Monday November 14th 2016

Today was going to be a travel day, but I extended an additional day at the Compass RV park in St. Augustine. My next reservation starts on Tuesday the 15th in the Fort Meyers area. Doing the whole travel distance in one day will make for a longer travel day than I’d prefer, but I wanted to pick up my mail in Green Cove Springs before I left the area.

I picked up my mail and got more details on the exact procedure to register my vechicles and get my Florida Drivers license. I need to get that completed before the end of the year. I don’t intend to wait that long. On the trip back I stopped at the grocery store for food for the next few days. One of the things I bought were custard filled donuts.

When I got back to camp, I had two of the donuts for desert after my roast beef sandwich lunch. Then I started getting ready for the travel day tomorrow. A couple of hours later just as I was finishing the first set of travel preparations something started to upset my stomach. I went inside to rest and things went down hill from there. I went to bed at about 6PM. I missed the Super Moon.

I am writing this blog entry on Tuesday night. I have been OK all day, just not 100%.

Sunday November 13th 2016

The weather today was similar to yesterday. It was cloudy and cool in the low 70s here, but warmer and partly sunny to the south. I went south to Palm Coast to hike along the Inter-coastal Waterway and checkout the storm damage. I took a similar hike back in August that I documented in the blog entry Walking in Palm Coast FL.

Marina on the far side of the Matanzas River in Palm Coast FL

Boat getting ready to enter the Marina. The guy hanging over the rail is preparing bumpers not falling overboard.

After breakfast and an overdose of Sunday morning news shows I headed down Interstate 95 to the planned community of Palm Coast. They have built a nice set of parks and walking trails along the Inter-coastal waterway. In this area the waterway is narrow as it follows the Matanzas River. The boat traffic passes by close enough to see the faces of the passengers. The paths are on the mainland shore of the Inter-coastal. The opposite bank has single family homes and a marina.

A pile of debris ready to be removed.

The Palm Coast area is heavy with trees. During the storm the winds took down many limbs, palm fronds and whole trees. Over the last several weeks the damaged trees have been removed to clear the roads and pathways. There are still some piles of debris along the roads and paths that haven’t been removed. They were working today, a Sunday, to pick up some of the debris piles along the roads.

Stump of tree that came down in the storm winds.

I walked about 2 miles north along the river from the Waterfront Park then returned to the car. The 4 mile round trip with stops for wildlife, boat pictures and general contemplation of nature took about and hour and a half. There were many others enjoying the walkway on a true Florida fall day. It wasn’t to hot or to cold.

Great Egret along the side of the Mantanzas River.

The wildlife highlight of the day was a great egret on the bank of the river that seemed to pose for my camera. I was about 20 feet away, but I think I could have walked up closer. I hung around hoping to see the egret in flight, but it decided to wade up the river.

After my walk along the Inter-coastal, I returned to my RV home and the TV. The NFL games were actually pretty good contests for a change. As I’m finishing typing this the Patriots have taken an initial lead over the Seahawks in the Sunday Night Game. Time to watch some more football.

Saturday November 12th 2016

Today I drove south along the coast from St Augustine about 30 miles to Flagler Beach. The weather in this area was cloudy and cool around 70 degrees, but the cloud cover broke as I got further south. In the Flagler Beach area it was partly cloudy in the high 70s.

It is now five weeks since hurricane Matthew went up the coast. As you drive along the coast wind damage is visible. Tarps cover roofs, siding is missing from houses and trees show signs of significant damage. Water damage is also evident. Beach access stairs are broken or missing. Side roads between route A1A and the beach show evidence of being underwater or sand filled. The area around the Matanzas Inlet seem to have been rearranged some. It looks like the channel to the ocean is in a different position. I base this supposition on my memory of the area from August, so I could be wrong. The point is it looked different.

I stopped my journey down the coast at Flagler Beach because I know A1A was washed out by the storm south of where I reversed direction. The pictures were shown on TV after the storm. The time estimate to get it fixed was long although they were trying to expedite the repair. A1A is detoured through residential streets.

The hurricane had bands of winds as it moved north. The visible damage seems to reflect that characteristic. For a mile or two you see very little evidence of damage, then it reverses. For the next few miles there is a lot of damage visible. All of this points out just how powerful and devastating a hurricane can be, but there is still an element of luck when it comes to impact to an individual’s property. All the more reason to evacuate before the storm arrives.

View south along the beach at Marineland

View north along the beach at Marineland. Note that the sky to the north is overcast.

