Sunday March 24th 2019

It was a nice day with a few high clouds to block the sun from time to time. The temperature was around eighty in the afternoon after a slow start from around sixty degrees overnight.

I spent a lazy day wandering around Walt Disney World on the transportation system. I started with a short boat ride to the Wilderness Lodge and continued on from there on a bus followed by a couple of monorail rides and another boat back to Fort Wilderness. The only actual park time I spent was a couple of hours in EPCOT.

The crowds today reflected the volume you’d expect for a Sunday in Spring Break season. It seemed to be very busy. The few wait times I saw at EPCOT were close to an hour for rides that usually move quickly like Space Ship Earth. I didn’t even check the rides that usually have long waits. The only attraction I visited was the Disney Pixar Short film theater. I’m not sure I’ve been in the theater since the “Honey I Shrunk the Audience” show ended years ago. Today I saw three short films that were really fun.

My real attraction to EPCOT this time of year is the International Flower and Garden Festival. The flowers, gardens and topiaries are beautiful. They make the park very bright and cheerful. I wandered around Future World checking out all the colorful plantings. I’ll be back a couple of more times this week to see more of the festival and watch some of the entertainment.

Tonight I returned to the Bay Lake beach in the campground to watch the fireworks. I didn’t take any pictures tonight, but watched the show more closely. There are some very remarkable firework shells. When the music and narration talks about love, the fireworks are in the shape of hearts. Similarly, when the bells are ringing, the fireworks are bell shaped. The view from the beach of the aerial bursts is terrific. It is a much calmer way to watch the fireworks than inside the Magic Kingdom. Last January I had that experience and had to fight my way out of the park after the show.

Saturday March 23rd 2019

I was packed up with the car hitched up by 11AM. The next three hours were a battle with Florida traffic going a little over 100 miles on Interstate 75 and Interstate 4. The volume of traffic is so great that any little problem causes a backup. When you combine the four or five areas of congestion, I had more than twenty miles of ten to twenty mile per hour travel.

I arrived at Disney’s Fort Wilderness campground between 2 and 2:30pm. After check-in I dropped my car off in the overflow parking area. There isn’t enough room to unhitch the car in the camping loops. I have a full hook-up site in loop 1900. This is the lowest category of full hookup site and it is still costing me more than I’ve ever paid at Disney before. I must have been feeling rich or demented when I booked this site for the next eight days. This site costs significantly more per night than I spent for a week in the Big Cypress National Preserve earlier in the month.

Once I was set up and had an early supper, I road my bicycle around some of the campground. The bike was doing a little complaining. I need to check the adjustments on the bicycle gears and lubricate it some. The bike is going to be an important means of transportation. This site is a long distance from most of the campground amenities and I don’t have a golf cart like many of my neighbors. Waiting for the bus transportation may get old fast. I waited over twenty minutes for the bus back to the overflow parking lot to retrieve my car.

Tonight, before I sat down to write this blog entry, I went down to the shores of Bay Lake to watch the Happily Ever After Fireworks display across the water at the Magic Kingdom. Here are some pictures I took.

Friday March 22nd 2019

Today’s weather was a copy of Thursday. It was sunny with a high around seventy and a north wind. When you were sheltered from the wind it was a great day. In the shade and wind it was a little chilly.

My marathon of Spring Training games came to an end today with the Pirates versus the Rays in Port Charlotte. This was my sixth game in eight days. It would have been eight in eight days if two games hadn’t been rained out. Next year I plan to be in the Phoenix area for the entire month of March. I’ll try to do more games spread out over a longer period of time. Watching a baseball game at the stadium is so much better than watching on TV. At the stadium you get to see all the nuances of the game. On TV the broadcast focus is on the position of the pitch in the strike zone while ignoring the players on the field. Watching all the defensive shifts and other action on the field is only possible at the game. Plus, there is also all the bizarre behavior of the people in the stands.

Today’s game between the Pirates and the Rays was slow. Both teams were changing pitchers in the middle of the inning and there were a lot of base runners. The score wasn’t high because they were leaving runners on base most innings. The end result was a Rays victory.

Tomorrow I’m moving on. I’ll be staying for a week at Disney’s Fort Wilderness. It is a little over one hundred miles from here. My plan is to leave here around 11AM. Hopefully, my site will be available when I get to the Fort.

Thursday March 21st 2019

It was a bright sunny day with a strong wind out of the north. The temperature was a little below normal for this time of year. It only barely got above seventy degrees.

