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.

Sunday February 18th 2024

The operative word for the day continues to be “Rain”. Since the rain began in the early hours of Saturday morning, it hasn’t let up. This is the longest period of continuous rain I’ve experienced in a long time. It is not unusual to have several rainy days in a row, but there are generally periods of intermittent rain during that period. In thus case there have been no let ups in the light to medium rain. An occasional wave of heavy rain has also happened. The only thing we haven’t had is thunderstorm level downpours.

Once again I spent the day inside watching TV and surfing the internet. I considered making a grocery run, but it just didn’t reach the level of urgency necessary to battle the traffic in the rain. My only venture outside was brief. I bundled up in rain gear long enough to take a couple of pictures to illustrate just how wet the outside world was during the afternoon. On the plus side, the rain managed to wash all the ugly yellow green pollen off my car.

This is my last full day at Lake Louisa State Park. Tomorrow I’m moving a hundred and twenty five miles north. Going north right after a weather front passes through the area practically guaranties a few cold nights to come. I’ll be in a commercial campground for four nights before my next state park reservation starts. The Walmart is half a mile down the street, so my grocery shopping will be easy on Tuesday. What else I’ll do during my stay remains to be seen.

Saturday February 17th 2024

All week the weather people have been forecasting rain this weekend. Early in the week the rain was predicted for Sunday into Monday. Multiple inches of rain were forecast. The Dayton 500 NASCAR race Sunday afternoon was clearly in jeopardy. As the week went by the start time for the precipitation kept getting earlier. As of Friday, the rain was predicted to start Saturday afternoon and possible be over by the time the race was scheduled on Sunday. This morning at 7AM the true became apparent. It was already raining. The current forecast calls for rain through Monday morning.

I have pretty much stayed inside all day. At one point, I hadn’t heard any rain on the roof for about an hour so I ventured out for a walk. It is a good thing I put my rain coat on, because it really was raining. One might call it a heavy mist, but my rain coat was soaked within a couple of minutes. That is as long as I lasted outside in the rain.

Most of my day was spent in front of some form of electronics. Surfing the internet from my phone got most of the time, but my tablet and laptop got their share of time after I ran the phone battery down. Of course the TV also didn’t get neglected. It served as background noise most of the day. The pictures in this blog entry are the flower blossoms I captured yesterday at Animal Kingdom.

Friday February 16th 2024

Today started cloudy similar to yesterday, but the sky cleared more rapidly. By late morning the sun was shining bright. The high temperature for the day was a little higher than Thursday peaking near eighty.

I took my last trip to Disney for six to eight weeks today. My plan was to start at Disney’s Animal Kingdom then hop to Magic Kingdom later in the day. The heavy crowds I found at Animal Kingdom changed my plans. There seemed to be more people there than I’ve seen before. Wait times for the rides were all long, but more indicative of the high crowds were the various animal trails. Usually it is a rather leisurely walk along the trails with only a couple of people at the animal viewing areas. Today there was a line of people on the walkways and the people stood two or three deep at the viewing areas. The bottom line is it took much longer to see the things I wanted to see. I didn’t have the energy to park hop to Magic Kingdom. The My Disney Experience App showed wait times there were even longer than Animal Kingdom.

Despite the crowds I managed to see many animals. I walked all of the animal trails and all of the main park walkways. Overall I made two loops of the park as I waited for the wait time for the Kilimanjaro Safari ride to get reasonable. Standing in a slow moving congested line for a long time is something I try to avoid. I can only play with my phone for entertain so long, before I get board. The wait time was ninety minutes for most of the afternoon. Just before the ride closed at 5:30, the wait time went down to forty minutes. It turned out to be about half an hour.

I managed to get on the ride without a long wait. The late ride time made some of the species of animals more visible, but others like the giraffes and zebras were already behind the scenes. I hoped to see the new baby elephant. Disney let her and her mother out from the behind the scenes area for the first time yesterday. I’ll have to be happy with the local media coverage. She was not out during my safari.

One of the things I did while waiting for the Safari wait times to come down was the bird show. I watched it for the first tine in a long time. I only remembered tiny parts of the show. Similar to other animal shows the hosts try to be comedians and ecology preachers at the same time. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. The birds were great.

A little after 6PM I called it a day. Instead of heading for Magic Kingdom, I pointed my car in the direction of my RV home. Traffic wasn’t kind to me. For the first couple of miles I spent more time stopped than moving.

Thursday February 15th 2024

The sun was very slow in making an appearance today. The day began with a thick cloud layer as the day progressed a few openings allowed the blue sky to be visible, but the sun didn’t find the openings until late in the afternoon. By sunset only a few clouds remained. The temperature managed to climb into the mid seventies with the help of a very light breeze out of the south.

