Monday January 2nd 2023

There was still fog in the area this morning, but it was a sunny start to the day here. The sky was blue with a few scattered puffy clouds all day. The high temperature flirted with eighty degree mark.

Today felt a little more like the New Years Day holiday. The Rose Parade was on the TV this morning and a few football bowl games were on in the afternoon. The parade and one of the games were on the TV, but I can’t say I really watched either of them. Mostly they served as background noise.

The other indicator that the holiday weekend was over came from all of the departures from the RV resort. From the time I got up until shortly after the 11AM checkout time there was a steady parade of RVs leaving the resort. Not as many RVs arrived later in the day, so the park is a little less occupied this evening. I suspect it will fill up with arriving snowbirds as the week goes by. For mow the recreation facilities including the pool and pickle ball courts are not as busy.

My chief activity for the day was backing up all of the pictures I’ve taken this year from my computer. I off load the pictures from my camera to my computer every night. I keep them sorted by date. My regular backup practice makes a copy every couple of weeks to couple of months depending on how diligent I am. At the end of every year I make two copies of all of the years pictures and blog text onto USB memory sticks. The sticks get stored in different places, one of which is in my “go” bag. I rarely have the internet bandwidth to upload all of the pictures to cloud storage. For special pictures or ones I want to share, I take the additional time to upload them to Google Photos and/or Amazon Photos.

This year I took more than 9,000 pictures. A high percentage of the pictures are of birds, wildflowers and elements of nature. I take pictures for three reasons. First is to add interest to my blog entries. Second is to remind me of things I’m experiencing and third just because I think something will make an interesting possibly artsy image. I try to take time setting up the pictures for reason one and three, but the pictures to remind me about the situation may be more snapshot quality. They may not be well framed or necessarily in focus.

After I finished all of my backups, I deleted from my computer’s hard drive the first five years of pictures. My one terabyte disk was getting very full. The five years of pictures took up more than 350 gigabytes of space. The computer is more than nine years old so I’m suspect on its continued function.

Sunday January 1st 2023

It was another foggy start to the day. Unlike yesterday which had an element of rain, today the fog lifted by midday into a mostly cloudy afternoon and evening. Some filtered sunlight got through the cloud layer to warm the air into the mid seventies.

A Sunday New Years is a strange kind of holiday. Most of the things we normally associate with New Years day are put off until Monday. The parades and football bowl games are all moved to Monday. The normal Sunday sporting events dominate the TV along with a few strange marathons of repeats on the cable channels. I watched one of the NFL football games.

I was surprised to see many RVs depart the RV resort this morning. People I assumed were here for an extended stay were among those leaving. The families with kids are still here. Tomorrow is the last day of the winter school break in many of the Florida school systems. I expect a lot more RVs to leave tomorrow. At the same time many RVs continue to arrive. Many arrive in groups. The three sites beside me are all occupied by a group that traveled south from the mid west together. Tonight the park is slightly less occupied than last night, but I suspect that more snowbirds will be arriving every day this week.

Traffic on the local roads in the area was light today, but passing under Interstate 75 it was apparent that wasn’t the case with the interstate. The traffic was slowed to a stop and go rate on the bridge when I drove to the Ocala Wetland Recharge park. Traffic was moving again when I returned under the bridge an hour or so later.

The Wetland Recharge Park was a popular place today. There were more cars in the parking area than I’ve seen on previous visits. I passed a number of other walkers while I was wandering along the trails. There wasn’t a lot of wildlife visible, but a couple of birds were very accommodating of my need to take their picture. A couple of turtles covered in the green slime that lines the surface the ponds were also photogenic.

Saturday December 31st 2022

Happy New Year

New Years Eve began with thick fog covering the area. It was replaced by occasional light rain for the majority of the day. I remained inside most of the day. Near sunset the rain had let up enough that I could walk around the resort a few times. There are even more occupied sites tonight. The activity level and atmosphere is entirely different from earlier in the month.

Happy New Year

Friday December 30th 2022

The day started sunny, but transitioned to partly cloudy and then full cloudy as the sun was setting. The temperature reached the upper half of the seventies. Rain is in the forecast for tomorrow.

This was a reset day. After worrying about getting my fuel leak fixed most of the week, today became a return to normal day. I hadn’t connected all of the utilities to the motorhome so they wouldn’t be in the way of the repair effort. This morning I connected the water and the sewer up and got into full living mode. The inside got rearranged a little also.

The other impact of the holiday week and my preoccupation with getting the leak fixed is I don’t know what day it is. Thursday, Friday and Saturday were all thoughts that passed through my mind during the day. Most of the time I thought it was Saturday, New Years Eve. I just checked the top of this post and I did correctly label today as Friday the 30th.

