Most of the day a layer of clouds kept the sun from fully warming the air. It only reached the low to mid nineties today. Late in the day the clouds started to thin and the temperature climbed the rest of the way to the days highs.
Figment
I was off to Disney’s EPCOT late this afternoon for a meal and some entertainment. The parking lot didn’t appear to be particularly full, but the crowds inside seemed to be heavy. Wait times for attractions were also long. I wandered around checking on the flowers, butterflies, topiaries, the entertainment and generally people watching. For dinner, I had a BBQ Brisket sandwich with french fries and onion rings at the Regal Eagle restaurant in the American Pavilion. The sandwich and fries were great, but the onion rings not so much.
I took plenty of pictures over the five plus hours I wandered around the park. I’ve included many here.
The sky was clear blue all day. This allowed the temperature to climb into the upper nineties. A constant breeze made it a comfortable day despite the high temperature.
Squint the bunny.
Once again my day was not very blog entry worthy. I attempted to do a few errands that involved wandering in and out of some stores. Back at my RV home I took my usual walk around the RV resort. The only surprise was a tree I hadn’t paid any attention to turned out to be a Magnolia that is now in bloom. I had a little success getting a picture or two of the blossoms.
The temperature peaked in around 95 degrees late this afternoon, but it felt much cooler than yesterday’s 90 degree high. There was a lot more wind today and the humidity was average. The trend is forecast to continue through the end of the week. Tomorrow may be the warmest day of the week pushing at the 98 degree high for the date.
The sky started the day very blue, but white and a few gray clouds arrived as the day went by.
Today turned out to be a chores around my RV home kind of day. I got a little bit of cleaning and decluttering done. The tanks also needed dumping. That little chore is quick and easy but always has a tiny bit of risk associated with it. I always check the connections and hose position before pulling the valves. Another task I need to accomplish is washing the windows. The outsides have developed a film of dirt. I keep hoping for a period of rain to tackle that task, but I’ll probably have to dig a squirt bottle out of storage to complete the task.
Walking around the RV park today, I noticed a lot more changes in the occupancy level of the park. The rate of departures seems to have slowed down, but a new pattern has developed. A lot more RVs have been closed up for the summer. Their slide rooms have been retracted. The outside patio furniture stowed away. In some cases golf carts have been covered and strategically placed to shelter from sun and wind. The sewer and water hoses at some RVs have been disconnected and stowed. These are all obvious signs of an RV in storage, but not everybody wants to be obvious. In a couple of cases neighbors are parking their cars to make unoccupied RVs seem occupied.
My plan was to go to Disney’s Animal Kingdom this morning, but I got a late start to the day. Animal Kingdom is always better early or late in the day. The animals are more active during those times of day. Today was also a very warm day. The temperature peaked just above ninety degrees. The weather pattern is still not a true summer pattern, so the coastal wind patterns were not available to keep the conditions mitigated.
Since the Animal Kingdom was scheduled to close at 6PM, a late afternoon visit wasn’t in the cards. I arrived at the park around 2PM. It wasn’t very busy. The wait for the Kilimanjaro Safari was listed at 5 minutes, but was essentially a walk on. They were only loading from on of the two truck loading platforms. Many of the animals were as expected sleeping in the shade. Others were probably back stage in their air conditioned enclosures. Still, plenty of animals were available to entertain including the baby elephant.
After riding the safari, I walked the Gorilla trail. The zebras and hippopotamus were all in view. The gorilla family had just returned outside from an afternoon nap in their air conditioned home. They were very energetic. The little ones were trying to harass their elders into playing without a lot of success.
I consider the safari and the gorilla trail the heart of the Animal Kingdom park. Once I completed touring those exhibits I considered my visit to the park a success. Today I walked around other areas of the park, but I started to feel the temperature. There aren’t a lot of air conditioned areas in the park that aren’t gift shops or restaurants. To get relief from the heat, people were huddling in the shade and in dark corners all over the park. I decided it wasn’t worth the heat to continue wandering around the park during the heat of the day and returned home a little earlier than planned.
The mercury is climbing in the old thermometer or the digits are climbing in the newfangled electronic thermometer. Either way you look at it it is getting warmer. Today’s sky was filled with lots of fluffy clouds and only a slight chance of an afternoon rain shower. The temperature peaked around ninety degrees. Warmer days are in the forecast for the rest of the week.