Today’s Spring Training game was between the Orioles and the Pirates in Bradenton FL. The game was held at LEMCO field. Built in 1923, it is the oldest active spring training game venue. It was last updated before the 2013 season. Provided you are in the real seats, it is good place to watch a game. If you get one of the bleacher style seats, I’m not sure you would make it through the game. I had a comfortable seat behind the Pirates dugout. The only problem was the weather. I was in the shade and the north wind was blowing right at me. At times it was more than chilly.

The game had a fair share of home runs. Most of the early runs were from the long ball. In the middle innings there were more base runners and some scoring. The ninth inning began with a tie. The Orioles scored two runs in the top half of the inning to go ahead. In the bottom of the ninth the Pirates filled the bases. The next batter continued the day’s theme with a home run. The game ended with a walk off grand slam.

Wednesday March 20th 2019

Today was dry with a little bit of sun between the clouds. It was windy overnight and into the day today. The temperature made it into the low seventies.

I spent the daytime hours enjoying the Lake Manatee State Park. I walked around the campground and down to the picnic area and boat launch. The sixty campsites are full every evening, but during the day there is some turnover. Today everybody seem to be a little sleepy. There weren’t many people out and about.

Today’s Spring Training game was a night game in Sarasota between the Orioles and the Redsox. For the most part, both teams started players on the major league roster. In the fifth or six inning the prospects took over. This is what I expect during spring training. I’m disappointed when the teams don’t use many of their good players. Some of the prospects don’t have their names on their uniforms and even end up sharing numbers with other prospects. The stadium announcer and score board operator had a difficult time keeping up with the who’s who of the game.

The game was pretty good while the starters played, but the later innings were very sloppy. The Redsox had a base running problem that resulted in an unnecessary out and the Orioles allowed several Boston runs on wild pitches or passed balls. The final score was Redsox 6 and Orioles 4.

Tomorrow is another day baseball game. This one is at the Bradenton home of the Pirates.

Tuesday March 19th 2019

It began to rain Monday evening and continued until afternoon today. It was mostly dry in the afternoon, but it still wasn’t a very nice day. The temperature never made it out of the sixties.

The weather caused another rain out of the Spring Training game I was planning on attending. Based just on anecdotal evidence if I want to see a game with the Minnesota Twins, it will be rained out. The game I was trying to watch on Saturday when it was rained out was between the Twins and the Tampa Bay Rays. Today the Twins were scheduled to play the Orioles in Sarasota. The good news is this one got rained out before I got to the stadium.

Since I couldn’t watch the game I did some grocery shopping. I only needed a few things, but managed to buy more than I needed. The rainy weather must have been keeping people out of the stores. The Walmart was almost empty.

Late this afternoon it was dry enough to take a walk from the campground to Lake Manatee. There was nobody out walking. The lake was very choppy making it unattractive to fishermen. I’m used to seeing a few small boats with fishermen, but not today. Except for squirrels and an occasional gecko it was very quiet.

Monday March 18th 2019

Despite worrisome forecasts it didn’t rain during the daylight hours. It remained cloudy and cool all day. The high temperature was just on the plus side of seventy. As I’m writing this blog entry the rain is falling on the roof of my RV home.

Today was day four in the Spring Training game watching marathon. I returned to the site of Saturdays rain out in Port Charlotte. The Pittsburgh Pirates of Bradenton were playing the Tampa Bay Rays at the Charlotte Sports Park. The game was pretty good when I got to watch it. The early innings were scoreless, but in the end the Pirates won four to two. My problem was all the activity in the stands around me. People were still arriving in the second inning only to head for the concessions an inning and a half later. There were also a lot of kids in the stands that weren’t really interested in the game. They were jumping up and down and running all around while their parents talked loudly about everything but the game. It isn’t what they were doing as much as the fact that I was paying more attention to the people around me than the game.

The Port Charlotte facility is nice with plenty of ten dollar parking. What it doesn’t have is a good exit strategy. When the game ends the parking lot turns into grid lock. All of the cars are parked head in along about eight long rows. When the game ends everyone has to back into the exit row or wait for the car in front to back into the exit row so you can drive out. Then you wait as one or two cars from each row gets into the exit road for each cycle of pedestrians crossing the main road in front of the stadium. It took almost forty five minutes from the time the game ended until I was on the main road headed home.

Sunday March 17th 2019

The cloud cover this morning seemed to be very close to the ground, but climbed higher and even dissipated for a while during the day. The temperature made it into the low seventies. In the evening a couple of rain showers moved through the area.

