Wednesday October 27th 2021

It was in the sixties when I tried to get out of bed this morning. The slightly chilly air drove me back under the covers for more of the morning news program on TV. Once I got up, I found a nice sunny day that eventually warmed into the upper seventies before the clouds moved in late in the day. The TV weather talkers are in scare the masses mode about tomorrow’s weather. A cold front is approaching that included severe thunderstorms and tornadoes today in Texas and Louisiana. They are predicting a “slight” chance of similar weather here tomorrow.

My slow start to the day rippled throughout the day. It ended up being a day focused on chores and maintenance tasks around my RV home. I managed to get in a couple of walks around the RV park too. When I returned from the first walk, I was just in time to prevent the Amazon delivery guy from leaving me a package I hadn’t ordered. Delivery people bring products right to your door at this park, but the site numbering system and package labeling don’t always get along. In this case there was a different number on the label that represented the indented location. There is a big difference between site 23 and site 651. With all the delivery trucks I see going by, I’ll bet it happens a lot.

There is more turn over in this park than I thought. The location of my site provides a good view of about two thirds of the arrivals, but less than half of the departures. Walking around the park I see a few empty sites every day, but they aren’t the same ones. I’m still certain that most of the residents are here longer than a few days, but maybe the location along Interstate 95 draws in more short term guests than I thought. It will be interesting to see if this weekend’s big Florida Georgia football game in Jacksonville draws fans from Georgia to the RV park.

Tuesday October 26th 2021

The sun was back in full brilliance and the humidity was down today. The high temperature was very comfortable in the low eighties.

Today turned into a bit of a wandering tour of the area. While I was out on a couple of errands, I found myself driving east along the north bank of the St. Johns river toward the Atlantic Ocean. The area nearest the city is dedicated to the port of Jacksonville. I passed piers for oil tankers, container ships, car carriers and even cruise ships. The port was fairly busy, but it didn’t look backlogged like some of the west coast ports.

The road I was on transitioned into route A1A after passing a ferry port across the river. A1A continued on toward the Atlantic Ocean then turned north onto Little Talbot Island and Big Talbot Island and eventually Amelia Island. It was high tide. There were plenty of the little boat ramps to pull off the road into to get a vie of the river. I didn’t see much traffic on the water. Near the Atlantic Ocean I saw several ships apparently at anchor waiting to enter the port, so maybe the port is busy.

The Talbot islands are primarily state parks. I didn’t see any areas to stop along the road other than entering the parks. That is something that I may do, but it will require a little more planning. Areas to stop got even more scarce once I transitioned onto Amelia Island. My brief impression was of traffic circles, gated communities and full tiny parking lots for bicycle trails. If I really want to explore the southern end of Amelia Island I’ll need to bring my bicycle. Once I reached route 200 back to Intestate 95, I bailed on the island for now.

Monday October 25th 2021

It rained overnight resulting in a very dreary morning. When I got up this morning the clouds were very low. It wasn’t fog, but it was a very dull day. Large puddles in the road indicated there was more than light rain overnight. The weather improved slowly throughout the day. It was late afternoon before the sun started to find openings in the cloud cover. Tomorrow is forecast to be a sunny day.

A major traffic back up on the Interstate 95 southbound lane kept me at home in the RV park today. When I started out I found the stopped traffic and its impact. The road the RV park is located on was being used by motorists to bailout of the southbound I95 traffic. Knowledgeable drivers can use the road in both directions as a shortcut to the I295 beltway. Unfortunately, all of the traffic had resulted in grid lock. I made a U-turn before I got into the middle of the traffic mess and returned to my RV home. A couple of hours later, when I was getting my daily exercise walking around the RV park, traffic on Interstate 95 was still barely moving. I don’t know if it was an accident or the construction at the intersection of I95 with the 295 beltway. It was probably both.

