Wednesday January 5th 2022

The first half of the day was cloudy. Over the remainder of the daylight hours the sun gradually became the dominant presence in the sky. The temperature peaked in the low to mid seventies. The lack of clouds at the end of the day will allow for more radiational cooling and thus a colder overnight.

In yesterday’s blog entry, I wrote that I knew where to find the Best Buy to buy a new TV. That turned out to be a little optimistic. I set out shortly after the lunch hour to drive to the Best Buy in Bradenton FL. It didn’t appear to be located in the area I expected it to be located. At a traffic light I pulled up Google Maps on my phone and asked for the “nearest Best Buy”. A list of three came up and I selected the first one in the list assuming it was the closest. Google had me turning south at the next intersection. I was uncertain on the accuracy of the instruction but followed the direction. With each passing intersection I became more certain it was taking me on a wild ride. Once I got to the airport on the Sarasota Bradenton line, I gave up on Googles direction and reversed direction until I found a parking lot to stop and reassess my route. When I selected the Best Buy from the list at the traffic light, I’d selected the one in Sarasota. The Bradenton store I was seeking was right around the corner from the traffic light I started following Googles instructions.

At the Best Buy I found the TV I identified on the internet as appropriate on display. I verified that it had the correct orientation of mounting wholes. Everything was looking good except they didn’t have any in stock. I found a similar LG TV in white instead of black. An interrogation of the sales associate collaborated that it was the same TV in a different color plastic. It took twenty questions to get that simple answer. I bought the white LG TV. Getting home was a lot easier than getting to Best Buy.

Back at my RV home it took only a couple of minutes to get the old TV disconnected and off the cabinet door. The mounting bracket is in two parts. The part attached to the wall implements a French Cleat to hold the TV up. The part mounted to the TV forms the part that hooks over the cleat. The mounting bracket will fit on the new TV, but I’m going to have to get some longer screws and some spacers to allow it to hang straight. I have it hung temporarily tonight.

The new TV is a Smart TV. It took longer for it to boot up and answer the questions it demanded that it was to get it hung. Getting used to its features and using the remote is going to take some time and study. How easy it will be to change the configuration and find new channels when I move remains to be seen. For now I can watch TV in the bedroom again. Figuring out what to do about the bigger TV in the living area is still an issue.

Tuesday January 4th 2022

The inside temperature was fifty degrees at 7:30AM. I turned on the electric fireplace and went back to bed unit it warmed up a bit. Eventually the day warmed up to the low seventies. It was ten degrees warmer than Monday, but still ten degrees cooler than Sunday. Today’s temperature was about the average for this time of year.

Between my two walks around the state park I went in search of a solution to my TV problem. I found that I’m looking for something the stores don’t stock heavily. A 32inch TV is to small to be displayed in many stores. The nearby Walmart use their space to display the big TVs measuring 60, 70 and even 75 inches diagonally. The few smaller sizes they stock are in boxes in some obscure area. I really would like to see the back of TV to verify the mounting hole pattern before I buy one. I didn’t make it to the local Best Buy. It wasn’t located were I thought it should be. After consulting Google, I know where to find it now. Traffic in this area continues to frustrate me. Tomorrow is another day to solve my TV problem.

The residents of this campground continue to turn over on a regular basis. I have new neighbors again tonight. The tent on the next site has been replaced by a van camper. Down the road a U-haul truck is serving as a sleeping area for another group. There is a real wide range of campers in this park.

Monday January 3rd 2022

This morning a few minutes after 4AM the howling wind woke me up. The latest cold front was approaching. I got the open windows closed before it started to rain. The weather reports indicate it was a very brief rain and wind event in this area, but I was back asleep, so I can’t confirm it. When I did get up this morning the sun was shining, the wind was blowing out of the northeast and the temperature was in the low sixties. It never got any warmer.

When I returned from my first walk of the day, my long ignored TV troubles doubled. The back light on my main TV broke more than a year ago in late 2020. I learned to work around the problem while waiting to find an appropriate replacement. Today the TV in my bedroom bit the dust in similar way. Everything works, you just can’t see the picture unless you shine a flashlight on the screen at the correct angle.