The campground at Lake Louisa State park is near the southeast corner of the park. It is a long way from Lake Louisa which forms the northern boarder of the park. Today I drove to the beach area on Lake Louisa. There are more hiking trails in this area. I walked a trail along the lake shore and another one inland around another much smaller body of water. Turtles, alligators and water birds still remain allusive. In the week and a half I’ve been here, I’ve only seen one egret along the side of Dixie Lake. All of the places I’m used to seeing gators and turtles taking the sun have been empty. It is a mystery to me.

There was no one using the water part of the beach today. A couple of people were sitting on the sand, but the sun wasn’t out to consider it sunbathing. A couple of families were having picnics and the kids were using the playground. I just walked across the beach and out the cypress tree lined trail along the side of the lake. A few wildflower blossoms drew the attention of my camera.

The campground has started its transition to weekend mode. It looks like people are trying to get a head start on the long weekend. Several tent campers and tent trailer campers arrived this afternoon. Some of the trailers that arrived also did a lot more setup than is usual for an overnight stay, so I expect they are here for the weekend as well. It is unfortunate that the weather forecast for the weekend calls for a couple of inches of rain on Saturday and Sunday. The local TV weather talkers are spreading fear that Sunday afternoons Daytona 500 race will be rained out.

Wednesday February 14th 2024

I finished editing the pictures and writing yesterday’s blog after midnight. That isn’t that unusual, but I also forgot to set the publication time stamp back to Tuesday. I don’t often make that mistake. Even after finishing the blog entry, I wasn’t ready for bed. The night got later as the TV programs got less interesting. Eventually I went to bed and slept normally.

All that seems to have set the stage for a lost day. I got up only a few minutes later than normal, but I didn’t really get started with the day. Rather than starting my morning coffee and gathering some food for breakfast, I sat in front of the TV and zoned out. I didn’t sleep, but I couldn’t tell you anything about the programs on the TV. The bottom line is breakfast turned into lunch.

Most of the half dozen things I was thinking about doing today never surfaced in my thoughts until I sat down to write this blog entry. Instead around 3PM I walked around the campground for the first time today. The mix of out of state license plates has a new twist today. The number of Ontario and Quebec plates has gone up. They easily represent the highest concentration other than Florida plates. I haven’t seen as many Canadian plates on cars out on the roads as normal, but I guess they around in places I’m not looking.

My second walk of the day was to observe and photograph the sunset. There was the right mix of clouds and moisture in the air to make a nice sunset. Hopefully I’ll have a more active and productive day tomorrow.

Tuesday February 13th 2024

The warm weather trend is over. The temperature only reached the high sixties today with a strong north wind. On the positive side the sun was only blocked by light clouds occasionally.

My afternoon was filled with errands that ended in the vicinity of Disney’s EPCOT. The International Festival of the Arts is still ongoing at EPCOT. I really enjoy looking at the art. I entered the main gate just before 5PM. My plan was to differ touring EPCOT for a little while, by riding the Skyliner to some of the resort hotels for a little touring. The Skyliner is an aerial gondola that departs from EPCOT’s International Gateway. It goes from the back of EPCOT near the France pavilion to the Caribbean Beach Resort with a stop at the Riviera resort on the way. From the main hub at the Caribbean Beach additional lines go to Hollywood Studios theme park and a station in the lake between the Art of Animation resort hotel and the Pop Century resort hotel. The station in the lake was my destination.

I have never been to the Art of Animation or Pop Century before. They are considered the best of the value resorts by most reviewers. The each has over sized decorations around themed buildings. At the Art of Animation the buildings are themed to animated movies like Finding Nemo and Cars. The Pop Century has areas dedicated to the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s.

After walking around the resort hotels, I returned to EPCOT for a fish and chips meal and to checkout more of the art booths, ride a few rides and watch the nightly fireworks show at 9PM. Tonight I rode Spaceship earth, Living with the Land and Soarin Over California. As I walked around the World Showcase I noticed a few changes in the booths since I was here a couple of weeks ago. Different vendors have taken over in some booths presenting some different styles. The talent and creativity required to produce the art pieces is amazing.

The International Festival of the Arts ends on February 19th. The International Flower and Garden Festival begins in early March. Many of the flowers for the festival have been planted in the broad lawns so they have time to take root and blossom before the festival starts. Some of the topiaries have been put in place as well. I will not be in this area of Florida for the start of the festival, but I plan to visit toward the end of April.

The crowd level in EPCOT wasn’t too bad today. By the time the fireworks started at 9PM as the park closed there were even fewer people. I was able to find good places to view the fireworks even at the last minute.