I stopped at the beach just south of Marineland to checkout the ocean at low tide. This is more of a fishing beach than a swimming beach. One guy was fishing and a couple of groups were sunbathing. There several sandpipers feeding in the surf that kept my attention for a few minutes. How they keep from getting pushed or dragged by the wave action is amazing.

Sandpiper feeding in the surf.

The highlight of the trip back was spotting a Bald Eagle on top of the sign for the Fort Matanzas National Monument. This is a protected wildlife area. I wasn’t able to stop and take a picture, but it was a nice observation. I don’t think of eagles as native wildlife in Florida, but they are with a large population in the state.

Friday November 11th 2016

It was another cool day. The temperature didn’t get much above 70F. The sun was out in the morning but it clouded over by mid afternoon. That concludes the weather report for this blog.

This area seems to be very focused on celebrating and thanking out countries veterans. Many of the communities held parades and other celebrations. Empty parking lots implied several local non-retail businesses were closed. The strong support may be because of the heavy Navy presence in the Jacksonville area or just plain patriotism. Whatever the cause, it’s a good thing.

Traffic today was very heavy. Going to the grocery store I had to wait at every traffic light at least one cycle. At a couple of signals, I waited two cycles. It wasn’t fun travel. It is probably the holiday but it may be the arrival of the snowbirds. The number of non Florida license plates are increasing rapidly and campgrounds like this one are filling up for the winter.

Another possible explanation of the traffic in the shopping districts is Christmas shopping. This years great marketing ploy seems to be early Black Fridays. As soon as the election ads ended, the department stores and big box stores have started ads for weekend sales with an emphasis on getting started on Friday. Looking at the calendar it is hard for me to believe that Thanksgiving and Black Friday are two weeks away. It’s just another one of those disconnects resulting from unfamiliar seasonal clues. Fall in Florida doesn’t look like fall in New England.

Campground retention pond complete with water circulation fountain.

This afternoon I walked around the campground. This campground like others in Florida is situated on reclaimed marshy, almost swamp land. The area is dried out by creating water retention ponds. To keep the water moving and aerated they put a pump and fountain in the middle. The pond in this campground even has fish stocked for catch and release fishing. It looks like they are adding a path and bench seating around the pond. I’m really impressed by the work the new owners of this campground are doing.

Thank you to all the Veterans.

Thursday November 10th 2016

If you read my blog regularly, you might get the impression that I’m obsessed with the weather. I don’t think I am, but I am aware of how heavily it impacts my day. I needed to wear a sweatshirt until about 10am this morning and again after 4pm this afternoon. Tonight’s overnight temperature is expected to go down to about 45 degrees. This is the first real evidence of fall here in northern Florida that I recognize.

Today was a moving day. The veterans day holiday falling on a Friday has created a 3 day weekend for some people. I feel lucky to have a nice site at a campground not far down the road from my location for the last week. The competition for a place to stay this weekend caught me by surprise. My site for the weekend is actually better and cheaper than my previous location. I am now at Compass RV Park. This is an older park that has recently got new owners. There is plenty of evidence of updates and expansion. This campground even has a pond and a hiking trail to explore.

Site 37 at Compass RV Park

Packing up to move this morning was a little quicker than normal. I didn’t have to dump the tanks and put the sewer hose away. The site didn’t have sewer services. I could have stopped at the dump station on the way out, but since I have a connection at the new campground I choose to wait. That did mean it took longer setting up at the new site when I emptied the tanks. It doesn’t matter if I’m moving 2 miles or 200 miles I still have to prepare the same way. The preparation and setup time on both ends of the travel day take a fixed amount of time.

For the holiday to tomorrow, I need to see what’s open. I’m getting the impression more celebration of Veterans day happens in this area than I’m used to in New Hampshire.

Wednesday November 9th 2016

The last twenty four hours were wasted. They weren’t productive in any way. I didn’t accomplish anything. I didn’t derive any particular enjoyment from the period and worst of all I didn’t get enough sleep.

It all started with election coverage. Somewhere around 10pm I got drawn into watching the reports. I had to watch for more than the length of a commercial break on a non news channel to find out why there wasn’t a declared winner yet. That was enough time to get me hooked on the coverage. I wasn’t watching to find out about my dog in the fight but more because it wasn’t going like all the polls predicted.