Part of the process of getting settled in at a new location is learning the schedule of services at an RV park and getting used to the noises. It turns out that Monday is lawn maintenance day. An outside service does the job with a crew of at least ten guys, several trucks, mowers and other noisy equipment. It wasn’t to bad today, but the lawn in my area of the RV park didn’t need mowing so they didn’t do much near my Motorhome. I haven’t determined which day of the week the noise rubbish pickup takes place. The truck will pass my site, but probably I won’t hear the actual emptying of the dumpsters.

I have pretty much gotten used to the sound of the passing jets as the take off and land at Jacksonville International Airport. The average commercial jets make a distinct noise that I’m already able to pass off. Even though I hear it I don’t react. Some of the smaller regional jets make a higher pitched noise that draw my attention, but I should be able to get used to. The Florida Air National Guard fighters are another matter. This morning six took off at the breakfast hour. They come in groups of two. Each aircraft in the pair is separated by a few seconds from its partner. The extra loud sound of the high speed take off from one aircraft just starts to fade when the second one grows in intensity. A minute or two later the pattern repeats for the next set of two. I guess I should be thankful they weren’t doing full power takeoffs with bone shaking sonic booms.

Sunday October 24th 2021

Most of the day was under bright blue sky. Late in the afternoon the clouds arrived ahead of some forecast overnight rain. The temperature peaked a little above the average in the low eighties.

My food supply was getting low this morning. It had been close to two weeks since I visited a grocery store back in Mississippi. This morning I finished off the last of my bread and I didn’t have anything out of the freezer for dinner. A trip for groceries was needed. I tend to go for groceries when I need to without considering the prudence of the task. Grocery shopping on Sundays is a challenge. For some reason it is a very busy grocery shopping day. \

The Walmart I frequent for groceries in this area was both busy and under going a remodel. Areas of the store were empty of everything including the shelves and blocked off. It looks like they were redoing the floor. Merchandise was moved around and compressed into a smaller area. It made stuff harder to find and very congested with all the people in the store. The store has also changed to a mostly self service checkout model, but I managed to find one of the few staffed checkouts without a major line.

At the RV park in the afternoon I got in my second walk of the day. This park is spread out over a large area along the side of Interstate 95. From the entrance to the newer back area it is about a mile. When I walk around the perimeter of the front and back areas, I travel about two miles. It is good exercise and occasionally the drainage ponds have interesting wildlife to observe.

This RV park is mainly occupied by people staying more than a night or two. I recognize a few of the RVs from my stay in June. Everything is kept very neat and organized, so it is hard to identify truly long term residents. I believe there is a mixture of full time RVers staying a month or two like me, snowbirds in Florida for the winter and people using the park for temporary living arrangements. I observed a wide variety of states of origin based on license plates. The furthest distance of travel I saw was Oregon and Idaho. I also saw Arizona, Nevada and Kansas that don’t match the typical origins for winter Floridians. Other than Florida, Virginia seems to be a very popular home state for the RVs in the park.

Saturday October 23rd 2021

A weak cold front passed through the area last night. It didn’t drop any rain, but it managed to reduce Friday’s humidity. Today’s sky was bright blue without any clouds. The high temperature reached the low to mid eighties with a gentle breeze that made it very comfortable out of the direct sunlight.

I spent the day getting settled in for my extended stay here in the Jacksonville area. I do a couple of additional things when setting up for a longer stay. For example, I put covers on the wheels to protect the tires from extended direct UV exposure. I also get an additional chair or two out of the basement storage bins to make the outside area look a little more livable.

Yesterday I got a question on why I’m staying in one place longer than normal in this area. I think it deserves a paragraph or two of discussion. It has been sixteen months since I stayed in one place longer than two weeks. That is the second longest run without a pause on the Rambling Road Trip. Between February of of 2018 and October of 2019, I completed a longer period of continuous travel. During the winter of 2015-2016 I spent four months in one place in central Florida. During the winter of 2016-2017 I spent a month at one place in Florida and a month at one place in Arizona. The months of November 2017 through January 2018 were spent at one place in Las Vegas Nevada. The winter of 2018-2019 followed the two weeks here, two weeks there model in Florida. The winter of 2019-2020 was back in Las Vegas for four months. Shortly after starting my 2020 touring the pandemic hit and I went into “hibernation” for the months of April and May in the Arizona desert. I’ve been following the two weeks or less model since leaving there at the end of May 2020.