There isn’t a good simple solution to the problem. The cost to fix the 32 inch TV in the bedroom is about the cost of a replacement TV. Fixing the 42 inch TV in the living area might be viable if I had a free helper to get the TV off the wall and transported to a repair facility. An at home repair service, assuming they’d agree that my RV qualifies, would bring the cost close to the replacement cost of the 42 inch TV. All of this assumes the replacement parts are available and not back ordered from Asia.

Replacing the TVs is also tricky. They are both mounted with custom brackets and openings in the wall behind them for the cables. When I investigated the 42 inch TV replacement I found that new TVs of a similar size didn’t use the same size mounting pattern. Mounting a replacement would require fabricating a new mounting system. This is one of the repairs I have tried off and on to get RV service people to work on without success. So today, when I started to investigate replacing the smaller bedroom TV, I didn’t have a lot of hope.

It turns out that LG hasn’t changed the mounting bracket size or the location of the connections significantly in the new models from the six year old model. It seems to be the only brand that uses a 200mm square mounting pattern. Most of the other 32 inch TVs are using a 100mm square pattern. Tomorrow I’ll take my current TV off the wall and check for other issues and maybe make a trip to Best Buy for a replacement. I also have a backup plan. My third TV is in a compartment outside that I don’t use often. It is identical to the broken TV in the bedroom. I could bring it inside, but a quick look at its mounting bracket was discouragingly complicated.

While looking for a suitable replacement for the 32 inch TV, I may have found a solution for the bigger 42 inch TV. Toshiba makes a TV with a 400mm by 200mm mounting that I might be able to use by drilling two new holes in the mounting bracket which was designed for a 400mm square mounting. I’m not impressed with the quality of the Toshiba, but anything may be better than nothing. If all goes well with the 32 inch replacement, I might try to replace the bigger 42 inch TV myself. The concern with managing the bulky TV alone remains, but knowing that I don’t have to find someone to weld a new bracket is a positive.

Sunday January 2nd 2022

It was windy day ahead of tonight’s passing cold front. The sky was dotted with fluffy white clouds that occasionally blocked the bright sun. The humidity was also high so the low eighties temperature felt even warmer.

The campground had a very big turnover today. When I walked through campground at midday more than half the sites were empty. All of the people that were here for week between Christmas and New Years or even just the New Years holiday weekend had departed. By the time I took my second walk just before sunset the empty sites were all filled with new residents. This park draws a very diverse range of camping equipment from tents to class A diesel pusher motorhomes.

Today I checked out the park for changes since my last visit in March 2021. The biggest change seems to be along the trails. The vegetation has been cut way back. Most of the paths are more than twice as wide as they used to be. The trails are mostly in areas of the park managed by prescribed burns. According to the signage the area is intentionally burned every one to three years. I don’t recall seeing the results of any recent burns, so maybe the heavy pruning is in preparation for another prescribed burn.

I am also in wildlife withdrawal. After two weeks at Myakka River State Park where I saw birds, alligators and deer most every day this park is a big change. Today I saw a dove and a couple of squirrels. Even the wildflowers seem to be in short supply. The yellow blossom I’ve included pictures of is located in the wet ground along the lake and is the only wildflower with any abundance.

Saturday January 1st 2021

Happy New Year Everyone

The year in Bradenton Florida began shrouded in a heavy thick fog. By morning the weather cleared into a mostly sunny warm day with a high temperature in the low eighties. Tomorrow is forecast to be a transition day with the highs on Monday in the sixties.

In addition to finishing setting up camp for the next two weeks I did a few odd tasks today. One of the little things was backing up all of my pictures and blog source files for the last year. Thanks to the wonders of the digital age, I took over 7,000 pictures during 2021. While the backup was going on I had time to reflect on my 2021 travels.

Overall the Rambling Road Trip in 2021 was unremarkable. I didn’t visit any new states or big National Parks and only stayed at five new campgrounds all year. It wasn’t a bad year, just not one filled with “bucket list” items. I enjoyed the staying at Fontainebleau State Park on Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana. It was a gem of a new find. I also enjoyed three weeks along the Mississippi River watching the shipping during my two stays at Tom Sawyer RV Park and my return to Maumelle Corp of Engineers Park on the Arkansas River in Little Rock Arkansas for two weeks was also fun.

