Friday March 8th 2024

Today was another warm day and I was traveling south. It was even warmer and more humid at my destination. I had to setup camp in temperatures in the high eighties.

I pulled out of my site at Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park around 10:30 this morning, but I had lots to do before I departed the park. My first stop was at the dumping station. It is only a little above the functional level of quality requiring careful navigation on a dirt surface near the dumpsters. Once the tanks were dumped, I had to meet up with my car that I prepositioned in the overflow parking lot. There is much more room to maneuver in the overflow parking lot than along the narrow park roads.

My first stop was at the Mobil gas station near the interstate. As often happens the gas was ten cents higher today than when I scouted the location on Thursday. Adding to my frustration was the speed of the pumps. I had to wait for a pickup truck to fill up before I reached the pump. It seemed to be taking forever. Once I started filling the reason became clear. I timed the pump at 3 gallons per minute. To fill my tank I needed fifty or more gallons. When the pump clicked off at the credit authorization level of $175, I gave up with about 47 gallons of gas. It seemed like I’d been there for hours. Checking the time as I departed the station it was 11:47am. About three hours later I pulled into Lake Manatee State Park in Bradenton Florida.

The journey was about 150 miles south along Interstate 75 with another fifteen or so miles getting to and from the highway. Traffic was very heavy, but fast moving most of the time. I passed several fender bender style accidents that slowed the speed down to a jogging pace, but never really stopped. The longest period of very slow traffic was near the end of my Interstate 75 journey. The new bridge construction over the Manatee River had all lanes in both directions backed up. The drive took a lot of attention and anticipation.

I was last at Lake Manatee State Park in December. This time I’m in a new site. It is bigger than I expected. That made parking more difficult. I couldn’t decide where on the site I wanted to situate my RV home. I was setup by 3:30 and trying to cool off.