The last few days have been above normal temperature with high humidity. Each day has included thunderstorms with heavy downpours and strong winds. Monday evening’s storm even included about an hour and a half long power outage.
I’ve adapted to the weather pattern and get the things I want to do in between storms. On Tuesday, that was a visit to Disney’s Animal Kingdom. I was lucky enough to see the baby giraffe while on the safari. It is only about four months old, but seems to be very independent. Its mom was on the other side of the savanna getting fresh food delivered by pickup truck.
Young Giraffe checking out a tree.Mom watching
Most of the pictures in this blog entry are from my visit to the Animal Kingdom.
This weekend has been uneventful. The weather has been hot with afternoon thunderstorms. It was very much a Florida summer weather pattern with warmer than normal temperatures. Yesterday, while enjoying the trails along a Lake in one of Winter Haven’s parks, I watched a storm materialize out of nowhere over the lake. One minute it was clear in all directions with a few scattered clouds and the next the area over the lake was thick with fog. Strong winds developed around the edges. Clear air and sun were still visible on the far side of the lake. It was a rapid transformation that I don’t think I’ve seen before.
Interesting cloud patterns before the storms.
The weekend has provided an opportunity to get a little yard work accomplished. One of the attractions of this property was the lack of significant yard upkeep requirements. Instead of grass the yard is covered in small stones over landscape cloth. It should be virtually maintenance free. What I’ve found is lots of scattered green weeds that have managed to find enough dirt to grow. They don’t take much to pull out, but if I don’t they will eventually take over. I collected a five gallon bucket full of weeds.
My bougainvillea was also in need of more trimming. This plant is very pretty, but wants to grow to fast. It has only been about a week since the last trimming. The problem is that each trimming cuts away many of the pretty blossoms. I even resorted to a Google search on how to care for a bougainvillea and I’m not doing anything wrong.
In other areas of my yard, I continue to look for other plants to add color. The issue is finding things that will survive and thrive when I resume my travels. At least visiting the garden shops to shop is interesting.
I have always had the tendency to be a late riser. With specific plans early in the day I have no issues getting going in the morning, but anything short of a commitment and I’ll easily differ the plans. As warm temperatures begin to dominate the weather pattern that becomes an issue. The beginning of the day is the time to be outside. It has been a particular problem this week.
Riverboat decorated for the holiday.
My days have been getting started late enough that the temperature has risen to near the ninety degree mark before I finish breakfast and am ready to start the day. This has put a complication in my quasi plan to visit Disney’s Animal Kingdom. The animals don’t really like the heat. This potential visitor doesn’t like the heat and the animals I want to see prefer to hide in the shade making them hard to see. Every day this week I have changed my plans to visit the Animal Kingdom.
I finally made a visit to Disney’s Magic Kingdom this afternoon. It was a cloudy afternoon keeping the temperature a little lower at 90 degrees. There were plenty of other people taking advantage of the slightly cooler temperature. I got in a good walk around the park and rode a few rides. One of the rides was on the riverboat around the Rivers of America. I want to get in a few more memories before Disney retires the boat to allow for announced new developments.
To get in more Disney time this summer, I am going to have to adjust my daily schedule. Getting to bed early so I can get up early is the plan. A few times a year I have to make this commitment. It works for a while, but my natural tendency to stay up late changes my habits back to the normal late start to the day.
The daily high temperatures continue to run a few degrees above normal. The full summer weather pattern with daily rain hasn’t arrived yet. As a result the brief periods of cooling after the storms isn’t happening. Once it gets hot it stays hot. Dealing with the heat comes down to preparedness. In addition to staying hydrated, dressing appropriately and staying in the shade whenever possible, a lot can be said about being mentally prepared. Knowing that it is going to be hot out before you open the door from air conditioned comfort to sweltering Florida heat helps immensely. That sudden shock is a big demotivator.
In the last three days I let the heat influence my day once. Friday afternoon and evening I went to Disney’s EPCOT despite the heat. It wasn’t a long visit, but enjoyable none the less. Today I drove to the Atlantic coast. I expected to find full beaches and parks with a lot of outdoor activity, but instead I found fewer people and less activity than usual. Saturday was the day I let the thought of heat influence my day. I stayed indoors in air conditioned comfort most of the day. Only one shortened walk along my street interrupted my day in the inside cool.
The current above normal pattern continues until Memorial Day weekend, but hot conditions continue in Florida until the end of September. It is just something you live with and talk about. In my case I also tend to write about it in this blog too much.
I am finding traffic in this area of central Florida to have improved significantly. Some of it is timing. The winter residents are clearly back in their home regions. You just need to driver through a park like the one my base camp resides in. I would guess that less than a quarter of the sites and homes are occupied.
Probably the biggest traffic change in this immediate area is the result of two new lanes on Interstate 4. As I mentioned in one my resent blog posts, the two new lanes were completed in an expedited fashion. Since they opened in the last week of April the stopped traffic on the interstate has been isolated to short periods during rush hour. Drivers are not avoiding the highway anymore. Before the new lanes arrived traffic was using other routes that were not designed for heavy volume. The backups on the local streets, including on Disney property, are a lot less now.
It took me about thirty minutes to get to Disney’s Hollywood Studios earlier this week. I has been taking close to an hour during the winter. My visit to Hollywood Studios was to get in one last showing of the Muppet Vision 3d movie. The whole Muppet Court Yard area of the park is being replaced by a series of Monsters Inc attractions starting June 7th. It will be under construction for the next year plus.