I allowed a lot of external concerns influence my travel this year. I was still in Florida in June. First I was waiting for the COVID vaccine, then I was trying to schedule some maintenance on my RV home. The vaccination happened by mid April which was earlier than I originally thought, but getting RV service was a big challenge. I finally did some of the things like replacing the coach batteries my self and other items are still on the list to get done. It just wasn’t happening in a timely fashion.

All of these things along with a good dose of procrastination prevented me from making reservations in the areas I wanted to visit. This had a few positive results, but was largely the biggest restriction on the years travels. The good thing was that it allowed me to run from severe weather without concern with recovering lost reservation fees. I ran from the path of three tropical systems. The negative aspect of not making reservations well in advance is the weekends. In popular areas the weekends were often fully booked even when I was looking a month or more in advance. The Labor Day and Columbus day weekends were of particular concern. The October holiday really snuck up on me. I ended up reversing course by two hundred miles to find an available site.

Currently I have reservations through the third week of April. My plan for the summer of 2022 is the Dakotas and other places along the way north and back. I am already late making reservations at the really popular public places next summer, but private campgrounds are still an option. I also have to start making reservations for next winter in Florida. The conditions haven’t improved since last year, but hopefully I will consider 2021 a lesson learned.

Friday December 31st 2021

Happy New Year Everyone

Today was a short travel day, but still had all the work to get ready for travel and setting up at my new location. The day started foggy before transitioning to a sunny humid day. The temperature peaked in the mid eighties.

I had plenty of time to get ready for travel. My goal was to depart between 12:30 and 1PM so my site would be available when I arrived. I’d do a little prep work then break for food or TV watching trying to gauge the time as it went along. About noon I put the focus on getting ready to leave. I still left plenty of time in case something went wrong. Once everything was hooked up and in travel mode, I still had time to sit and reflect. I pulled out of Myakka River State Park at 12:30PM.

The trip north to Lake Manatee State Park in Bradenton took forty five minutes. Traffic was heavy all the way. The trip up Interstate 75 kept moving, but the traffic was very heavy. The construction crews seem to have the day off. Driving east from I-75 to the state park I managed to catch every traffic light. Since my last stay in March, road construction has added two new intersections and one traffic light. The development continues to get closer to the state park.

This state park isn’t as big as Myakka River State Park. It also doesn’t have anywhere near as many opportunities to view wildlife. Probably because of that it is usually easier to get a reservation. I’ve been here almost twice as many times as I’ve been to Myakka River State Park.

This is an OK park for access to the attractions in the area. The site I got for this visit has a couple of annoyances, not real issues. My site is near the edge of a group of campers that are here to celebrate the New Year. There gathering place is located further around the camping loop so the noise is muffled some. They will probably be gone by Monday. The other thing is the orientation of my site. The only significant tree at my site is right in the path of my satellite dish antenna. I won’t have any satellite TV for the next two weeks. I’ll have to be happy with some of the sixty plus over the air stations.

Thursday December 30th 2021

It was after ten this morning before the overnight fog burned off. By mid afternoon the temperature at the state park was in the mid eighties under a bright sunny sky. Near the gulf coast it was a different story. The fog never really lifted along the coast which kept the temperature near eighty. The fog has returned inland tonight setting up a repeat performance tomorrow morning.

This is my last full day at Myakka River State Park. It was also a much busier day than the last few. I had many travel preparation tasks to complete and I needed to get some groceries to make it into the new year without having to get creative with substitutes for basic items like bread. Traffic in the Sarasota area was terrible. An accident along with construction on Interstate 75 northbound had the highway completely backed up and the excess traffic on the local streets snarled. I escaped the traffic by taking I-75 south for an exit and returning north into Sarasota on US41, the Tamiami trail. After filling my grocery needs I fought my way home through the Sarasota traffic. I-75 north was still plugged.

