Thursday January 27th 2022

The trend of cloud covered days continued. Today the rain didn’t fall and the cloud cover wasn’t as thick all day. There was one point in the afternoon that it looked like the sun might break through, but the clouds won out. The temperature also recovered into the mid sixties even with a strong wind out of the northeast.

For the first time since Monday I took a real hike. My choice today was the labyrinth of trails in the state park south and west of the campground. The trails are easy to follow, but they aren’t really marked. They are wide grass and sandy surfaced paths designed for waking, bicycling and horse back riding. Every intersection is marked with a number and a set of arrows providing directions to other numbered intersections. This works great if you are carrying a map, but it isn’t very helpful without the map to decode the numbered intersections. Since I didn’t set out with a map in hand I soon felt slightly lost.

I had three options to solve my lost in the woods problem. I could cheat big time and download a map with my phone or turn around and backtrack along my route. The third option that I chose was to continue to turn in the same direction at every intersection. Since I knew there were no dead end trails, I eventually would complete a loop back onto may original route or find a known landmark. I ended up on a much bigger loop than I intended, but it was a nice walk on a cloudy day. There was nobody else on the trail today.

For inside activity during this period of gloomy weather, I’ve been doing more research for my summer travels. The question I need to answer is where do I want to be on each of the major holidays from the end of May to September. Then I can fill in the blank area between those potential bottlenecks. At least, that is the approach I’m taking this year.

Wednesday January 26th 2022

Today was the second day in a row dominated by full cloud cover, rain and drizzle. It was also the forth day in the last five that was better for indoor activity than outdoor activity. Unlike the above normal conditions most of the month of December, the second half of January has been filled with below normal conditions. It was another dreary and cool day. The high temperature was in the low fifties.

I was up early to make another reservation for next winter. I successfully booked two weeks from December 26th to January 9th back at Lake Manatee State Park. The new booking software continues to be a challenge to navigate. Last May the Florida State Parks switched from the Reserve America booking system to another service. The Reserve America Software isn’t perfect, but its wide use has reduced many of the bugs in the user interface. I haven’t encountered the software used by the new service anywhere else. It may be a better underlying system, but it has lots of bugs in the web interface. The biggest problem is the way it formats the information on the screen. Lines can wrap around at random points and formatted text can be compressed into narrow columns for no apparent reason. It makes reading the display a challenge. Perhaps the most annoying issue is the information it remembers between uses. It often displays information about the last park for which you investigated reservations instead of the park you requested.

I got two short walks in around the campground today. During the first walk I had to take refuge under a picnic table shelter while a rain shower moved through the area. It was only a few minutes but represents the unpredictability of today’s weather. The walk at the end of the day was dry. Tomorrow is forecast to have a lower probability of rain, but it will still be a cloud filled day. The weather forecasters are hyping Saturday’s weather. The high temperature is supposed to be in the low forties and Saturday night is forecast to be in the twenties. The dreaded Central Florida Hard Freeze is coming. With most of the citrus groves replaced by housing developments in this area, I don’t think it is as big a concern as it once was. Most to the groves are now twenty to thirty miles south of here and toward both coasts.

Tuesday January 25th 2022

Today was a rainy do nothing kind of day. I heard the sound of light rain on the roof early this morning. The sound became familiar as the day progressed. It wasn’t constant, but even when it wasn’t making a noise on the roof a heavy drizzle was in the air. The temperature climbed from the forties to around fifty degrees.

I spent most of the day inside my RV home watching YouTube videos and reading. The only time I went outside was to retrieve another gallon of drinking water from my SUV. I tend to keep a stock of a few gallons in the back. The campground supply gets used for washing, cooking and flushing. The bottled water is exclusively for drinking.

Monday January 24th 2022

The inside temperature was in the upper forties at 7:30 this morning. I turned on the heat and returned to my warm bed. Unlike the last couple of mornings, the sun was out today. The sun gave the heater a lot of help getting the temperature into the comfortable range. I watched the morning news programs from the warmth of my bed. It was ten before I started the active part of my day.

After two days of limited exercise, I tried to make up for it today. I took a long hike around Dixie Lake and some of the areas in the front of the park. The hike took about three hours. I’d guess I covered five to ten miles during that time. The trails are not strenuous. They are wide and dry with only a little bit of elevation change.

