Sunday June 30th 2024

I was expecting a similar weather day today to yesterday. The day began a little brighter, but the clouds moved in quickly and the afternoon rain approached as well. Once the rain began yesterday it continued into the evening. Today the rain stopped around 4:30 and the sky cleared. Soon the clouds were all gone and the temperature and humidity were down.

I spent a lazy day doing a few chores around my RV home and a little bit of touring around the area. Expecting that I wouldn’t get a chance for a walk around the RV resort with my camera, I stopped at the Lowes home improvement store to take a few pictures of the blossoms in the garden center. The pictures in this blog entry are from that stop.

It turned out I was able to get an evening walk around the RV resort in. This was the first full length walk around the park I’ve been able to complete in several days. The changes were subtle. Water from the storms over the last few days accumulated in some of the lower holding areas. The grass throughout the area has turned very green and is getting quite tall. Thursday is the usual lawn mowing day, but it is a holiday this week. I wonder when the grass will get cut.

In general there are more occupied sites than there were a couple of months ago. The extended weekend coming up starting on Thursday the 4th will probably bring more people to the park. A couple of long term residents took their rigs away for a short “vacation”. At least that’s the easy conclusion when you see a site without the RV, but all of the outside paraphernalia still in place.

Saturday June 29th 2024

Today began with a little more sun than Friday, but it was still humid. As the morning went by the clouds increased. By noon it was a heavily overcast day with storm clouds in the distance. The thunderstorms arrived around four and continued until about seven.

I was out running errands south of my RV home when the storm arrived. Watching the air to ground lightening as I drove north toward home was a combination of dread for what I might find when I got home and awe at the spectacle nature was providing. There was just a lot of water on the ground when I got home.

The rain kept me from taking my early evening walk around the RV resort. That also took away my last opportunity of the day for capturing some pictures for this blog entry. I stepped outside my RV home in a light rain to see what I could find for pictures that describe the day. Rain falling in a puddle seemed to be appropriate and the wild lush green grass along the side of the concrete RV pad shows the impact of all the rain. The grass was brown and very stringy a little over a week ago. Today it is dark green and in need of mowing. This weather pattern will probably be in place most of the summer.

Friday June 28th 2024

Today’s operative word was “humid”. It was overcast all day so the temperature was manageable. The temperature varied from the high eighties to about ninety, but the humidity was constantly high. The transition out of air conditioning was like hitting a wall of very hot air. Late in the morning a few brief periods of rain passed through quickly. The real culmination of the humidity came around 5pm when a two plus hour rain storm with lots of rain, thunder and lightening commenced.

My day was filled with chores and errands. Yesterday’s fun stuff at EPCOT was in the rear view mirror, but I’ve included a few pictures of the flower blossoms I enjoyed seeing.

Thursday June 27th 2024

The rain showers were a little more scattered today. They also came on schedule and departed as forecast as well. The showers started around 2:30PM and ended before 6PM.

I used the rain schedule to my advantage. I went to Disney’s EPCOT for dinner this evening and stayed for the Luminous A Symphony of Us fireworks show. Dinner wasn’t fancy. I returned for the Fish and Chips at the UK pavilion. It was better tonight than the last time I had it.

After dinner I walked around the World Showcase and visited a few attractions before the 9PM fireworks show. I was impressed by the art exhibit at the American Adventure called Portraits in Courage. It is a series of Oil Paintings by former president George Bush of US Military personnel. His style isn’t precise, but it gets the point across.

Shortly before 9PM I lined up around the lagoon with everyone else for the fireworks. The afternoon rain cleared the park out a lot. There was plenty of room in some of the better viewing areas.

Wednesday June 26th 2024

The temperature climbed into the mid nineties under a sunny sky this morning. As the afternoon arrived so did the clouds. Starting with fluffy clouds they soon turn more menacing. At various points in time dark black clouds would appear around the area. Sometimes the storms would emit thunder or show a bright flash of lightening. It was all in the hands of luck if you got caught in some rain or not. Today I didn’t.