Today was the first day I got out of the park since Monday. I made another visit to the Ocala Wetlands Recharge park. The weekend freezes killed off more of the vegetation for the winter, but there was plenty of greenery left. The water level in some of the holding pools is a little higher, but the birds seem to be in hiding. There weren’t as many posing for my camera.

RVs continued to stream into the resort. I think about half of the arrivals are for extended stays and the rest are for the holiday weekend. There are many families with kids on bicycles, scooters and other powered contraptions. The activity level is so much higher than a week ago. It really is a different kind of place this weekend.

Thursday December 29th 2022

There was more humidity in the air today. The day started with a lot of fog in the area. This immediate area seemed to be clear of fog. Over the course of the day there were more clouds in the sky than the last couple of days, but temperature got to the mid seventies. It was a few degrees warmer than Wednesday.

My day began with figuring out plan B for getting my fuel leak fixed. The mechanic that was supposed to show up at 2PM Wednesday hadn’t been heard from since a text message at 2:30PM. I would have expected something last night or the first thing this morning. Yesterday, one of the voice mails I left on Monday or Tuesday returned by call. This morning he got my business. I canceled the previous guy with a text message of my own and scheduled the new guy for 3PM.

The new guy arrived before 3PM and immediately found the leak in the fuel line where it connects to the manifold. It looks like some rodent may have taken a bite out of it. He took off with the fuel line in hand on a search of the local auto parts stores. Unfortunately he didn’t have any success. The part would have to be ordered from Ford with a long lead time. The best solution was to patch the existing line. A bunch of high tech adhesives and epoxy goop later the fuel line was patched successfully. I’ll keep watch on the patch and pursue the Ford part order if necessary.

I’m really lucky I didn’t have more problems. I had smelled gas before Monday, but hadn’t seen anything identifiable under the motorhome. The location of the leak caused fuel to spray on the outside of the hot manifold which vaporized the fuel. All it would need is a spark to have an uncontrolled fire. The fact that Monday morning was so cold resulted in less gas getting vaporized. The liquid drained onto the ground in a big puddle. In a way this is a good result from a very cold morning.

This RV resort continues to fill up. They open the section of the park with the recently completed electrical service. There seem to be two types of occupants. Families are here for the school vacation week and New Years Eve weekend. Snowbirds are also arriving in droves. Most of them will be here for a few months.

Wednesday December 28th 2022

The weather continued its steady improvement today. It was a day filled with bright sunshine. The temperature started on the positive side of the freezing mark and continued to climb into the low seventies.

It was a good day to sit outside in the sunshine and I did a lot of that today. I spent the day waiting for the mechanic to show up to investigate my fuel leak. Initially he was scheduled for 2PM. Around 2:20PM he sent a text indicating he was running behind. I haven’t heard from him since. It looks like I’ll be figuring out a plan B in the morning. One of the other calls I made yesterday has now responded, so I have two possible alternatives.

While I was outside waiting for the mechanic many new RVs arrived at the resort. I think I saw a couple depart this morning, but as a whole there were many more new arrivals than departures. Walking around the resort this evening, it is apparent that the number occupied sites now outnumbers the available sites. Even so, there are more than 100 available sites and probably an equal number of sites that aren’t finished yet. One group of unfinished sites is just waiting for power and another group is a little further behind. The last group is just getting landscaped now. They expect to have all the sites ready by February.

Tuesday December 27th 2022

The really cold weather is slowly leaving the area. It only got down to about thirty overnight. Today was bright and sunny with a slight breeze out of the north. The high temperature was around sixty degrees. The average daily high for this time of year is in the low seventies. The New Years weekend is forecast to have high temperatures back in the eighties, but with the probability of rain.

This morning I resumed the search to get my motorhome fuel leak fixed. I tried the business cards from the park office and numbers I found from internet searches. Today I got actual answering machines and a couple of real people. I left four messages and got one call back. The call back was via text message. The end result was a possible appointment for Saturday. I continued my search. The second actual person I made contact with said he could look at the motorhome tomorrow afternoon, so I’m going to give him a try. He has good reviews for his mechanical skills online, but is faulted for not showing up when scheduled. This is going to be interesting.

To give me enough time to get this “little” problem fixed, I’ve more drastically restructured my travel schedule. I’m going to stay here until the 9th of January. This cancels my second set of two weeks in the Sarasota/Bradenton area. While I’m going to miss my visits to the state parks, this change makes sense. Going 150 miles south for two weeks before returning right by here to go 40 miles north to the Gainesville FL area already seemed wrong. The shorter the stay the more wrong it felt. In a way this is just one more ripple in the cancellation of my Myakka River State Park reservation because of hurricane Ian. I still have reservations in the Sarasota/Bradenton area for March and April.