I went to the big outlet mall near Disney today. It was my first visit. I’ve been to the older outlet mall at the north end of International Drive near the Universal theme parks before, but today was my first visit to its newer sister mall. The outlet mall on Vineland Drive has been there for many years. It is just new to me.
It is very popular place. On a week day afternoon I had a hard time finding a parking space. There were lots of people walking the maze of walkways between shops. This is the first mall I’ve ever seen roped off lines outside the doors of shops. The biggest line was understandable at the Disney Character Warehouse, but they were common at other stores as well.
My intent was shoe shopping. The pair I wear most of the time is nearing the end. I’ve been buying shoes from Amazon the last few years, but thought I’d check a few of the outlet shoe stores. What I found were shoes slightly higher in price than Amazon, but with a store “sale” of buy one get another pair of equal or lesser price for half price. This seemed to be the approach at all the shoe stores in the outlet mall. I don’t need two pair and I wasn’t wowed by anything I saw. I think its back to shopping at Amazon.
Last night and this morning the weather forecast called for the day to follow the summer pattern. A line of thunderstorms would pass through the area some time from the afternoon to early evening. I tried to plan my day around it except Mother Nature had other ideas. The revised forecast around the noon hour didn’t call for any rain in this area. The rain was going to stay north and east of Orlando today. For the most part that is what happened. The only sign of rain in this area was a big black cloud that passed by to the north with a few dribbles of rain about 6PM. The drought continues.
The morning sky.
My original plan was to use the rainy period for grocery shopping and push my outdoor activities into the other parts of the day. Despite the improving forecast, I still shortened my outdoor activities and went grocery shopping in the late afternoon. Walmart was busy. There were plenty of people that checked their patience at the door and forgot to use common sense while going up and down aisles looking for food. It is a common problem that I’m not immune to either. Today evidence of the behavior was in full force. Congested aisles only get more congested when people tried to enter when others are trying to exit in parallel. One of these days I’ll remember not to go grocery shopping at Walmart on Sunday afternoon. Still I managed to get everything I needed.
Wildflower blossom on the day.
Once I got back to my RV home and put the groceries away, I attempted to take my long walk of the day. As I got further and further from my RV home the big black cloud to the north got more and more ominous. I had to make a decision to believe in the weather forecast and continue my walk or cut it short and return home and close the windows. I decided to honor the threat and returned home. The dribble of rain was over by the time I closed the windows.
I got a late start to the day. Yesterday’s Disney visit ended late enough that it took several hours before I wound down. When I got up this morning the sun was high in the sky and I was down another neighbor. The number of empty sites in the RV park continues to increase.
I found one accessible Magnolia tree at Disney, but could get a very good picture of a blossom.
Today’s weather forecast called for a slight chance of rain. Tomorrow it increases to about 40 percent. This area really needs some rain. It really only rained once for more than a few minutes in the last month. The summer weather pattern of nearly daily rain showers hasn’t arrived.
Duck swimming in the Rivers of America. The green color is mostly caused by the reflection from the nearby trees.
The grass in the RV park is turning brown. This past weeks visit from the lawn mowing crew turned into a couple of guys wandering around with string trimmers. I don’t think the mowers were even unloaded from their trailer. Another sign of the drought in the local area is at Disney World. They have suspended water transportation in the Disney Springs area of the park. I am kind of surprised because most of the bodies of water I’ve seen appear to be at a normal level.
This egret has become a real scavenger around Liberty Square at the Magic Kingdom.
Overall today wasn’t very eventful. I thought it was Sunday most of the day. A couple of errands out of the park were very random and not particularly productive. The pictures in this blog entry are from yesterday’s visit to the Magic Kingdom.
The highlight of today’s activities was a visit to Disney’s Magic Kingdom this evening. My plan was to ride a few attractions, get some dinner and watch the Happily Ever After Fireworks show. For the most part it was a successful evening.
