Wednesday November 23rd 2022

It rain a little overnight. The showers I heard were very light and short. This morning it was close to being a foggy morning. The cloud deck was very close to ground level and remained there for most of the morning. In the early afternoon the sun broke through for a very short reminder of a sunny day. It wasn’t long before the sky darkened and a gentle mist dampened everything. The temperature peaked in the mid seventies.

I made the mistake of leaving the RV resort this afternoon. The traffic rapidly reminded me that it was the day before Thanksgiving. Traffic on the US route that passes the front of the park was the worst I’ve ever seen it. The was a steady line of traffic in both directions. In front of the park traffic was moving at normal speeds, but less than a mile up the road the traffic thickened and slowed to ten to fifteen MPH. As I drove along the road, it looked like the traffic in the other direction was even slower. The parking lot for the Publix supermarket appeared full with more cars turning into the shopping center all the time.

I didn’t have any particular destination, but chose to stop at the Home Depot. My intent was more to turn around than to go shopping, but I went inside to kill time. I hoped that time would allow the traffic level to drop. The Christmas decorations for sale in the Home Depot were impressive. They had a complete selection of inflatables and plenty of fake trees. It would be easy for someone decorating their home for the first time to spend a thousand or more dollars on decorations and not be done.

The other seasonal indicator was the presence of black plastic covered displays in the aisles around the store. They were clearly getting ready for Black Friday sales and didn’t want people getting into them before the start of the sale. I have no idea what was hiding under the plastic.

Traffic hadn’t improved when I got back into it heading home. My average speed over most of the eight miles home was around ten MPH. My guess is the traffic on Interstate 4 was worse and people switched to my route as an alternative. It was a primary way south and west from Orlando before the Interstate.

Tuesday November 22nd 2022

The weather forecast called for rain today, but as of 9PM it hasn’t rained yet. That doesn’t mean the sun was shining. In fact the clouds just seemed to get thicker as the day went by. Despite the missing sunshine the temperature reached the mid seventies.

Once again, I allowed the weather forecast to dictate my day. My plans for outdoor activities were put on the back burner and I focused on inside activities. Today that was a lot of internet activity looking to fill the feared gap in my winter reservations. Yesterday I heard that at least part of my reservation for Myakka River State Park in the middle of December was canceled. With no guaranty that the last eight nights will not get canceled, I am looking for a place to stay for the entire two weeks.

There is no availability at the public campgrounds for more than a random night or two. The larger commercial RV parks have at least a few vacancies for the two week period, but they are at a premium price. The smaller commercial campgrounds are full. The further north I go in the center of the state the cost becomes more reasonable. Near the coast the premium prices remain. I will probably book a site at the RV resort in Ocala I stayed at in August. It is a new park that opened in July and hasn’t fully booked the winter with snowbirds. The downside is the location. I will basically be traveling north seventy miles for two weeks, then south one hundred fifty miles for two weeks before returning north one hundred and seventy miles for the another two weeks.

Today seemed to be decorating day at the RV park. The resort staff decorated the common spaces for Christmas and many of the residents took the opportunity to decorate their sites. This evening the area was very colorful. I was laughing when I saw the display in the picture at the top of this blog post. Who decorates outside for Thanksgiving?

Monday November 21st 2022

The weather forecast for today was the same as for yesterday. I was expecting a day filled with rain, but none fell. While the sun was only out briefly, the day was a total opposite. The temperature climbed into the mid seventies and it was a generally nice day.

I woke around 7:30AM to the sound of construction. The park model home behind my site was getting a new roof today. They stripped the roof and put on new shingles before noon today. It is a good thing the weather forecast was wrong. Sleep was out of the question with all the noise, so I got an early start to the day. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to bed early Sunday night and it was a restless night. My energy level was not high today.

It was a normal slow day. I did a few chores around my RV home and got a couple of walks in around the RV park. The sandhill cranes and the peafowl were missing from the park today. In there place I spotted an Anhinga drying its wings and a bunch of turtles taking in the limited sun.

Sunday November 20th 2022

It was a miserable weather day. The temperature barely cleared sixty degrees and some form of rain came down all day. The rain varied from mist to gentle rain. It never got to the downpour state. I had to run heat to keep the inside of my RV home in the comfortable range.