Monday February 12th 2024

The weather today was in transition. I expected a day similar to yesterday, but instead got a lot more wind and lots of clouds. The day began cloudy, but the sun tried to make an appearance in late morning. Before it could get settled in massive black clouds appeared on the horizon. It looked like rain was approaching. A few drops did arrive, but mostly it was just dark and windy. The sun made another attempt later in the afternoon, but the clouds dominated by the time sunset arrived. The temperature managed to climb higher than Sunday. It peaked at 85 degrees about ten degrees higher than the average.

The uncertain weather influenced my day. I didn’t want to get too far away from shelter, so I stayed at home and focused on a few chores. When I ventured out for a little walking exercise I kept my eyes to the sky. The first big black cloud of the day resulted in a quick step back to my RV home. My other outings during the day were a little more successful. I even managed to get my trash to the dumpster without driving. The dumpster is on the entrance road about a half a mile from my RV home. I think the theory is you can drop it off as you leave, but I made the trip on foot today.

The campground finished its transition into midweek mode. At checkout time there were almost as many empty sites as yesterday. During the coarse of the afternoon all of them were filled. If last week was normal, there will only be a small number of departures each day during the week. The other major difference during the week is the reduced number of people that come in during the day to rent kayaks or fish from the piers. Over the weekend there was a real crowd of fishermen at the rails along the short piers into each “lake”.

Sunday February 11th 2024

The temperature climbed another couple of degrees into the mid eighties today. One more day of warmer than normal weather is in the forecast before another cold front makes its presence known.

I took advantage of the nice weather with another hike along the trails of the state park. Today I walked along the trail on the backside of Dixie Lake. This area is more open than the backside of the Hammond Lake that I walked last week. The state park rental cabins are on top of the hill on this side of the lake. Dixie Lake has more reed growth the perimeter than I’ve seen in the past. I’m used to seeing turtles and alligators taking the sun on logs around the shore. This year I haven’t seen any. Perhaps, all of the reeds make it difficult for them to get to the logs.

The end of the weekend turnover in the campground happened today. I didn’t really notice the mix of campers transitioning from mid week travelers to local weekenders, but it happened. Last night there were several ten campers and other light duty equipment with Florida license plates. This afternoon big RVs arrived to occupy the weekender sites. A couple of rental motorhomes also arrived. That’s a little different. You usually see rental RVs at franchise campgrounds like KOAs.

I am writing this as I watch the Super Bowl on TV. The game is OK and some of the commercials have been interesting, but the extra fancy coverage at the start of the game was out of place. An orchestra playing while the stories about a few players in the game were dramatically told just seemed over the top and unnecessary. Then they had to stretch out the start of the game with two additional musical presentations before the National Anthem. Why, to make more content to sell for ad revenue.

Saturday February 10th 2024

I got an earlier start than normal this morning. My destination was Sea World. It is not easy to get there from here. You have to get to the east side of the entire Walt Disney World complex. It is necessary to go around Disney to the south or the north. This morning I had the added complication of getting out of the state park through a bicycle event. There was either a race or a ralley that filled the roads with bicycle riders. I had to navigate around riders the whole two plus miles of park roads.

It was 10:30am when I entered Sea World. The journey around Disney property, combined with the bicycle traffic on the park roads and the interstate traffic on I-4 it took about an hour. Sea World has two extra events going on right now. The smaller of the two is a few Mardi Gras events, but the biggest activity is a festival that runs to the middle of May. The Seven Seas Food Festival presents food booths selling dishes and drinks from around the world. The food kiosks are very similar to the food booths around Disney’s EPCOT during their festivals. The combination of the two events and the beautiful Saturday weather brought huge crowds to the park.

I was there primarily to see the animals and other sights. The food booths held a small interest, but the lines were long and the prices were high. The one thing I don’t partake in at Sea World is the roller coasters. They always seem to be building a new one. A roller coaster at the Penguin Encounter is currently under construction. The last coaster to open was the Pipeline which is based on surfing. The hook is that the riders are standing upright as the coaster goes up, down. I think it even has an inversion. Not for me.

This morning I enjoyed the Dolphin show and I spent a few minutes watching and listening to the sea lions and seals. They do a very good job begging for food and all kinds of water birds hang around to pick up anything they miss. Once the sea lions get their fill, they retreat to the rocks for a nap.

It turns out I didn’t hang around long. I walked around the entire park at least once. I checked out all of the animal exhibits and watched the Mardi Gras prade. It was disapointing. There were four stilt walkers, six dancers and a four piece marching band. The crowds continued to build as I walked the park. By 2PM I started to make my way toward the exit. Finding my car in the newly reconfigured and paved parking lot was a little more challenging than it should have been. They haven’t added row numbers to the markings yet. I found my car on the first try, but only because I was careful to make note of several external landmarks when I parked.