Sunday September 4th 2022

With the exception of a little more threatening conditions toward the end of the day, today’s weather was very similar to Saturday. The temperature peaked around ninety degrees with a moderate breeze and plenty of humidity. The late day dark clouds threatening thunderstorms never materialized in this area.

The party atmosphere at the RV park continued today. A handful of RVs departed this morning, but for the most part it was the same group of party participants as Saturday. The pool party with DJ continued. They replaced the BBQ food truck with a pizza truck. Today’s big events were Rock Panting, Watermelon Eating contest, and a golf cart parade to end the weekend activities. Nothing was exciting enough to draw my interest, but I did watch the golf cart parade go by. With all the horns it was impossible to miss.

I spent most of the day in a relaxed mood. There were several car races on TV to keep my attention. This is the last Sunday until late January that NFL football will not dominate Sunday TV. I’m sure I’ll be watching a lot of games, but it is nice to watch some different things like racing while the opportunity is available.

Saturday September 3rd 2022

Weather wise today was a clone of Friday. The temperature was around ninety with plenty of humidity and a nice breeze. The rain missed this area today.

The RV park was incredibly different today. When I raised the blinds this morning I was surrounded by other RVs. Up until last night the sites near me were all empty. Along with the occupancy comes activity. There were people all around. Kids were riding bikes and scooters along the road and plenty of walkers were out as well. The park pool was full all day as people swam to the music from a DJ. A food truck and a farm stand were onsite to provide additional options. I got text messages throughout the day announcing other activities like bingo and karaoke. Other than providing something to watch, the increased activity didn’t change my day.

I stopped at the Ocala Wetland Recharge Park again for some exercise this afternoon. It was very quiet at the park. I didn’t see any other people walking the trails and most of the birds seemed to be hiding out in the tall grasses. The few ducks I saw were out in the green algae covered water.

Friday September 2nd 2022

Today’s weather was a better version of Thursday’s. The partly sunny conditions lasted for the entire day. The afternoon rain showers stayed away from this area. The temperature peaked in the low to mid nineties with high humidity, but there was a nice breeze most of the day.

The holiday weekend has arrived. Starting around noon today there was a steady stream of arriving RVs. Last weekend there was a bounce in occupancy of five to ten RVs. I’d guess from fifty to one hundred RVs arrived today. Each arriving RV gets escorted to their site by a work camper in a golf cart. A good percentage of the arriving RVs have their own golf cart to unload once they get to their site. As the day went by the number of golf carts going up and down the park roads exceeded the volume of cars.

The RV resort has a lot of activities going on this weekend. I haven’t seen any published schedule, but every couple of hours I get a text message about something else that is about to start. So far I’ve taken note of a Disc Jockey that will playing loud music at the pool all day each day Friday to Monday. They also announced a balloon toss tournament and the inflation of a kids water slide. It looks like it is going to be a busy weekend around here.

Thursday September 1st 2022

The day started very similar to yesterday. There were scattered fair weather clouds with lots of humidity and a gentle breeze. The temperature climbed quickly into the low to mid nineties. The similarity ended in the mid afternoon. Yesterday the thunderstorms missed this area. Today the storms seem to form right on top of this area. About 3:30 a very angry storm hit. The rain was a continuous roar on the roof and the wind gusted enough to shake my RV home. It was a half an hour of hold on and hope it ends soon.

There were lots of changes in the campground today. The start of the new month seemed to be a departure day for some of the longer term residents from the far end of the park. I’m not sure, they may have been work campers that got the park open and up and running. Later in the many new RVs showed up at the park. I’m guessing this is the start of the long weekend guests. There were more new arrivals than I’ve seen at any point since I arrived last week. It will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow.

The pictures in this blog entry are from another stop at the Ocala Wetland Recharge park. My stop today was shortened by the approach of the inclement weather. Only a few minutes after I arrived the white fluffy clouds turned dark and ominous. I hurried back to the protection of my car for the trip home. It was only a couple of minutes after I got home that the sky opened up and the heavy thunderstorm began.

Wednesday August 31st 2022

Today’s weather was nearly perfect. This area avoided the daily thunderstorms. It was a partly cloudy day with normal Florida Summer high humidity and a decent breeze. The temperature peaked around ninety degrees.

My irrational annoyance with lawn mowing was stimulated this morning with the sound of trimmers and leaf blowers outside my window shortly after 8AM. It was lawn mowing day at the RV park. I know they have to do it, but why do they have to do it when I’m around? Other than their starting time, they seem to be a little more considerate of occupied sites today. It also helped that I was away from the RV park when the noisy mowers were close to my site.

Most RV parks and some campgrounds have grass that needs to be mowed. In the summer time that means once a week. When you live in RV parks it is inevitable that you will be there when the grass gets mowed. I think my basic issue is the noise. The people doing the work have ear protection, but those of us nearby usually don’t. I have some noise canceling ear buds that I could put on to listen to music or podcasts, but when you are still in bed that is not a great option.

While I was out today, I stopped at the Ocala Wetland Recharge Park once again. It is a great place to get some walking and nature exploring done. The number of birds visible today seemed to be down from my last visit. The birds seem to hangout in the tall grass and brush along the sides of the drainage ponds. Still, I managed to get a few bird pictures.

Tuesday August 30th 2022

Today’s weather was different. The day started a little brighter than the previous few, but it was still very humid and still. The difference was the timing on the rain. The forecast predicted rain to begin after 3PM which was very similar to the previous few days. They got it wrong. Around noon the sky darkened and the clouds opened up for a few minutes followed by an attempt to return to sunny conditions. It lasted for less than an hour before the pattern repeated. By the dinner hour the sun was reasserting its dominance. I think this is the first night I’ve been here with a true sunset.