I only got one walk around the state park today. It was late in the day as the sun was setting, but the alligators seem to have already headed for their night time feeding locations. I found one gator submerged along the river bank watching the bank carefully. As I approached its head didn’t move, but I’m sure its eyes were tracking my every move. Many of the birds had retreated from the river bank to tree branches high above the bank. I’ve taken several other walks at similar times over the last couple of weeks. Today seemed to be a less active day.

Tomorrow I’m moving north to Lake Manatee State Park. It is less than twenty miles as the crow flies but more than thirty along the most reasonable route. It is another regular stop for me in this area. It doesn’t have the same wildlife viewing opportunities as this park, but it has everything it needs for a two week stay. Once again I’ll try to leave this park close enough to checkout time to allow my destination with the same checkout time to empty out.

Wednesday December 29th 2021

It is getting a little more humid which is bringing a few more clouds to the otherwise bright sunny sky. The temperature peaked in the mid eighties, but it felt a little warmer.

This blog entry is a bit of a rant. I’m going to get my “soap box” out and vent a little, but I’m still including a selection of today’s photos. Yesterday I wrote about the crowds not understanding basic state park and wildlife etiquette. I think it got worse today. Here are three of today’s observations in increasing order of stupidity.

One of the best alligator observation areas is from the bridge over the Myakka River on the main park road. To get there I have to walk about a mile along the narrow winding park road. The speed limit is marked as 15MPH and most drivers keep it under thirty. I was taught as a child to walk facing traffic when there is no sidewalk. In fact, that is part of the National Highway Traffic Safety Codes and included as law in most states. On just about every trip to the bridge I see people oblivious of this simple safety rule. Today as I rounded one twist in the road I saw a group of eight to ten people walking toward me on the same side of the road. They were spread out across most of the road. They didn’t see the car approaching them from behind. Probably because they were so spread out the driver of the car saw them in time and stopped. It was nearly a minute before anyone in the group knew there was a car waiting to get by them.

On one of the trails along the river two children around six to eight years old and two adult “children” who were probably their parents were “goofing off” along the bank. One of the little kids was trowing every stick and bush she could find into the river. The little boy had shimmied out a tree growing horizontally over the river about a foot and a half above the water. His legs were hanging down toward the alligator infested water. I doubt the alligators would be interested, but I don’t know that. Neither adult was watching the kids. The female adult was playing with her phone. The guy was busy defacing a palm tree with his knife.

The third and probably stupidest observation also involves alligators. Several people had walked along the river bank from the bridge a couple of hundred yards to an area with several alligators taking the sun on the bank. One group got within five or ten feet of a gator to get a selfie. That wasn’t daring enough. One guy decided he needed to touch a gator. He slowly approach the gator from behind and reached out to touch its tail. I don’t think he actually succeeded. He jump back away from the gator and the gator didn’t react. I moved on before he could try again. Watching carnage wasn’t in my plan for the day.

Thank you for allowing me to vent. Here are some of today’s pictures.

Tuesday December 28th 2021

The great weather and the crowds vising the park continue. The temperature peaked in the mid eighties. Today also appeared to be the busiest day for visitors to the park since I arrived eleven days ago.

Most of the parking lots were overflowing. A steady flow of slow moving cars paraded along the main park road. The down side is that many of the extra visitors weren’t knowledgeable of basic park etiquette and safety concerns. There were people everywhere. It didn’t matter that there wasn’t a trail in the area. Somehow people found a way to get into some “interesting” places. In many cases they took advantage of the low water level and walked along the exposed river bank. The people were walking in areas that normally were home to sun bathing alligators and feeding birds. Walking along the side of the river in alligator country one might get surprised by a gator lurking just under the water’s surface. In most cases adult size people are safe, but little dogs and children maybe not.

I had to venture much further from the main road to find gators and birds today. All of the wandering people kept them from the easier viewing areas. Most of the people on the longer trails know how to interact with nature in harmony. I didn’t get any noteworthy pictures today, but some of the birds were nicely photogenic. Here are today’s best pictures.

Monday December 27th 2021

After a little fog overnight it turned into another bright sunny day. Once again the temperature peaked around eighty. Another overall great weather day.

On my walks around the state park today I focused on the Great Blue Herons. There seemed to be more around today than usual. I took pictures of alligators and egrets too, but I’m not going to include them in this blog entry of mostly pictures.