Saturday February 11th 2023

The warm temperatures continued today, but the sun was hidden behind the clouds most of the day. There was also a lot of wind preceding the cold front approaching from the northwest. Toward evening a lot of short rain showers started to arrive in the area.

Since my Disney World Annual Pass doesn’t include weekend park visits, I spent the day outside the theme parks visiting other areas of the world. My first stop was a Disney Springs for some shopping, but not buying. It was a very busy day. All of the Cheerleaders that were in the theme parks Thursday and Friday seemed to be at Disney Springs today. Some of them were even performing on the big stage in the market place area.

From Disney Springs I took the boat to the Port Orleans French Quarter resort. I walked from there along the side of the canal to the Port Orleans Riverside resort. It was an enjoyable stroll on a nice afternoon. At both resorts I toured the gardens, lobbies and gift shops. Once again I was looking not buying.

To get back to Fort Wilderness from Port Orleans I had to either return to Disney Springs or take a bus to one of the theme parks. The first bus to arrive at the bus stop was heading for EPCOT. I had to walk from one end of the bus loading zone to the other to reach the Fort Wilderness stop. There were about twenty people there and many had been there for almost twenty minutes. Maybe I brought them luck. One of Disney’s random special buses arrived to pick everybody up. These are buses that travel around looking for people that have been waiting too long for buses stuck in traffic or some such issue.

This evening I walked down to the campground beach on Bay Lake. The fireworks from the Magic Kingdom can be scene clearly from the beach. The accompanying music is even piped in. I took lots of pictures of the fireworks.

Friday February 10th 2023

Last night’s rain let up in the early morning. This morning it was cloudy and humid. The temperature climbed into the low to mid eighties with a little bit of sun during the afternoon. In the evening the treat of rain was back. It didn’t fall on me, but my RV home got wet.

Today was a Magic Kingdom kind of day. I made two trips across Bay Lake to the theme park. The first was in the morning and the second was in the evening. It was very busy during both visits. Disney World is hosting some form of Cheerleading or Dance competition. There are hoards of young people in matching t-shirts all over the place. I’m guessing they are mostly high school age girls, but they weren’t all girls and there were a few guys in the mix as well.

Random Castle Pictures

The wait times this morning were out of this world. Two of the big rides, Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion, were down for a long period. This just drove the wait times at the other rides higher. There is no way I would wait in line fifty minutes to ride It’s a Small World. During my morning visit I road the Walt Disney World Railroad all around the park and I road the Tomorrow Land Transit Authority People Mover. I was back at my RV home by 2:30PM.

Random Pictures from my day at the Magic Kingdom

My evening visit was far more productive. I got to ride five or six rides and watch the fireworks. All of the rides were running and the crowds had thinned out some. I didn’t see as many cheerleading groups.

Fireworks Pictures

Thursday February 9th 2023

Today was moving day. It wasn’t a long trip, but with traffic it was a slow trip. The driving distance is about 25 miles in a giant U shape. As the crow flies it is a lot shorter distance between Lake Louisa State Park and Disney’s Fort Wilderness Campground. It took close to an hour to make the drive.

I checked in online earlier in the week and requested a 1PM check in. The official check in time is 3PM, but they are pretty good about accommodating earlier requests after the 11AM checkout time. The last couple of times I checked in online I was able to go directly to my site. Today, even though I’d received the check in verification notification on my phone, the guard insisted that I go to the check in toll plaza. It seemed to be a very perfunctory activity. The check in clerk got no new information from me nor provided any that I didn’t already know.

After unhooking my car in the overflow parking lot, I was backed into my site by 2PM. I’m in a Preferred site which means it is in a good location, but isn’t updated with more space. My RV home fits, but it is a little more shoehorned in than some of the other sites. It is still a very nice site.

About 4:30 I started a slow trip to EPCOT. The bus from the campground would be the fastest transportation, but I took the boat to the Magic Kingdom followed by two Monorail rides to get to EPCOT. I arrived shortly before 6PM. My goal for the evening was to ride a few rides, get some dinner, wander around and see the night time fireworks show, Harmonious. I achieved all of the goals but one. Watching Harmonious remains on the todo list.

Here are some pictures of the chalk art that probably got washed away by the rain shortly after I took this picture.

Shortly before 8PM, I spotted lightening to the west. A quick check on the weather app on my phone showed a line of heavy rain approaching. I was not prepared for a rain storm in a practical way or mentally. I decided to head back to my RV home. While I was on the bus it started to rain lightly. I got a little damp getting from the bus to my campsite, but it really opened up shortly after I got inside. It has been a very noisy storm for the last two plus hours. Heading for home before the fireworks was the right decision.