My food supply was getting pretty low today. I didn’t have any bread for toast with my coffee or for lunch time sandwiches. In fact, even my supply of coffee was getting low. My freezer still had a few options that could be thawed, but the main part of the refrigerator was very sparsely populated. This afternoon I made the necessary food run.

The low supplies at home caused me to break one of the common rules. You should never go food shopping while hungry. I came home with breakfast pastries, mini donuts, eclairs, and cupcakes in the sweets and carbs line. One or two would have been plenty. In the primary protean area I bought a piece of steak, hamburg and more sandwich meet. While these are common purchases, the portion size I purchased today was on the bigger end of common. The rest of the stuff seemed to be fairly normal when I unpacked the bags into the refrigerator and cabinets.

Walmart was very busy this afternoon, but they had plenty of staff at the checkouts. There were actually more “assisted” checkouts in use than self checkouts percentage wise. Walmarts in this area get plenty of tourists. They stock the food side of the building with a lot of snacks and drinks. In the clothing area they have a fare selection of Disney merchandise and the pharmacy area seems to have areas focused on travelers issues as well. Today I was behind one family at the checkout that was clearly stocking a vacation home. Their shopping cart had snacks, drinks, microwavable items and Disney tee shirts. The only health items in the cart was some fruit. Seeing tourists in the store isn’t unusual. On several occasions I have seen apparent tourists speaking unknown languages basically gawking at the size of the store and the varieties of selections.

My daily walk this afternoon and evening was broken into two shorter walks. The threatening weather didn’t give me the confidence to explore beyond easy return distance. The black clouds seem to have a mind of their own.

Tuesday June 25th 2024

This was a lazy day. I got a few chores done, but not much else. The weather was threatening off and on all day. The temperature peaked in the low nineties with lots of humidity.

Here are a couple of pictures from my late afternoon walk. Heavy dark clouds without rainfall had recently passed overhead and cooled things off for a few minutes.

Monday June 24th 2024

On the positive side, today was a warm sunny day. The down side was the high humidity and the changing prospect of thunderstorms throughout the day. At one point in the middle of the afternoon the forecast showed the chance of rain for the remainder of the day at zero. That was overly optimistic. A line of strong thunderstorms arrived from the west around 8:30 in the evening.

With the rain seemingly under control I planned to spend the evening at Disney’s Magic Kingdom. It took about an hour to get from my RV home to the main gate. It has been taking from half an hour to a forty five minutes. Tonight I caught a lot of traffic getting to Walt Disney World and then getting across the Seven Seas Lagoon to the park from the parking lot at the Ticket and Transportation center took extra time as well.

The park wasn’t extremely busy, but it was hot. Outside queues in the sun were a no go for me. I walked up the west side of the park through Adventure Land into Frontier Land. The wait times at Jungle Cruise and Pirates of the Caribbean were long, so I continued walking right by. My first stop turned out to be dinner at Columbia Harbor House. The menu has changed since my last visit. The fried shrimp I had was a new menu item. It was OK, but I probably won’t order it again. To make up for the fried shrimp I got a Hot Fudge Brownie Sunday in Tomorrow Land.

After a ride on the Tomorrow Land Transit Authority People Mover and a visit to the Mickey’s Philharmagic show I spotted a big dark cloud with lightening flashes on the western horizon. I made the decision to head for home. I could skip from indoor attraction to indoor attraction, but in an electrical storm the evening fireworks were probably not going to happen.

I got home by 8:30 with the rain associated with the line of storms just starting. It got progressively worse over the next hour. The lightening was really impressive (scary) and the sound of rain on the roof was intense.