Hollywood Studios is my least favorite park of the four at Walt Disney World. It is not great as a place to get in my walking exercise. It is relatively compact and doesn’t have a lot of good long walking routes without doubling back. The rides also have very long waits. In addition to the Muppet show, I rode Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railroad on this visit. That is a fun ride, but I miss the Great Movie Ride that it replaced.
The last few days have been dominated by a rainy weather pattern. Thunderstorms and random heavy rain showers dominated each day. The pattern is similar to summer, but perhaps a little less predictable. Friday the storms arrived in this area late in the day. Saturday the storms came in two waves. The first was around mid day and the second near the end of the day. Today’s first storm came around 4PM and it was a wild one. The wind was extreme requiring a trip outside after the storm to pick up knocked over items and blown in junk from neighboring properties. Additional storms continued during the evening.
The weather changes represent a need to change behavior. Over the winter months I fell into a pattern of behavior that squandered the morning away. It usually was afternoon before I departed my base camp and became active. Now, with rain a regular event during the day, I need to take advantage of all opportunities. If the morning is the clear time of day, then that’s when I need to be out and active. This weekend I haven’t been very good at that. Each day just before or soon after I leave the comfort of my base camp rain gets in the way.
I noticed this last year as well. Gradually I adapt to the expectation of daily rain. I plan activities during the part of the day it will not be raining and I accept that I may get wet. Right now I’m just remembering how to live in this semi tropical environment.
The current weather in Florida is a summer weather pattern. Although it usually waits until mid June, a pattern of high humidity, temperature around 90 and thunderstorms moving across the peninsula has settled in since the weekend. The forecast calls for it to continue until the middle of next week.
Piglet at EPCOT
Before the afternoon rain today, I made a visit to Lowes to buy a simple trellis for the flowering vine at the back corner of my shed. The plant that cut back severely earlier this year was starting to regrow from the base. I needed something for the vine to climb so it wouldn’t invade the shed siding like it had before I cut it back. The simple white trellis I bought should do the job well.
Simple trellis for a random flower vine with a pink flower.
While at Lowes, it occurred to me exactly how much stuff I’ve bought at Lowes since I moved into my base camp. It ranged from lumber and tools to a mattress and a refrigerator. I bought a few things at Home Depot, but most of my purchases were at Lowes. The fact that it is practically a neighbor makes it very convenient. I can see the roof of the building from my front steps, but it is about a mile by car to reach their parking lot.
Most of the pictures in this blog entry are from a Wednesday visit to Disney’s EPCOT. I stopped in for an early dinner of Fish and Chips as well as some exercise. The crowds were light and I managed to get in a walk around the World Showcase before the humidity and the threat of rain caused me to call it a day. The actual rain on Wednesday actually held off until around 9PM.
I woke this morning to a dull cloudy day. Rain was on the way to give the area a brief reprieve to the drought conditions that have been present in the area for the last month or so. The rain turned into be a few very brief downpours followed by about half an hour of steady rain. The sky got brighter as the day progressed, but never became one of full sunshine
The threat of rain got me out of bed and moving a little earlier than normal. I had to get outside and move a five gallon bucket under cover before it filled with water. It was left near my bougainvillea bush. I was using it to collect the trimmings from my Saturday attempt to get the bush under control. It seems like only a few days since my last attempt to trim the bush into shape, but it was probably closer to a month. The bush grows very fast and didn’t fill in with blossoms very well after the last trimming. The original plan was to touch up my trimming effort today. The rain changed those plans.
I have one other flowering plant near the bougainvillea. It is a vine with a pink flower. Last year the vine got out of control. To get it off of my shed and the ladder stored on the back of the shed, I cut it back to the base last month. The vine is growing fast. I need to buy a trellis or something similar to capture the vine. There are other places around the property that have supported flower plants in the past. I’ve been looking at my options. The current list of possibilities include several different colors of Hibiscus.
I returned to my practice of using the Disney theme parks as a place for exercise this week. The Easter vacation blackout days associated with my entrance pass are over. It is nice to be able to stop at one of the theme parks to just walk around, checkout any changes, observe the visitor antics, maybe eat some food and generally have a good time. I don’t have to ride everything in the park to achieve value.
Getting to the parks has improved while I have been staying away. The expedited accelerated roadwork on Interstate 4 has reached a milestone. The accelerated part of the effort began around the beginning of the year with a plan to have a number improvements that would usually take several years completed by the end of the year. The “expedited” part involved adding a lane in each direction to alleviate slow downs and backups. The new lanes opened this week. They seem to work. The interstate doesn’t seem to be backing up as often or for long periods of time. The traffic on all the surface roads also seems to have improved. Drivers aren’t trying to use the side roads to avoid the interstate as much.
On Monday I went to Disney’s Magic Kingdom, but I didn’t plan very well. First, it was the night of a separate admission After Hours night. For the admission price a select number of guests gets access to the park after the regular park day ends at 10PM, but people attending can start arriving at 7PM. As a result, the park gets busier as the night goes on rather than getting less crowded. My second mistake was not checking the weather forecast. A thunderstorm shut all of the outside rides and activities down for more than two hours, although the actual rain only fell for fifteen minutes or so. I got a little wet.
Today I went to Disney’s EPCOT for my exercise. It wasn’t too busy. I got in three or four miles of walking, road a couple of rides and took lots of flower pictures.
Rob's Rambling Road Trip 