Today’s weather was very similar to yesterday except for the severity of the thunderstorm. The day began sunny and humid. As the day went by the cloud cover increased. Toward evening the thunderstorms arrived, but today the worst of the storm passed by to the north of here.
For exercise today I visited the Ocala Wetland Recharge park. This is a wetland area created to filter treated wastewater and ground water back into the underground aquifer. It is basically a wetland park with several algae covered ponds. There are several trails and boardwalks around the park. The placards indicate that the park is home to small mammals, reptiles and birds. Today, I only saw the birds, but lots of different ones.
The photo in this blog entry is a repeat from earlier in the month. I got distracted while uploading from my camera and deleted the few pictures I took today. They weren’t that interesting anyway.
The day began with a bright blue sky allowing the temperature to rapidly climb into the low nineties. As the day progressed the clouds started to form. Around 6PM a thunderstorm arrived. It was primarily a rain and lightening event. The storm hung around the area for about two hours dropping very heavy rain. A flash flood watch was in effect for the area. The scary part was the lightening. I was surrounded by many cloud to ground lightening strikes. Most of them were a reasonable distance away, but my RV home is one of the tallest things in a big empty field right now. Needless to say, I survived.
Today was lawn maintenance day at the RV park. They use a large crew from a landscape service. Since the park has only been open a month they haven’t figured out how to mow around occupied sites. They blew all of the cuttings at my RV home ad car. The cement pad was covered in green grass clippings until they came around with a leaf blower to clean up the mess. That guy, using the noisy blower, was within a couple of feet of my open door. He had noise protection in his ears, but I didn’t. The landscape crew needs to be more considerate of the people occupying the sites. I’ve often commented in this blog on mowing in campgrounds, but this was probably the worst experience.
This area of Florida is well known for all of its retirement communities. I was reminded of that fact in Walmart this afternoon. The store was busy, but not extremely so. The issue seemed to be the makeup of the clientele. More than half of the people in the grocery section appeared to be between 75 and 100 years old. Many were using various mobility assistance devices and the others were in no hurry to complete their shopping. They just weren’t very energetic people. It wasn’t a problem, but I normally don’t think that I’m one of the younger people in the store.
The first part of the day was sunny and humid. The temperature climbed into the low nineties. The second half of the day saw a rapid increase to the cloud cover. Shortly after 4PM the daily rain storms arrived. It continued off an on into the evening.
The birds are big around here. This helicopter flew low over the park this morning. It may have even landed on the far side of the clubhouse, but my view was blocked.
The first order of business today was finishing the task of establishing my home for the next two weeks. I got the essential appliances like the coffee maker out to keep me fueled before finishing up outside. Most of the morning after tasks outside deal with the car. I have to remove my bicycle and rack along with the rest of the gear used to tow it behind my motorhome. There are more outside tasks I might complete over the next couple of days, but they depend on how much outdoor living I decided to do.
For a RV park that is mostly empty, there was a lot of staff activity this morning. The park is still in “new car” mode. They are doing lots of little cleaning and maintenance tasks that will likely be abandon when the newness of the park wears off. I’ve never seen anyone clean electrical boxes before. A staff member in a golf cart was driving to each electrical post and wiping it down inside and out with a rag. I suspect it might have been spiders they were concerned with.
The clouds started to thicken as I looked out over the empty sites of the new RV resort.
I also noticed that the sites near the entrance haven’t been completed yet. There is still an excavator in the area and none of the cement pads have been poured yet. A brief study of the campground map shows that they will have more than 480 sites when everything is finished. Currently there may be twenty five sites occupied. I wonder how many will be here over the upcoming holiday weekend.
This was a travel day so mother nature decided to make it challenging. As I was packing up this morning it was cloudy and very humid. It didn’t take much activity to build up a heavy sweat. At the other end of my travel day I had to set up in the rain.
I departed Jennings Florida right at the 11am checkout time. My journey was only a little over 100 miles, but I needed to take three hours for the trip. I killed about an hour at a rest area just south of Lake City on Interstate 75. When RV parks make the effort to publish check in times, I try to honor them. This is particularly important when you haven’t been there before.
Most of the trip was under a partly cloudy sky. Traffic was heavy going through the Lake City, Gainesville and Ocala areas. Between the big communities traffic was only impacted by the trucks slowing down climbing the hills along the bumpy spine of the Florida peninsular. Contrary to popular belief there are hills in Florida, but only in a narrow area.