Sunday June 23rd 2024

I have come to the conclusion that the weather forecasters are incapable of predicting when rain will arrive during the central Florida summer. At the beginning of the day today rain was predicted with various levels of probability from 11AM until nightfall. As 11AM approached the forecast was moved out to 2PM and then 4PM until about 9PM. It actually rained in this area around 5PM for half an hour at most. This changing forecast has been the case every day for the last couple of weeks. There are just too many variables and the showers tend to be very scattered. When the sun was out the temperature climbed to the low nineties with high humidity making it feel like it was over 100 degrees, but mot of the day some clouds obscured the sun keeping the temperature in the mid to upper eighties with the same high humidity.

Why do people bring golf carts to the RV resort when they are only going to be here for a week or less? Since I prefer to walk a lot, I can’t see the value. It gets particularly bad when the golf cart doesn’t behave. In the last few days I’ve seen two different golf carts getting towed back to their sites. This morning the one next door only seemed to need charging.

This RV resort has a 10 MPH speed limit. Most golf carts don’t have a speed gauge and many are driven with the pedal to the metal. From past experience I think that is well above the posted speed limit. The quiet moving vehicles can be a real menace to walkers. It is interesting that many RV resorts I’ve been in have rules against electric bicycles for these very safety reasons. Probably because the resort staff uses golf carts for day to day operations they don’t have any rules against them other than the driver must be licensed. Some parks do require the golf cart be insured as well. As electric bicycles get more common, I suspect the parks with restrictions will relax a little. This park doesn’t have any issues with electric bicycles. One even broke down in the street across form my RV home a couple of weeks ago. You’d think they could pedal or walk it home, but the male member of the couple walked home for a truck while the female member of the couple guarded the bikes.

The bunnies were out again on my evening walk. The grass looked to be pretty tall again in the area they were nibbling.

Saturday June 22nd 2024

Today’s sky was threatening from the time I got up until darkness arrived. The forecast agreed. At least a 20 percent chance of rain was listed for every hour of the day. Toward late afternoon the chance of rain climbed above the fifty degree mark. What it boiled down to is lots of little pop up intense storms. I don’t think any rain fell on my RV home, but I drove through several while I was out. This is likely to be the pattern in this area through the summer. Today when the sun was blocked by clouds it was a comfortable, but humid day. When the sun hit you directly, it was hot with a feels like in the triple digits.

I did chores in the morning followed by random driving style wandering in the afternoon. I drove to the Winter Haven area in search of a park on a lake which turned out to be a boat launch with nothing remotely resembling a park. It was still a nice drive although traffic in the Lego Land area was intense. I think the theme park emptied out when a rain shower passed trough.

Back at the RV resort this evening I took my usual walk. It is surprising how full the park looks this weekend compared to the end of April. There are no massive empty areas. Most of the sites I can see from my site are full. The exception is the site immediately next to me. I suspect it is marked as out of service. They took the picnic table away a week or so ago to fix it.

Friday June 21st 2024

The lawn crew was back to finish the job of mowing the park this morning. I got woken up to the sound of a gas string trimmer outside my bedroom window. While I appreciate that the lawn got mowed, did they have to wake me up so rudely? It managed to really screw up my morning. I was dressed and drinking my first cup of coffee, when I realized I forgot to take a shower.

It was a very overcast morning with a forecast for rain in the afternoon into the evening. The rain forecast was very much a Florida summer day forecast. After letting the forecast get in my way the last couple of days, I just took a “damn the torpedoes full speed ahead” approach today. I drove north into Lake County and walked around in some of the county parks around the lakes in Clermont and a little way north. The rain cooperated to the extent that it only rained while I was driving. The brief downpours required the maximum setting on my wiper blades, but it was over in a minute or two. While I was out walking everything was dry.

The rain didn’t fall on my RV home while I was out. It was nice enough to wait for me to get home. The five minute burst of rain on my RV home happened while I was eating dinner. Later, as the sun was setting, the sky started to clear for the first time all day. Tomorrow seems to be a repeat of today weather wise.