I stayed indoor all day. The TV kept me entertained most of the day, but not with the football games I wanted to watch. My location is in a dead zone for the local CBS station. Fox had one football game that I watched a little bit. Tonight, I can’t even remember the teams that were playing. Most of my TV watching was the sappy Christmas movies that dominate cable (in my case satellite) this time of year. Every plot seems to be a variation on the same plot theme.

Saturday November 19th 2022

It wasn’t as cold overnight resulting in a warmer start to the day and a higher peak in the low seventies. There was some sun early, but by mid day the sky was filled with clouds. The forecast for tomorrow calls for rain.

Traffic in the area was terrible again today. Every intersection had several cars backed up. I don’t think I got through any of the traffic lights on the first signal. There are just too many homes in the area for the size of the roads. Since I first started coming to this area seven years ago many new high density housing developments have been constructed. More are being built all the time. Areas that were citrus groves last year are now sandy open areas with the roads and utilities starting to be constructed. By next year they will contain a hundred or more houses. The roads just can’t keep up.

While I was out I made my last stop at Walmart for groceries before Thanksgiving. I think I waited too long. The place was very busy. Getting up and down the aisles with a shopping cart was often impossible. After I got boxed in by other shoppers a couple of times, I left the cart at the end of the aisle and went on foot to find the items I wanted. The result was I didn’t get everything I needed. I depend on the slow walk down the aisle to trigger my memory rather than writing a list. It is the non healthy stuff like cookies I forgot, so I’ll survive without another grocery run until after the holiday.

Friday November 18th 2022

The cool weather is taking some getting used to. I had to add a blanket to my bed in the middle of the night to keep warm. This morning the sun brought the inside temperature up quickly, but the outside temperature remained in the low sixties all day. I know that is nothing compared to the northern states, but it does represent the arrival of winter weather in central Florida.

There is quite a bit of work going on in the RV park. Yesterday they paved some of the roads in the park including the road in front of my site. The roads didn’t look like they needed repair, but they had been ground down in preparation for a new surface before I arrived here at the end of last month. Perhaps because the temperature cooled off or just a scheduling thing they completed the job yesterday. I didn’t receive any notice from the park staff that the roads would be blocked at times during the day. The sad thing is I don’t think it was a very good job. There seem to be little voids in the surface and loose material on the edges that didn’t get rolled in.

I caught up on a few chores around my RV home today. For exercise I walked around the RV park a couple of times. The ducks and sandhill cranes were all in their usual places. The peafowl were missing today. There is an extensive area of pasture behind the park that I suspect is a good hideout for the birds when they aren’t in the park. The cattle that use the pasture probably don’t care what the birds do.

Thursday November 17th 2022

Today’s weather was a dramatic change. The sun was shining bright, but the temperature only climbed to the low sixties. It was more than ten degrees cooler than Wednesday and closer to fifteen degrees cooler than the average over the last couple of weeks.

I slept in this morning. My visit to Disney’s Magic Kingdom yesterday was tiring. It involved a lot of hurry up and wait type activities. The heavy crowds drove wait times up to very high levels and even the non ride activities like watching the parade and the fireworks required a lot of waiting.

I arrived at the park around 1PM and made my way down Main Street checking out the decorations. The Halloween decorations I saw less than three weeks ago were all replaced by Christmas decorations. The town square area was dominated by a huge Christmas Tree. Scarecrows were replaced by wooden soldiers and Micky Jack-o-lanterns became big green wreathes with big red bows on all the lamp posts. It was a very festively decorated.

The Jungle Cruise ride is “replaced” by the Jingle Cruise ride this time of year. I waited in line for about eighty minutes to see what the Holiday overlay is all about. Perhaps if the wait was shorter it would have been more enjoyable. Disney has added Christmas lights and decorations to most of the structures along the ride. The decorations fit in well and the boat skippers weave them into the story. The skippers also add a Christmas element to their puns and comedy. It wasn’t bad, just not great.

The Enchantment Fireworks show was at 8:15PM. The crowd was two thirds of the way down Main Street when I locked in a spot to watch the parade at 7:30PM. I didn’t move more than six inches until the show was over more than an hour later. People completely unaware of their surroundings tried to push and bump me out of my place more times than I could count, but I made it through the show. It is really nice show and I was in a very good place.

After the fireworks many people left the park. I pushed through the crowds deeper into the park. It was open until 11PM. Most of the ride wait times had not improved. I got a chance to ride the People Mover with only a twenty minute wait, but other rides still had waits in excess of sixty minutes. Even some of the theater style attractions were backed up.