As I moved south from Gainesville toward Ocala a huge wall of clouds became visible on the horizon. I was traveling into a line of thunderstorms. The clouds got darker and lightening became visible in the clouds as I got closer. Not long after that I had to turn on the windshield wipers to maintain visibility. I was lucky the worst of the storms were to the east and the west of my path. The western storm lingered around and posed a problem while I was setting up at my destination.
Site 362 at Champions Run RV Resort in Ocala Florida.
I arrived at the Champions Run RV Resort in Ocala shortly after 2PM. This is a very new RV park. It opened last month. There are several hundred mostly empty large concrete RV sites, a few cabins, a large club house and a few other amenities I haven’t figured out yet.
Today began similar to yesterday just a little more cloudy. By mid day the clouds had broken enough for partial sunshine to go with the humidity. The sun helped the temperature climb into the low nineties. Toward the end of the daylight hours the clouds returned followed shortly by a thunderstorm. The storm was accompanied by heavy winds and driving rain.
This was a very lazy Sunday. I lingered over breakfast and generally did very little other than reading and watching TV all day. The only break was a walk around the campground to check on the ducks and egrets in the retention pond. This is my last day here, so I had to “say good-bye” to the ducks.
The campground didn’t empty out this morning. Three other RVs remained after the 11AM checkout. Perhaps people don’t like to travel on Sunday. During the afternoon the next group of campers started to arrive. There seem to be more people here tonight than any other night during my stay.
I am moving on tomorrow. My original plan was to move north into Georgia from here. Finding a place for the Labor Day weekend in that direction was a challenge. Instead I’ve found a place for the next two weeks in the Ocala Florida area. My only concern is the approaching peak of Hurricane season. I’ll have to watch the tropics carefully and pull out and move north and inland if necessary.
It was a still, humid and mostly sunny day. The temperature climbed into the low nineties, but the conditions made it feel much warmer. Late in the day thunderstorms missed this area to the north.
Most of the day the sky was filled with fluffy clouds.
When I raised my blinds a little after 8AM this morning, all of my neighbors were gone. Only one other RV was visible in this section of the campground. By the 11AM checkout I was all alone. I really don’t get this place. It is so different from other times I’ve stayed here. In the past there have been a few multiple night stays among the single night stops. Nobody was here for the weekend. About 2PM tonight’s residents started to arrive. I suspect most of them will be gone in the morning.
The one thing that won’t be gone tomorrow are the ducks. They are everywhere around the retention pond. I suspect they have a coop, or whatever you call a home for domesticated ducks, back near the woods on the far side of the pond. They fly, but seem to stick pretty close to the pond. People are clearly viewed as a source of food, not as a threat. The egrets that hang out with the ducks fly away quickly, but the ducks just come closer.
It was a very changeable weather day. When I got up this morning a thick layer of fog blanketed the area. As the morning progressed the fog gave way to cloud cover. Shortly after the noon hour the sun broke through for a brief visit. By 2PM rain was threatening. Shortly after 3PM a light rain transitioned into a thunderstorm of potentially severe proportions. Rain was pounding on the roof and the north side of my RV home. Lightening was all around with almost immediate accompanying thunder. Around 4:30PM it had moved through and the drier conditions followed.
I made another attempt to book a campsite at one of the Army Corp of Engineers campgrounds along the Caloosahatchee Waterway in South Florida. My booking period that started at fourteen nights was down to four. There were five possible sites at the two campgrounds. I selected a suitable site as my target and hit the button with a second to go on my clock. Once again I was unsuccessful. There are just too many people trying for the limited number of sites. I have stayed at both campgrounds in March the last two years. There were never any empty sites and most seemed to be occupied for long stays near the two week limit. The difficulty of booking a site was a popular topic of conversation, so the difficulty I have experienced is not surprising.
With the outlook for available sites tomorrow looking worst than today, I have officially given up. I have book alternative locations for the middle two weeks in February. As I mentioned in a previous blog entry I have booked Fort Wilderness at Disney World for the first week. The next three nights will be at a KOA in the Orlando area and the last four nights will be at the Midway Campground in the Big Cypress National Preserve. I will enjoy these places, but they represent a different kind of experience than my original intent.
I also got some near term planning completed. I booked my next couple of weeks of travel after I depart here on Monday. I’m not heading inland as quickly as I expected. I’ll need to listen to the National Weather Service about conditions in the tropics. I don’t want to get surprised by a hurricane.
