can’t support the holiday weekend traffic without slowing down. It is more than five miles south, but the traffic was moving at slightly better than pedestrian speed most of the day. North bound traffic was moving at a normal rate for a heavy traffic day. Even US 17 that parallels interstate 95 and serves as an alternate route was backed up southbound this afternoon.

The ducks are missing from the RV resorts retention pond again today. This time I’m going to “blame” the kids that are fishing along the bank. I’m going to go by a theory that the ducks wanted peace and quiet, but it probably just means there is somewhere else in the area that has more food and shelter. Hopefully, they will be back. I like seeing them swimming in the pond and relaxing on the bank.