On the hike I spotted signs of last nights heavy frost. Most of the plants with small white blossoms that I have been taking pictures of were in bad shape. On many of the plants the blossom’s petals were start to fall off and the leaves were wilted. This was a small local example of the frost. On the TV news they showed many grass areas covered in frost this morning. It is a big deal this far south in Florida. Frost doesn’t happen every winter. Even the community of Frostproof Florida about fifty miles south of here may have gotten frost last night. It was named under the false assumption that it didn’t frost that far south. Needless to say it has quite a few times.

The remainder of the weekend campers left this morning. The mostly Florida based weekenders have been replaced by travelers from northern states. There seemed to be an invasion from Pennsylvania today. I saw three RVs from Pennsylvania arrive to join a couple of unrelated ones that were already here. The second most prevalent states seem to be Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Saturday January 22nd 2022

Some light rain fell overnight as the latest weather front arrived in the area. The inside temperature was in the fifties when I got up this morning long enough to turn on the heat. When I started my day the inside temperature had risen to the mid sixties. The outside temperature barely crossed the fifty degree mark. The high was fifty one degrees.

Not only was it a cool day, but it was a wet day. A steady drizzle came down all morning. In the early afternoon there were a few dry periods. I tried to get in my first walk of the day around the campground. The north wind kept it raw and uncomfortable outside. I returned to my RV home after an abbreviated walk very damp. It was much drier on my second walk just before darkness settled in. I even managed to take a couple of pictures.

Around the campground, most people seemed to be hibernating. Most of the people out and about were out to walk the dog or make a quick trip to the restrooms. There were no bicycle riders or kids playing. I did find one surprising odd activity during my first walk that was shortened by drizzle. A wedding party was taking pictures near the dock on Hammond Lake. First, I can’t figure out why they picked the location. The background is not very picturesque and the lighting was terrible. Second, the bride must have been freezing. She was the only one in the group of ten to fifteen people without a coat. Everyone else had coats or at least long sleeves. Starting your married life with pneumonia isn’t a good thing.

I spent my day on the computer working on my itinerary for the summer and next winter. My general plan is to head for the Dakotas this summer. It is already late to book many of the public parks in the popular areas, but commercial parks still have openings. I’m planning a little differently this year. My intent is to book each of the major holiday periods first then fill in the weeks between with appropriate reservations. Last year the holiday’s came quickly and required a lot of scrambling.

Friday January 21st 2022

The sunniest part of the day was at sunrise. As the day progressed clouds continued to move into the area. By sunset the clouds blocked the bright yellow and orange colors of the setting sun. The temperature peaked in the low seventies.

I continued my surveillance of the campground laundry facility. It is a very busy place. I haven’t found a convenient time to get my clothes washed. Doing the laundry in the middle of the night is always a possibility, but not one I plan on using anytime soon. The machine was likely available while I was away from the campground during the middle of the day. I was out touring the area and dealing with heavy local traffic. Just getting out of the state park proved difficult today. Traffic entering and exiting the new housing development across route 27 from the park makes breaking into the steady line of cars more difficult. It is only a matter of time until a traffic light is added.

While out touring I stopped at the Walmart in Clermont to stock up on food. The store was very busy, but unlike the last few Walmarts I’ve shopped the shelves were well stocked. I was able to get everything I wanted. The real difficulty was navigating the store with all the shoppers. Each aisle had three or more other shopping carts and most had a Walmart picker doing their thing too. Unlike many Walmarts lately this one had most of the staffed checkouts open as well as the self serve. It didn’t help get me out of the store quicker. I was in like behind a lady that had more than three hundred dollars worth of groceries. She paid with cash counting out the money using twenty dollar bills in a slow cadence. The cashier then recounted it twice at more than double the pace. The things we see!

As expected the campground is full this weekend. The difference is the turnover yesterday and today has resulted in more weekender type visitors. There are several sites with small tents and others with elaborate outdoor entertaining areas setup. There is a 5K race in the state park tomorrow morning. I wonder if any of the new visitors are here for the race. It starts at 7AM, so I’ll probably sleep through it.