I found a channel that Directv established just for election coverage. It showed 4 or 6 channels of election coverage simultaneously. Listening to FoxNews provided a far right opinion, MSNBC provided far left coverage, CNN was a little closer to the center than MSNBC and BBC World News America was just strange. An interesting observation was they didn’t all call states at the same rate. If you took the aggregate of their predictions, the verdict would have been in much earlier, but making that final call all of the channels were very careful making.

Around twelve thrifty or one I went to bed with the TV on. I dosed off shortly after the Democrats sent their supporters home. When I woke an hour later Trump had already made his acceptance speech. It was time to get some sleep.

The Marine Salvage storage trailer on the left and the front of my RV on the right. The boat they were working on in the middle of the night was beside the one in the picture.

Around four in the morning the Marine Salvage group across the field decided it was time to start working on a boat. I don’t know what that was all about. They have been quiet night time neighbors up until now. After about a half an hour they drove off with the boat. Then around six more workers started to make a racket around their storage trailer. Maybe I’ve slept through the commotion other mornings.

Next up in the annoying distraction parade was rain. It rained off and on all morning. I dragged myself out of bed between 9:30 and 10:00 but I was pretty much sleep walking all day. On TV the true politicians were all upbeat today with seamless transfer of power discussions. The political commentators and the people they interviewed were all gloom and doom or rah rah change is coming. Only time will provide the true answer.

It is now evening and I’m finally motivated to do a few things like write this blog. Cooking, eating, watching TV and writing this blog are the extent of my accomplishments for the day. Not very impressive.

Tuesday November 8th 2016

It was a cloudy day today and that about says it all. The weather reflected my mood and energy level. One thing about living in an RV is you’re more consensus of the weather. If it were rainy day I might have just rolled over in bed and gone back to sleep. Instead I just started slowly.

My focus for the day was mostly running errands. I also put a few miles on the car. I didn’t have to drive many miles to accomplish my errands, but it went along with my cloudy day induced mood to kill time. One of the roads I drove on was through a very swampy area. The water was only about a foot below the road surface. There were signs warning of water on the road so I hadn’t receded to its current level very long ago. More significantly, the road was lined with downed trees. Tree crews were still working on a few trees that were still leaning into the woods. Since it is now a month after the storm hit, this must have been a really bad area.

Most of my tasks for the day were phone call and internet based. One that proved more complicated than I anticipated was making a reservation for Thursday night through the weekend. It never occurred to me that this was a long holiday weekend. I guess more businesses in the Florida area give their employees Veterans day off or it is just a good excuse to have a long weekend. I got one of the last sites in a campground down the street from my current location. My first attempt down the coast in the Fort Pierce area was a total bust as was extending at this park. Staying in this area will give me more time to complete the car registration process that brought me to this area in the first place.

Cloudy sunset

The TV coverage on the election has been interesting. The stations are interrupting regular coverage every half hour. They rush reporters to every polling area with the slightest of issues. This morning they were broadcasting a live remote from a poll that had a paper jam in the ballot box. The first report was there is an issue we’re sending a reporter. A half hour later the reporter is there saying an engineer has been called to fix the problem, but not to worry the ballots are being captured in a backup box. The next report was the engineer has dislodged the jammed ballot from the ballot box. They promised to make sure that the ballots in the alternate box would be feed into repaired box. How they are going to keep that promise is beyond me. In all they spent over two hours hyping a minor issue. Other reports were on how provisional and absentee ballots are being processed. That at least that report was informative.

I’m relying on the cable channels for my entertainment tonight. I’ll check in with the election coverage periodically, but I’m not going to stay glued to the talking heads.

Monday November 7th 2016

It rained again overnight, but the day was pretty nice. It was Sunny in the high 70s with a good breeze most of the day. Tonight the clouds have moved in again.

I woke up early again this morning. The time change hasn’t caught up with my sleep cycle. The marine salvage operation on the other side of the field got an early start as well. I’m not sure where they are working but they routinely return with boats in need of repair. This seems to be a staging area and equipment supply area. They don’t work on the boats here. It has been a month since the storm went through the area. I’d think the salvage operation should be winding down.

After breakfast and morning television, I took a ride over to St. Augustine beach and the areas to the south on A1A. I turned back inland before I got to Marineland. The storm damage in the area I traveled through didn’t look as significant as the area north of St. Augustine. I have heard that Marineland south through Flagler county is not in good shape.

Looking north from the St. Augustine Pier area.

Looking at the waves breaking under the pier.