The early arrival of the rain put a bit of a damper on my daily activity. I still managed to get out between the showers, but the rain made driving around difficult. Being in the car was still better than walking outside during the rain. The roads in Ocala are pretty much laid out in a grid. The streets and avenues are numbered and identified by the quadrants of NE, NW, SE and SW. The thing is they are not necessarily continuous. A particular numbered road might end in one area and pick up again miles away in another quadrant. Roads can be multi lanes wide at one place and turn into little more than a cart path a mile or two away. I found at least two roads today that dead ended. One ended at the entrance to a horse ranch and the other at a country club without any apparent warning.

Ocala isn’t as big a city as I thought. It only has a population around sixty thousand people. Gainesville, about thirty five miles north, has a population of more than twice as many people. The Villages, which is a retirement area about thirty miles south of Ocala also has more people at around eighty thousand people. Ocala is just a nice little city.

Monday August 29th 2022

The weather pattern of the last few days held true today. The day began with heavy cloud cover, lots of humidity and very little wind. As the day went by the clouds broke up some, but as the afternoon progressed the clouds returned. It was followed shortly be a line of thunderstorms. The only real difference was in the direction of the storms. The last few days have moved from southwest to northeast. Today the storms moved from southeast to northwest.

I stopped at the Ocala Wetlands Recharge park again today on my way home from touring the area. The bird pictures in this blog entry are from my visit.

Gas prices seem to be bouncing all over the spectrum in this area. Early last week I filled the tank of my SUV for $3.39 per gallon, but many of the prices were twenty cents higher. Did I just find the right place or were prices on the way down? Late last week all of the prices seemed to be around $3.59 per gallon including the station I think I bought gas at earlier in the week. Today, most of the stations have moved off the $3.59 price to around $3.43 per gallon. My uncertainty is a condition of full time RV life style.

When you travel all the time, you don’t have a solid base for comparison. Living in one place habits are established. One passes the same gas stations everyday and you learn the prices. It is easier to understand if the trend is climbing or decreasing. The same can be said about any price from groceries to clothes.

There are many other observations that suffer from the same lack of a solid base. For example, you are at the mercy of the TV weather forecasters to know when the current weather is abnormal. Are they being dramatic for ratings or reality? For really significant weather like hurricanes I’ve learned to balance local commentary with the Weather Channel, but next day’s thunderstorms that isn’t possible. All of these things are part of the “fun’ of travel, but they can easily become part of the stress. Right now I’m depending on the calendar to remind me that fall is right around the corner. There is nothing in my current experience or the environment that clues me in to the change of season, even if I did hear a TV weather forecaster call the current pattern a sign of fall.

Sunday August 28th 2022

There was a little more blue in the sky today, but generally the weather was very similar to Saturday. The temperature was in the high eighties, with high humidity and very little wind. The possibility of rain was continuous throughout the day. I was after 8PM before the storms actually arrived. The rain was extremely heavy, but the thunder and lightening were intense.

My objective for the day was getting some rest to recharge my internal batteries. To do that I watched a lot of TV and video. My first challenge was finding the NASCAR race from Daytona that was postponed from Saturday. Yesterday’s race was on the NBC broadcast network, but today the network was broadcasting golf. The challenge was to find the correct NBC Universal cable channel that picked up the race. It turned out to be CNBC. What a race has to do with business news only a network programmer could guess. As it turns out, I didn’t watch a lot of the race.

This RV resort has very good Internet and Wifi. They do not have restriction accessing streaming services like most parks. I took full advantage today. I watched a lot of YouTube videos and a couple of movies on Amazon Prime in full HD quality. When I use my cellular data to watch the streams, I scale the quality way back to use less data.

Saturday August 27^th 2022

There was a moderate to heavy cloud cover all day. It was a very humid day with little to no wind. Even though the temperature stayed under 90 degrees it was a very uncomfortable day. The threatened thunderstorms with plenty of rain finally arrived around 7PM.

For exercise today I returned to the Ocala Wetlands Recharge Park. It is under three miles away and provides a nice place to walk with the possibility of seeing interesting things. I went earlier in the day in hopes of seeing more wildlife, but if anything it was worse than the middle of the afternoon. It was still a fun walk.

This blog entry is getting completed on Sunday morning. It will be back dated to Saturday. The humidity really seemed to get to me on Saturday. I went to bed early in the middle of writing this blog entry. Sunday is another day.

Friday August 26th 2022

The weather followed the same pattern today as it has the last few days. It began sunny with mostly blue sky and got progressively more cloudy as the day went by. By the dinner hour the clouds were thick and there was plenty of rumbling in the distance. Tonight the thunderstorms have missed this area. They seemed to pass by to the south and the north. The temperature peaked in the low nineties with plenty of humidity.

Touring the area today I was reminded of how big this area is for horses. There are ranches with all kinds of horse related names. Many are focused on particular breads and others on horse related activities. The one common element for all of the places seem to be long wood rail fences with huge lush green fields. What I don’t see is a lot of is horses. I suspect they are well back from the road or in comfortable air conditioned stables.

To go with the ranches there are plenty of horse related businesses. I passed a couple of feed stores, a big tack store complete with a saddle on display in front of the door and an “equine” veterinarian’s office. There is also a great deal of housing being built, so I wonder how many ranches have been consumed by the increase in the areas population.

I was wondering if this new RV resort I’m staying at would have more residents for the weekend. It doesn’t seem to have increased significantly. There are a couple of new RVs, but at least one departed this morning. People haven’t discovered this park yet. My guess is they will need to do a significant amount of advertising to fill the sites this winter. I wonder what the business plan is with respect to how soon they reach a healthy occupancy level.