Wednesday February 8th 2023

Today is my last day at Lake Louisa State Park for this visit. The day was very similar to the last couple of days. The weather was bright and sunny with a high temperature in the upper half of the seventies. My activities for the day were focused on chores around my RV home and travel preparations.

I’ve allowed the interior of my RV to get very cluttered during this two week stay. All of the packing material and tools associated with getting the new TV installed were in the way during part of my stay. Consequently access to some of the storage locations was obstructed. The bottom line is I’ve had more to do to get things straightened out. By the time I go to bed this evening I will be at the same level of preparedness to travel as normal.

For exercise today I took another hike along some of the trails in the park. It really was a timed hike, since I turned around in time to be back for the noon TV news. I was really most interested in the weather forecast. A new storm front is approaching the area over the next few days. I’m going to be in theme park visiting mode over the next week. Since you need to make a reservation to access a Disney park, I wanted to know what weather obstacles I might encounter. It looks like the storms arrived Friday night.

Tuesday February 7th 2023

The nice weather trend continued today. It was a bright sunny day with a little more wind than Monday. Despite the wind the temperature was also a bit higher than Monday. It topped out in the mid to upper seventies. The trend is forecast to continue tomorrow, but break during the day on Thursday.

Today was a continuation of yesterday’s chores and stuff. My biggest task today was catching up on the laundry. I carry lots of clothes so I can stretch the time between laundry days when necessary. In this case I have also been switching between warm weather clothes and cold weather clothes. This has allowed me to stretch things even more. The biggest driver to doing the laundry is a place to hide the dirty clothes. Today was the day to make room for more dirty laundry.

I had three loads of laundry to complete and one washing machine and one dryer to accomplish the task. They also weren’t the worlds fastest machines. Each load took nearly fifty minutes per machine. All totaled from lugging the dirty laundry to the facility, washing and drying followed by folding and bringing the clean clothes back to their storage locations it took around 3 hours. I didn’t hang out at the laundry the whole time. Every twenty minutes or so I walk back to the laundry from my RV home. I really didn’t get anything else done while the laundry was running.

There was a lot of turnover in the state park today. Most people seem to come for a two to three nights stay. There are only a few of us that are here for the two week maximum. All of my neighbors have changed once or twice while I’ve been here. Tomorrow is my last full day here.

Monday February 6th 2023

The weather was beautiful day today. There were very few clouds in the bright blue sky. The wind was next to nonexistent and the temperature climbed to the low to mid seventies. It was the type of day the Chamber of Commerce wishes every day modeled.

Today was a productive and busy day but it wasn’t much of a blog worthy one. I caught up on a lot of odd chores, did some maintenance task and completed a few elands. The most noteworthy of the lot was completing the installation of my new TV. After watching it for a few hours last night, I determined it was safe to complete the installation. I put the last four screws in the bracket this afternoon. Having a working TV back in the living room area of my RV home is taking some getting used to. I have walked right by the TV into the bedroom to check the picture that goes with the dialog I’m listening to on the TV. Never mind that all I had to do was turn my head and look at the living room TV.

My walks around the campground today didn’t discover anything particular new or noteworthy. There were only two turtles taking the sun on the log today. On other day’s I’ve seen as many as six on one long and several more on other logs. Perhaps it just wasn’t warm enough. The good news is some of the wildflower blossoms have returned. The cold weather over the weekend caused many of the blossoms to die off. There was also a beautiful sunset tonight.

Sunday February 5th 2023

The weather forecast for today was a 70% chance of rain all day. They got it wrong. In this area it was sunny most of the day with only an hour or two of full cloud cover near sunset. The rain seemed to stay off to the east near the coast all day. The temperature reached the mid seventies.

The first agenda item of the day was to find the bolts I needed to install my new TV. Two stops later, I found some bolts I could make work. The size I needed were not available at Home Depot or Lowes. I needed two washers per bolt to make the 5mm longer bolts work.

When I got home, drilling the new holes in the steel bracket proved to be more complicated. I didn’t have a good way to mark the location of the new hole on the black paint. More significantly I didn’t have a good punch to start the hole. My drill bit wanted to wander across the hard surface. A makeshift punch and working up from a small bit to a medium size bit before drilling the actual size hole solved the problem.

The TV is now mounted in the living room. I still need to put the screws back in the bottom of the mounting bracket, but I wanted to wait until I was sure it was working correctly. For the first time in a long time I have a working TV in my living room. My habit of retreating to the bedroom to watch TV is now over. I can watch TV from the sofa, from the kitchen or the table once again. It is going to take getting used to. So far I’m satisfied with my purchase.