The places I like to stay are mostly public campgrounds. Most state and federal parks have a two week limit. You can usually return after a period of time somewhere else, but you must vacate the park. Two weeks isn’t long enough to get some things accomplished. If you need to do something that requires an appointment, like car service, it becomes tricky. Once you arrive in an area and find a suitable place, it is often impossible to get an appointment before your two weeks is up. Trying to plan ahead in unfamiliar areas has its own set of challenges and uncertainties.

Most people who are traveling full time in an RV, develop a set of go to locations that they frequent for longer stops. Often it is in their old home town area, other times it is near family and some, like me, just pick an area. My old home region is New England and I wouldn’t want to be there in the winter. In the summer there is still lots of country to see. Northeast Florida is my choice on the east coast. Las Vegas seems to have become my choice in the west, but for entirely different reasons. Northeast Florida is near my mail service and thus my domicile. Things are easier to do around here and I’ve developed some familiarity with the area. In past years, when I’ve been on the east coast, even though I didn’t stay at one place in the area I often spent several successive one and two week stays in the area. This year it was more convenient (and cheaper) to stay at one place for a little over a month. It won’t be all errands and tasks while I’m here. There are some nice parks along the St Johns River and the Atlantic ocean is only a little ways away.

Friday October 22nd 2021

I was up with the sun, which is around 7AM in this area, to get ready for my travel day. It was a warm and humid morning as I packed up and got ready to travel. The plan was to leave as close to the 11AM checkout time to arrive at my destination one hundred miles away after the 1PM check in time. I succeeded in departing at 10:50AM, but not without a few odd mistakes getting things set for travel.

As a solo traveler, I am in the habit of checking everything twice or more getting ready. Traveling couples can double check each other, but I don’t have that luxury. Usually when I recheck things everything was done right the first time. This morning I wasn’t on top of my game. I found windows that I hadn’t shut and a water pressure regulator I forgot to properly stow. Those were little things that wouldn’t have caused serious consequences, but one of my lapses would have had resulted in disaster. I had neglected to put one of the locking pins in the tow bar for towing the car. All of my double and triple checking really paid off this morning.

My only stop on today’s journey was at a gas station a couple of exits south of my starting point. Once again I only put in one credit card pass worth of fuel. This time, in addition to a probably futile hope that the price will go down, I was frustrated by the pump. The handle would not lock in the on position. I had to hold the leaver in for almost five minutes as the tank filled. My hand was starting to cramp.

Construction on Interstate 10 as it approaches the Interstate 295 beltway along with heavy traffic lead to me miss the exit. I had to continue further toward the downtown area. I could have continued to Interstate 95 in the downtown area, but found an exit to reverse direction. The beltway around the northwest quadrant of the city had less traffic.

I arrived at Pecan Park RV Resort near the Jacksonville Airport around 1:15PM. I was assigned a different site than the one I thought I reserved, but it is likely to my advantage. This site, near the front of the park, is further from the Interstate 95 highway noise and doesn’t have any rear neighbors. On the down side, it is closer to the Jacksonville Airport runway approach noise and it is on a busier road. I’ll be here until the last week of November.

Thursday October 21st 2021

The overnight temperatures were a little warmer Wednesday night leading to a warmer start to the day. It was a more humid day with a high temperature in the mid eighties. According to the TV weather talkers it is about five degrees above normal for the time of year.

My RV home is parked with the back few feet under the canopy of a huge Oak tree. At some times of year that would provide welcome shade. Right now, it is the source of annoyance. At random times during the day or night it drops acorns onto my RV roof. This little nuts land with a loud echoing plonk or thud depending on where they land. Once I new what was happening, they weren’t bothersome, but even with knowledge they are still startling. Between the breeze and hungry squirrels quite a few nuts have bounced off my roof.