After the People Mover, the cold temperature got to me. The temperature was in the sixties and I had a short sleeve shirt. Earlier in the evening I looked to buy a sixty dollar sweatshirt, but I couldn’t find any in the correct size that weren’t pink or adorned with a character graphic I wouldn’t be comfortable wearing. It was time to head home.

Getting home was another adventure. The waits for the ferryboat or the monorail were long. I finally got on the second ferryboat across the Seven Seas Lagoon. My next adventure was finding my car. It wasn’t where I thought I parked it. Luckily, I always take a picture of the row number when I park. My memory said I parked in row 316, but the picture said it was 314. Grey vehicles in dimly lit parking lots become invisible two rows away.

For my trip home I took yet another route. Traffic was some of the worse I’ve seen leaving the Disney World area. I couldn’t get across four lines of traffic to take a left turn onto a road I knew was going to be plugged with traffic because of construction. I went further west before turning south adding five to ten miles to my trip home. It was after 11PM when I got home. It was a fun, but exhausting day.

Wednesday November 16th 2022

Today’s weather started overcast with an occasional rain shower and ended overcast with the sun threatening but not succeeding. The temperature peaked in the mid to upper seventies. After dark the temperature started a nose dive. It is close to sixty as I write this blog entry shortly before midnight.

I went to Disney’s Magic Kingdom today with two goals in mind. First I wanted to see the holiday decorations and second I wanted to see some fireworks. I achieved both. Since it is late and I am tired, I going to include lots of pictures in this blog entry and write more about the day in tomorrow’s blog entry.

General Pictures

Enchantment Fireworks

Tuesday November 15th 2022

The sun never made an appearance today, but neither did the rain. The day started overcast and it continued that way all day. The temperature peaked in the low to mid eighties.

This afternoon I drove north to the southern edge of Orlando to do some shopping at the outlet malls. There are plenty of outlet stores closer, but I went to the area with some of the original outlet stores in Orlando. It goes without saying if you have a tourist area you have outlet malls. I avoided the congestion on Interstate 4 by using local streets to get there. It was a real adventure.

Traffic and the behavior of motorists in metro areas is always interesting. This area is no exception. Today I saw my fair share of accelerating to make the yellow light at intersections and weaving in and out of lanes to get around slower traffic. I even saw one instance where the behavior was combined almost leading to a major accident right in front of me. Two cars in the outside lane were rushing to get through the yellow light the first car tried to duck into the second lane to get by a slower car, but a car in that lane decided to stop for the yellow light. The driver swerved back into the outside lane in front of the other car trying to race through the yellow light. The second car had to hit the brakes hard and didn’t make the yellow light, but the first guy causing all the issues made it through the light.

Between the volume of traffic, the impatience of the drivers and all of the road construction it can be a real challenge driving around. I’ve been in this area enough over the years to know the roads, but not necessarily the traffic patterns. I don’t know what times of day to avoid which roads. Night time is also a whole new challenge. The landmarks I know aren’t necessarily visible at night, so I need to slow down sooner to find the turns. Coming back into this RV park after dark is one of those difficulties. The first few nights were a real challenge, but I think I’ve got it down now.

Monday November 14th 2022

About noon today I ventured out to Disney’s Hollywood Studios. My goal was to ride a few rides, see a few shows and generally checkout the Christmas Decorations. I partially fulfilled my goal.

The park was very crowded. Wait times for rides were in the triple digit minutes. I got to see a couple of shows including Frozen Ever After with its Christmas flair. The waits for rides were a real problem. I got into the Toy Story Mania line with an expected wait of fifty minutes. It was over an hour before I got off the ride. About the only thing that didn’t have a wait was lunch and that was only because I mobile ordered ahead.

The one thing I was completely successful with was checking out the Christmas decorations. They were plentiful, colorful and well enjoyed. The only place they didn’t decorate for Christmas was the Galaxy’s Edge Star Wars land. I guess the fictional planet of Batuu doesn’t put up Christmas decorations.

My plan was to stay for the Fantasmic nighttime show. It returned after two plus years at the beginning of the month. The show started at 8PM. At 6PM there was a line twenty feet wide all along Sunset Blvd and growing. They don’t open the seating area until 7PM. I wasn’t prepared to wait in that line alone. Boredom was sure to win the battle before the show started. I decided the show could wait and I headed for home. Unfortunately, it was the end of rush hour. It took close to an hour to get home. Except for the drive home it was a fun day.