The weather didn’t know what to do today. The day began cloudy and very still. By mid morning the stillness was replaced by a strong north wind. It was quickly followed by a cloudburst of rain. A few minutes later the sun made a very brief appearance before the cloudy pattern with an occasional shower returned. The temperature peaked in the upper eighties.
A dreary day,
The campground really emptied out this morning. There were only two of us left after the 11AM checkout time. Clearly most of the overnight stops are travelers along Interstate 75. Since most of the RVs are from Florida, and they seem to get on the highway heading north when they leave, I’m guessing they are Florida residents heading north for a few weeks of fall travel. Last year I stopped here at the end of October and I think the opposite direction of travel was prevalent.
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of travel into Florida right now. While I was out today, I stopped at the Florida Welcome Center just over the boarder from Georgia on Interstate 75. It wasn’t very busy and I didn’t see any cars from states other than Georgia or Florida. This is one of three big Florida Welcome centers along the three major interstates entering the states. Based on a sample of two out of three I think Publix Supermarkets are sponsoring the welcome centers. There is a big advertisement for the store chain over the doors of the welcome center on Interstate 95 and this one on Interstate 75. My guess is a similar advertisement is on the welcome center in the west on Interstate 10.
The sun broke through the clouds for a little while in the early afternoon allowing the temperature to peak in the low nineties. Most of the day the clouds kept the temperature in the mid to upper eighties. During the early evening one brief thunderstorm passed close enough to drop a little rain and blow things around a bit.
For entertainment today, I watched a tree service work around the campground. All week a bucket truck operator and another guy to cleanup the mess have been working on the trees. Most of their work during thee first couple of days was trimming the low hanging branches on the trees along the exit driveway. The trees they are working on are older trees heavily weighted with Spanish Moss. Without trimming RVs would scrape on the branches. Today they changed their target to several trees in the campground proper. They did more than trim these trees. When they were finished only a stump a few inches above the ground remained. It really didn’t take long to bring the tree down piece by piece. There are still several huge live oaks adorned with Spanish Moss that stand in and around the campground. I hope they aren’t on the chopping block.
The campground was mostly empty during the day while they were working on the trees. Only a couple of other RVs stayed from last night. During the early afternoon tonight’s residents started arriving. The tree work moved out of the area with campsites when the new RVs started to arrive for the night.
My day began with the sound of rain on the roof around 7AM. I scurried to make sure all the windows were closed before returning to bed. About the time my head hit the pillow the rain stopped. It was only a very brief shower. That was the pattern all day. Heavy but small storm cells dotted the whole area. While I was out driving around the north central Florida area I drove through a couple of storms and saw several in the distance. None of the storms were very big or lasted very long. When I returned to the campground there was no evidence it had rained since the 7AM storm that woke me up.
I made another unsuccessful attempt at booking a reservation for next February this morning. Once again there were only a couple of sites available with who knows how many people competing for them. When these sites go for as little as $15 a night with the senior pass there is a big incentive. Private campgrounds in the same area want $90 to $130 a night if they have any inventory available. I have a day off from my frustration. It doesn’t look like there are any sites available starting six months from tomorrow. This is so similar to the experience I went through last March trying to book this same two week period in a Florida State Park at the start of their 11 month reservation window. That’s why I waited five months for the Federal campgrounds reservation window to open.
My challenge is complicated by the fact that I’ve booked the two weeks prior ending on February 9th in the Orlando area and the next two weeks starting on February 23rd in the Naples Florida area. I’d planned to book the two weeks in between somewhere between the two locations. My normal solution to unavailable reservations in the popular areas is to head north in the middle of the state. This area is less popular and has plenty of options. With Naples being in extreme southwest Florida this option isn’t really on the table this time. I don’t like five hour travel days.
Since I’m going to have to pay a high price for a commercial RV park, I went ahead and booked one that I know provides a lot of value for the price. I booked the first week from February 9th to the 16th at Disney’s Fort Wilderness. Obviously it wasn’t the cheapest option, but surprisingly it wasn’t the most expensive place I checked either. That distinction goes to a campground in the Fort Pierce area. I still want to get a few days at my desired location before the 23rd. Then I’ll just need to fill the gap from the 16th to whenever.
Tomorrow I need to work a more immediate planning problem. I need to book a site for my next stop and the Labor Day weekend.
Rob's Rambling Road Trip 