The transient section of this RV park is close to full again tonight. It was similarly full on Tuesday night when I arrived. Yesterday seemed to be an off day for overnight visitors. I had the only RV in my row until one arrived well after dark. I wonder what travel pattern caused the Wednesday anomaly.

I am moving on to my first real Florida winter stop tomorrow. It is about one hundred miles to the Jacksonville area. I’ll be there until the end of November. I’m looking forward to a longer period in one location and I’m developing a list of things I want to get done.

Wednesday October 20th 2021

The fall weather I’ve experienced the last few days is over. Between the changing weather pattern and getting closer to the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the temperature is back into the mid eighties with increasing humidity. The only real positive factor is the overnight temperatures are still getting down into the low fifties. It is good sleeping weather.

I did a little bit of this and a little bit of that today. Basically it was a day to relax after a travel day. Coming up with something close to informative or entertaining in this blog entry isn’t happening tonight. Here are some of the pictures of the non human visitors to the campground.

Tuesday October 19th 2021

The cold morning trend continued today. I was up early to get ready for the travel day, but had to keep moving to stay warm. As a consequence, I was ready to travel earlier than planned. It was on the road a little around 10AM for my 190 mile travel day.

I made one stop for gas shortly after I got on the road. The price per gallon at the Love’s station was only a penny higher than Sunday’s purchase in Alabama. Some of the other stations in the area were more than ten cents higher. Once again I only put one credit card swipe of about 40 gallons in the tank. Since I hadn’t checked the web or one of the price tracking Aps, I had a fleeting hope that the price would be cheaper in Florida. When I checked the Web this evening I found fuel prices were another 5 cents higher. It doesn’t make a big difference (about $3.00 for a full tank) in the overall scheme of things, but it is annoying.

Traffic along the way was heavy, but it kept moving. There was a steady flow of big trucks to deal with. Most of them were going faster than I was, but every now and then I encountered one going slower. Getting around a slow moving truck with faster trucks passing almost continuously in the next lane was often challenging. It was a little after 1PM when I arrived at the Florida Welcome center. I got my thee ounces of free Orange Juicy to celebrate my return. I left Florida at the beginning of July. I plan to be in the state until at least the middle of April.

I’m at the Jennings KOA Holiday in Jennings Florida. The campground is on the side of Interstate 75 a few miles south of the state line. I’ve stayed here a couple of other times. I am on the same site I was on during my last stay in June of this year. I’ll be here until Friday.

Monday October 18th 2021

It was another cold morning. The outside temperature got down into the low to mid forties overnight. It was fifty inside my RV home when I woke this morning. I turned on the electric fireplace to raise the temperature a little, but I counted on the sun to do most of the warming. It took until noon to break the seventy degree mark inside. Outside it only got to the low seventies by the end of the afternoon.

Today was planned as a day of rest after yesterday’s long travel day. It also turned in to an acclimation to the new time zone day. Today was my first day back in the eastern time zone after three and a half months in the central time zone. I grew up and spent most of my life in the eastern time zone, so when I’m in other zones I’m always doing some comparison and translation. Even so, today had some of the typical disorientation associated with crossing into a new time zone west to east. The biggest factor is not having an accurate sense of time during the day. I am sure it will be resolved in a day or two, only to be replaced by a different kind of temporal confusion with the return to standard time in a couple of weeks.

The campground was close to full last night and it is again tonight. During the day more than half the sites were empty. This park is very much a night or two stop along the way. Most of the RVs are from states along the Interstate 75 corridor from Michigan to Florida.

During an early afternoon walk around the campground, I saw more Canadian Geese than people. The small pond at the front of campground was surrounded by geese. It looks like several pairs of geese raised there families without any attrition. I stopped counting around fifty.

I am moving another 190 miles south tomorrow. I’ll be back in Florida for the first time since the beginning of July when I stop for three nights just south of the state line. On Friday I’ll continue east to the Jacksonville area for a longer stay. Let my winter Florida itinerary begin.