While working with the park office staff to extend my stay I learned that ten to twenty new RVs are arriving most days over the next couple of weeks. Their phone lines have also been ringing continuously with people looking for extended reservations. Before Christmas they weren’t getting a lot of interest, but starting yesterday they’ve been busy answering queries. The park is starting to look much more occupied. The power company was here today to put in additional transformers so that another section of new sites can be opened soon.

Monday December 26th 2022

I was up early to get ready for a travel day. It didn’t get as cold last night as the previous couple of nights, but it was still only in the low thirties as I got packed up.

Things felt a little frozen. The hoses resisted moving in the direction I wanted them to move. It took a little more time and convincing. Getting the main slide room in and the leveling jacks raised was a slow process. The hydraulic fluid in the system was not as viscus as usual. All things considered, I was still ready to leave at 10:30. That is when the real issue made an appearance.

As I was connecting up the car for towing one of the park staff asked the curious question: “Do you have a gas leak?”. Sure enough there was a small puddle of gas accumulating under the coach just behind the engine area. I had smelled gas in the past and thought I might have an issue, but this was a lot worse than anything I might have suspected in the past.

The next complication is that today was a holiday for most of the working world. I got several options from the park staff, but nobody was picking up the phone. The few places that I got through to on voice mail haven’t called me back. I drove around the area in my car this afternoon and didn’t find any service places open.

The site I pulled out of this morning is occupied tonight. I’m on another site until at least Wednesday. I called Lake Manatee State Park in Bradenton to give them a heads up that I will be arriving a few days late. In the morning I’ll resume my search for someone to fix the fuel issue.

Many new RVs arrived at the campground today. It looks like many people spent the holiday at home before departing to spend the rest of the week between Christmas and New Years out camping. Lots of the new arrivals have kids trying out new bicycles, scooters and other large outside toys. The park is far more lively today than it has been during the entire two weeks I’ve been here.

Sunday December 25th 2022

Merry Christmas

The overnight hours were very similar to Friday night. There was about twelve hours below freezing with most of them in the low to mid twenties. Today’s high temperature was about five degrees warmer than Saturday at forty five. Tonight will be very similar to the last couple.

Once again this was very much an indoor kind of day. I baked a batch of imitation blueberry muffins from a package to go with my morning coffee then lingered at the table enjoying them. Eventually I got enough initiative to bundle up in my winter coat for a walk around the RV resort. Everything was very quiet. People were all inside their RVs. Yesterday all the plants I saw were showing real signs of freeze damage. The blossoms were all black or fallen off. Today I found a couple of little weed like plants that still had thriving blossoms.

Back in my warm RV it was time for Christmas dinner. I may not have a Christmas tree, but somehow I still have to have a slightly more upscale menu on the holiday. Today I had a slice of ham that I accompanied with mashed potatoes and corn for the main course. For dessert I had a slice of Apple Pie with Ice Cream. Overall it wasn’t anything special, but it was good.

This is my last full day in Ocala. Tomorrow I’m moving south about 140 miles to the Bradenton FL area. Getting packed up in the morning is going to be a challenge. The temperature will barely be above freezing by the 11am checkout time. Today’s cool temperatures kept me indoors and I didn’t get any of the usual outdoor prep tasks accomplished.

Saturday December 24th 2022

As predicted the temperature was below freezing by 11PM last night and didn’t return above freezing until around 10AM. The low temperature was around twenty three according to the TV weather report. I was comfortable inside my RV home. The only downside was waking up when the furnace came on a couple of times. I slept trough most of its cycles. The sound of the furnaces in other nearby RVs was more of an issue before I went to sleep than my own furnace.

Today’s high temperature was just a little north of 40 degrees. The bright sunshine allowed the inside of my RV home to stay warm all day. Outside, the wind out of the north kept brought the wind chill temperature down ten to fifteen degrees. I had to get my winter jacket out to stay warm on my daily walk around the RV resort. It has been a few years since the jacket left the closet. It sounds like I’ll need it again tomorrow.

Walking around the resort this afternoon I didn’t see any significant signs of RV damage from the cold. At one site the water hose was stretched out across the pad, probably in an attempt to thaw it out. Just turning off the water isn’t sufficient. You need to drain the hose. The most obvious sign of last nights temperature were the plants around the clubhouse. Yesterday there were colorful blossoms on all the plants. Today all of the blossoms and many of the leaves were black. The plants are still alive today, but another couple of nights with similar temperatures may do them in.

People were not very active in the resort today. The Christmas Golf cart parade didn’t happen. Yesterday there was an email saying it was still on if you wanted. Apparently nobody wanted to drive around in an open golf cart in thirty plus degree temperatures. I haven’t seen many golf carts other than the ones the staff use, so there probably weren’t many candidates.

Merry Christmas