The park wasn’t overly busy so it was easy to ride the non thrill rides and watch shows. For dinner I had a nice lobster roll at Columbia Harbor House. It was much better than their fried seafood platter that I have had in the past. The only down side to the evening was that I didn’t get a chance to watch the fireworks from the front of the castle on Main Street USA. My ride on Buzz Light Years Space Ranger Spin took longer than I expected. I didn’t have time to fight the crowds to get to Main street once I got off the ride and it probably would have been filled. Instead I watched the fireworks from the back side in Frontier Land. It is still a very impressive show from there.
A nice east breeze returned today. It made the time of bright sunshine a little more endurable. Late in the day the cloud cover thickened enough to also contribute to making the day more comfortable. Once again the temperature peaked in the upper eighties.
Clouds moving in across Lake Davenport during the late afternoon.
There seemed to be a lot of activity in the campground overnight. I woke up several times to sounds around me in the park. It is possible that I was just sleeping lighter than usual, but it sounded a lot more active than normal. In addition to cars driving around in the park around 2 or 3AM, there were odd noises and extra lights around the campground several times. I think it was just one of those nights.
This morning everything seemed normal. The only surprise was the departure of a couple of neighbors that I thought would be here long term. The number of RVs in the park has decreased substantially and many of the RVs still here are not occupied. I recall watching a similar exodus out in Arizona in 2020. That year I interrupted my travels to sit tight for the months of April and May while traveling during the COVID pandemic figured itself out. A few RVs would leave every day until the number stabilized on a mostly empty RV resort. A similar behavior seems to be happening here.
Today’s big activity was very tame by comparison to my visits to the theme parks. I walked to the shore of Lake Davenport behind the clubhouse. There are several Adirondack style chairs that are a comfortable place to watch the activity on the lake from the shade of tall trees. There were several Jet Ski boats racing up and down the lake this afternoon.
Today was a slow day without a lot of accomplishment. It felt much warmer today even though the actual temperature was about the same as yesterday. There wasn’t as much wind and the sun never found a cloud to hide behind.
The floating planters filled with impatiences really adds interest to the water.
Yesterday’s blog entry was rushed and included mostly pictures. In this entry I will include a few more pictures from yesterday’s visit to EPCOT and describe a few of the things I did and saw. Overall it was one of my more relaxed and enjoyable visits to EPCOT in awhile.
I think this little dog topiary has something to do with the new Wish movie.
EPCOT wasn’t as busy as it has been on recent visits. There were still a lot of people there, but lines were much shorter. In fact, I had a solo ride through the Living with the Land green houses. I sat in the front row of a two boat flotilla with no one else in either boat. It was a timing fluke. There was almost a full pair of boats in front and behind me. Another first that was kind of fun. I also was able to walk right onto Spaceship Earth and the Three Caballeros in the Mexico pavilion.
The rows behind me in the two boat set coming out of the tunnel into the Living with the Lands Garden. I had a private boat.
Every night during the International Flower and Garden Festival a concert is held in three sets at the American Gardens theater. Friday through Monday the performance is by a nationally know group. Often it is the remnants of a popular group from the 60s, 70s, 80s or 90s. During the week tribute bands and groups from the Orlando area perform. On Tuesday night it was an Orlando based Country/Southern Rock band called Southbound playing. They were OK, but could benefit from better technical support. Whoever was adjusting sound levels didn’t do them any favors. The drums drowned out everything. Even during a song featuring the fiddle in the band, you couldn’t hear the fiddle. Keep in mind I know nothing about music, I just thought it was wrong.
The Butterfly tent setup for the festival was really packed with butterflies in the late afternoon. I usually see butterflies hiding from people of the back sides of the plants near the tent walls and on the tent walls themselves. Yesterday, in addition to the usual places, butterflies were all over the place. There were plenty of them flying around, landing on blossoms, landing on little kids posing as statues to encourage them to stop by and dive bombing adults trying to walk through the exhibit. They were plentiful enough that it was easy to find butterflies stopped on blossoms for picture taking.
For the evening fireworks in the World Showcase lagoon I kept walking around the World Showcase stopping here and there to take a picture or two. Once again the lower crowd level made this possible. The lagoon shore was only line with people a few rows deep. The walkways were empty. I’ve been there when the walkways remained jam packed throughout the fireworks display. On this visit it was easy to pause behind the stationary watchers whenever a good part of the display started.
Rob's Rambling Road Trip 