Today’s spring training game was between the New York Yankees and the Baltimore Orioles at the Orioles winter home in Sarasota. The weather cooperated for this game. The cloudy skies and a gentle breeze made sitting in the stands as comfortable as you can get. The narrow seats and aisles don’t allow you to get really comfortable. Maybe that’s why nobody around me ever seem to stay in their seat for more than a couple of innings. Just when you think they’re gone they come back in the middle of the game action. Trying to see the field with folks standing and walking in front of you is beyond difficult.

They Yankees won the game, but they didn’t even have their regular line up present. The majority of the major league players were at another game in Clearwater against the Phillies. The Orioles started the game with mostly major league players on the field. They were down by four runs before they tried to come back. The Yankees won 5 to 3.

Tomorrow’s game is back in Port Charlotte. The Pirates are playing the Rays weather permitting. As I understand the forecast, it will be cloudy with a chance of rain.

Friday March 15th 2019

I up before the sun burnt through the overnight clouds to prepare for today’s travels. I was in line at the campgrounds dump station shortly before 9:30 this morning. I hit the road with empty holding tanks at 10:00am.

The first part of the trip went well. I made good time north to the Fort Meyers area. Even buying gas went relatively well. The station was easy in and out, but I had to wait for behind another RV for my turn at the pumps. The real difficult part of the travel was in the last fifty miles. I spent fifty five minutes to go less than six miles in one backup. The cause was an accident investigation team working around a motorcycle in the woods on the curb side of the road. The accident was long over, so I don’t know much about it. The second slow down wasn’t as long. There was a three mile slow down for a mini van in the woods along the median. The next slow down was traffic through construction zones.

The result of all the slow downs in the last fifty miles of travel was more than an hour delay it getting to Lake Manatee State Park in Bradenton FL. I had to hurry and get set up so I could get to my first Spring Training baseball game for this year. The fight through Friday night rush hour traffic was inline with all my driving experience today. It was slow and congested.

The game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Pittsburgh Pirates was fun. There were several home runs by both teams, a double play and only two walks. The game ended in a tie after nine innings. The teams probably wanted to get home.

Thursday March 14th 2019

Today was my last full day at the Midway Campground in the Big Cypress National Preserve. Tomorrow I relocate to Bradenton FL and switch into Baseball Spring Training Game viewing mode.

To be ready for a busy week of baseball watching I needed to get some errands done today. I set out on the fifty mile drive to Naples with two and a half tasks in mind. I needed to do grocery shopping at Walmart and I wanted to get my hair cut at the SuperCuts nearby. The half a task was refilling the car’s gas tank after using up so much fuel just getting to town.

As it turns out I added another task with a slightly higher priority on the drive into town. The oil change warning display appeared on my dashboard about half way to town. When the oil life gets to 15 percent it starts annoying you. If you clear the warning it will return every time you start the car. The owners manual indicates that it gets even more annoying as it approaches 10 percent, but I can’t confirm that. I prefer to change the oil when it reaches thirty percent, but I have experienced the fifteen percent warning before. So that I don’t experience the nagging at the lower percentages the oil needed to be changed today.

My first stop on the road west was the place I planned to get a haircut. I opened the door to a full waiting room. There were at least eight people taking up all the available seats. Concerned with getting the oil changed, I wasn’t about to wait hours for a haircut. Back in the car, I used Google Maps to find an Instant Oil change place to my liking. It was about fifteen miles away on the other side of Naples. A lot of people were getting service today. I was fourth in line when I arrived. About an hour later my “Instant” oil change was complete.

While waiting for my oil change I found the location of another SuperCuts near the oil change place. There was only one person waiting in front of me at this place. I think the actual haircut took longer than any haircut I’ve ever had. The women doing the cut was slow and deliberate at everything she did including answering the phone. I think she took five minutes every time the phone rang with someone looking for an appointment. The third and final time she was interrupted by the phone she even had to get someone else to help her use the computer. The haircut was typical SuperCuts OK.

By the time I got my groceries and gas it was getting late in the afternoon. If we hadn’t transitioned to Daylight savings time, I would have been returning to my RV home in the dark. As it was I got stuck driving through one of the only rain showers I’ve seen while I’ve been in this south Florida area. It only lasted a few minutes and a few miles, but the road got pretty slick from the rain.

I have about one hundred and eighty five miles to travel tomorrow. I’ll leave here between 9:30 and 10AM to arrive after the 1PM checkout time. My first Spring training game of the year is tomorrow night.