While I was out bolt shopping I stopped at Walmart for groceries. The store was busy for an early Sunday afternoon. There were public shoppers like me, Walmart employee shoppers filling online orders and for some reason a ton of stock people reloading the shelves. It was a congested mess. It took extra time to fill my cart with everything I needed. On the positive side, this Walmart had most of the “Assisted” checkouts open.

Saturday February 4th 2023

The weather returned to the good side of the spectrum this morning. It was a sunny day with a high temperature in the low to mid seventies. This is consistent with the normal high for this time of year. After last week’s highs in the eighties it felt cool today.

I had the displeasure of being in a shopping center on a Saturday. Normally I’d avoid shopping at a big center on a Saturday, but late last night I got an Email from Best Buy. They found a TV to satisfy my order. Earlier in the week, I ordered a new TV for the living room of my RV home. It was in stock when I ordered it, but out of stock ten minutes later. They couldn’t meet the February 1st delivery date. I was given the option of canceling the order or waiting for the product to become available. The wording wasn’t hopeful and it was a product they were trying to liquidate. I decided to wait until the beginning of the week before canceling the order. It turned out to be the right decision.

The TV I’m replacing broke over a year ago. Getting it fixed was more expensive than a new TV. The issue with replacing it was the way it is mounted in my RV. The mounting hole pattern in my RV home is not common for a 43 inch TV. I also didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a premium TV that will get bounced around and subject to hot and cold operating temperatures. During each traditional TV sales period, I scourer the specifications of all the TVs on sale for a suitable TV. This week during the pre Super Bowl TV sales I found a Pioneer 43 inch 4K TV that met my needs. It is an older unit that was on sale for $100 off.

After the ordeal of navigating the traffic through new housing developments with many “roundabouts”, I managed to get from Clermont to Winter Garden. Road management at the end of the last century was removing all the rotaries in favor of lights and four way intersections. Now they are adding them into perfectly good roads with the intent of slowing down traffic. They may do that, but I don’t think they eliminate accidents. I went through five or six in a two mile stretch of road. The shopping center was filled to overflowing with cars. It took a lot of searching to find a place near the Best Buy.

Tomorrow I need to go to Home Depot or Lowes to get the proper size bolts to mount the TV. I also have to drill two new holes in the metal mounting bracket to make the new TV fit. These modifications are minor compared with the contraptions I was envisioning to make some other TVs mountable. Once it is all complete I’ll have a working TV in the living room for the first time in over a year.

Friday February 3rd 2023

The forecast weather transition arrived today. When I rolled out of bed this morning the temperature was in the sixties and climbing. About 10:30AM a light rain started to fall on the roof of my RV home. About fifteen minutes of steady rain fell before the sky started to lighten up and the rain became intermittent. The climbing temperature turned into a falling temperature. The transition seemed to be anticlimactic, but I was wrong. Shortly after noon the wind started to blow. A few minutes later the rain returned with a vengeance. There was an absolute deluge for the next twenty minutes or so. When combined with the wind, the rain was an absolute deafening roar on the walls and roof of my RV home.

After the deluge it was a cloudy and gloomy afternoon. The temperature continued to drop. It was in the fifties by the time the sun started to set with a chill from the wind to go with it. The sky also started clear as the sun set. I got one cold looking picture of the sunset.

Thursday February 2nd 2023

There was a low ceiling this morning, but it wasn’t low enough to call it fog. By 9AM it had burned off and the sun was in full force. The temperature peaked in the mid eighties. The cold front is due pass through mid day tomorrow.

I spent the afternoon at Disney’s EPCOT. The International Festival of the Arts is in full force. Is park is filled with Art. There are displays and for sale items all over the park. Artists are actively creating chalk art on walkways and the sides of buildings. Kiosks are selling paintings, sculptures and other forms of creative art. The food stands are selling forms of culinary art as well. This is one of my favorite EPCOT festivals.

Here are some of the chalk art.

Most of the art has a Disney flair, but there are some more classical pieces of too. Even the art with Disney content runs the full spectrum from in your face carton characters with bold colors to very subtle homage to Disney elements. One set of paintings had hidden mickeys incorporated in the art. I can just see people gazing at it for hours trying to find them all. It took me several minutes before I even found one.

I didn’t do a lot today other than wander around the park looking at all the art. It wasn’t very crowded during the afternoon. As I was leaving at the dinner hour many people were arriving for the evening. I’m reserving my night time visits to the middle of the month when I’m staying on property at Fort Wilderness. It is so much easier.

Other than walking the pathways and shops, I rode the Living with the Land boat ride, Space Ship earth and toured the aquarium at the Living Seas. While I was in the World Showcase, I also listened to one performance of the Voices of Liberty. All of this was around at late lunch of Fish and Chips in the UK pavilion.