Thursday January 20th 2022

Today was the weather peak for the week. It was a bright sunny day with only a little wind out of the south. The temperature exceeded the norm by reaching a high of seventy nine degrees. The next cold front in a continuing pattern is due to pass through the area tomorrow afternoon. The forecast high temperatures over the weekend are in the high fifties to low sixties.

I really squandered the good weather day. It was afternoon before I completed breakfast and my morning internet reading. Once I emerged from my RV home I did a little walking around the campground, but was over dressed for the good weather. On my way back home to shed a few layers, I noticed the laundry facility was available triggering a plan to catch up on my accumulating pile of dirty clothes.

It wasn’t a well thought through plan. Back at my RV home I loaded the dirty clothes including the sweet shirt I was wearing into my laundry bag. I gathered up my laundry supplies and returned to the laundry area. In the fifteen minutes I was away, someone else had started a load of laundry in the only washer. They weren’t around so it was a pure guess on how long the current load would take. I returned thirty minutes later to find the dryer going with the load that had been in the washer and someone else loading the washer with what looked like the first of several loads. An hour and a half later I checked the availability again with no success. My laundry bag is now waiting by my door. I’ll check the machine availability every time I go by the facility until I succeed.

Wednesday January 19th 2022

The day began a few degrees warmer than Tuesday. It was a little above fifty when I turned on the heat this morning, but unlike yesterday it climbed rapidly into the low seventies. Today’s high temperature was consistent with the norms for the area. The next cold front is due Friday afternoon or evening.

After a slow breakfast and catching up on my Internet reading I set out on a hike around Hammond Lake. This is a small body of water on the south east side of the campground. The trails around the lake are wide and flat. Today I only met one couple on the trail. It was quiet walk.

Some of the land the state park is on used to be Citrus Groves. My guess is they were abandoned and cleared when the state acquired the land in 1973. On the back side of Lake Hammond a few old orange trees and some newer wild growth trees are filled with Oranges. The small orange fruit seems be pretty close to ripe. I’m not brave enough to find out. Oranges I’ve picked from trees in the past have been a bitter experience.

Monday, the day I arrived, there was a lot of turn over in the campground. Since then there have only been a few changes in occupancy each day. When I was here in December, most of the residents were from Florida. This time around there are many more states represented. My immediate neighbors are probably fellow full time RVers. They have plates from Texas and South Dakota which along with Florida host many of the full time RV travelers. There are also many northern states represented in the park. I saw license plates from Minnesota. Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, Vermont in the north and Colorado, Arizona, California and Oregon from the west as I walked through the campground this evening before sunset.

Tuesday January 18th 2022

Most of December temperatures in Florida were well above normal. The first part of January was about normal. The last couple of days seem to be the start of a below normal trend. Today’s high temperature was twelve to fifteen degrees below normal. The high temperature was fifty eight in this area today.

At 7:30 this morning the inside temperature in my RV home was forty four. I turned on the heater and got back under the covers in my warm bed. After a few long busy days in a row, I took the opportunity to catch up on my sleep. When I finally got up the inside was comfortable in the seventies. It was only in the low fifties outside. It really was a nice weather day looking at it from the big picture. It was not cold and snowy or hot and humid.

Today was a pretty routine first full day at a new location. I completed the setup tasks I didn’t get to yesterday and took a walk around the campground to check out the area. The changes from my stay in early December are subtle. The water level in the two lakes may be a little lower and the type of wild flowers that were in blossom are no longer brightening the area. I also saw fewer turtles taking the sun on one of their favorite logs. That may be a result of the cooler weather. Maybe more turtles will be out in the next couple of days which are forecast to be warmer.

I got in two and a half walks around the campground today. The first was in the early afternoon, the second was at sunset and the third “half walk” was a trip out on the fishing pier to attempt to see the Falcon 9 rocket launch from Cape Canaveral. The 7:04PM scheduled launch didn’t happen. It was moved to 9:02PM. Rather than taking another cool dark walk, I just turned out my lights and watched out the window of my RV home at 9:02PM. The ascending fireball was visible in a slightly different direction than I expected, but I managed to see it. In some ways it is more impressive to watch from seventy miles away than from five to ten miles away on the coast.