Monday February 19th 2024

The two days of rain came to an end overnight. This morning started cloudy, but the sun made an appearance long before noon. It turned into a nice day with cooler than normal temperatures. As the day went by a north wind joined the weather mix.

The weather wasn’t ideal for travel, but it was better than a rainy travel day. My ideal travel day is cloudy without rain and no real wind. I had less than 130 miles to travel today. That is an easy distance on the interstate. Unfortunately the interstate isn’t a viable option for traveling from the Clermont area to Starke Florida northeast of Gainesville. My chosen route for this often driven route is north on US27 to US301. Several years ago it was an easy drive through several cities with long stretches of empty space between them. Now, the cities are bigger and the space between the cities has filled in with housing and businesses until you get north of Ocala. Two thirds of the journey is in traffic with signal lights every few hundred yards. Probably the worst part is through the Villages massive complex of 55plus housing.

Today I departed Lake Louisa State Park just before the 1PM checkout time. I arrived at the KOA in Starke Florida a little after 4PM. This tends to be one of my fall back locations to fill in a gap in my state park reservations. Initially even this park wasn’t available when I checked last fall, but it became available a couple of weeks ago. This has been a difficult winter to find reasonable places to stay. The twenty six nights I’ve needed to stay in commercial parks this winter has cost almost as much as much as the fourteen weeks in state parks. Of course, I’ve chosen the commercial parks by convenience and entertainment value rather than cost, so I can’t complain. Commercial campground costs have gone up in cost substantially, while the public parks haven’t gone up quite as much.

I’ll be here until Friday. I don’t anticipate doing much other than some grocery shopping and some walking in the neighborhood. This campground is located in the business district within walking distance of downtown.