I stopped at the St Johns county pier in St. Augustine Beach. The tide was in for a change. The previous three or four times I’ve stopped at the pier the tide has been out. At high tide it is not possible to walk under the pier without getting wet. The slope of the ocean bottom must be somewhat flat since the waves were breaking a long way from shore.

The temperature, wind and it being a week day kept the sun bathers down. They were widely scattered. One enterprising guy was taking advantage of the wind to fly a kite. It was pretty red, yellow and black sail that was giving him a good battle. I’m surprised I haven’t seen more kites. I have seen several kite festivals advertised.

Later in the day I was out on the roads again to pickup some food for supper. I came home with a couple of pieces of steak for the grill. One for tonight’s meal and one for another day. The only complication was darkness. I finished the grilling under the lights. Getting used to the time change is hitting me hard this year.

Just think after tomorrow the political ads turn into Christmas ads. It will be a nice relief for about a week. Then I’ll be ready for the after Christmas sale ads and so it goes.

Sunday November 7th 2016

It rained hard overnight. The day started cloudy with the threat of rain at any minute. As the day went by it got progressively brighter, but mother nature still managed to produce a couple of three minute showers when you least expected it.

Today started out earlier than usual curtisy of the end of daylight savings time. With this lifestyle I should be less aware of the time, but it seems like I have more clocks and other time devices to worry about in the motorhome than I had living in a house. Many of the devices that display time manage to change back to standard time on their own, but I still end up verifying that it did what it was supposed to.

The other thing that the time change accomplished was to reaffirm that fall is here. In Florida I haven’t been exposed to the things I expect as harbingers of fall. The trees don’t turn pretty colors, the leaves don’t fall off the trees in a big way and the weather change is much more subtle. It is a little cooler and less humid but high temperatures are still around 80 degrees. Tonight it was dark by 5:30.

The signs warn that alligators are present in the pond at the back of the campground. I haven’t even seen a bird.

The uncertain nature of the weather today made outside activities less than ideal. I dawdled around the campground this morning watching the Pirates pack up and leave. Many of the weekend residents were attending the St Augustine Pirate Gathering next door. Watching a guy in full pirate costume pack up a trailer is not something you see everyday.

Shortly after noon I went out for a drive and a provisioning run. I went south on I95 then back north on US1 into St Augustine. The tourist shops at the intersection of I95 and US1 are now advertising Navel Oranges and had lots of orange bags out front. November is the start of the season for Navel Oranges so I need to keep my eyes out for a true citrus stand to buy some. I’ll be closer to the citrus region of the state at my next stops so I shouldn’t have a problem.

For groceries and other incidentals, I stopped at Walmart. I continue to use Walmart for everything but meats and fresh pastries. I still have a hard time finding reasonable and quality produce. Walmart has a fair price for stuff that has traveled a long distance. The supermarkets have higher prices for stuff that might be from closer by, but you really need to look. Some of these fruits and vegetables aren’t my favorite foods so I want good stuff when I (force myself to) eat them.

I am now settled in for my long winter night. What will I do until the winter solstices arrives and the days get longer? It’s not that bad; tonight I’m acutely aware of the arrival of night fall.

Saturday November 5th 2016

It was sunny with low humidity and lots of wind today. The temperature peaked in the high 70s. Florida’s idea of fall is here.

After a leisurely breakfast of cinnamon roles and coffee I tackled the satellite TV problem again. I surveyed the tree branches above the RV roof and decided to back the motorhome up another 2 feet. This proved to be a bad idea because it put the dish righ under a different set of branches. The sound of the light weight branches scraping on the dish as it tried to find the satellite was akin to fingernails on a chalkboard. I moved the motorhome forward a foot to clear that branch and I got a lock on the satellite. I now have satellite TV 95% of the time. Occasionally the wind will blow a branch in front of the dish blocking the signal. I’m getting occasional drop outs for a few seconds.

Satellite dish on top of RV found a hole in the tree branches.

Now I have entertainment options when the broadcast channels are unwatchable. I’m thinking of next Tuesday night when it will be non-stop who’s winning and who’s loosing the elections. A couple of minutes of coverage at the top and bottom of the hour would be enough for me. I don’t like the endless speculation of what each and every exit poll and early result means. It might be more entertaining if each commentator had to wear a sign or political button that declared their bias. I’ll happily watch home repair on HGTV or a sappy Christmas movie on one of the Hallmark Channels.

Water drainage pond behind the campground that separates the campground from the flea market.

After lunch I walked over to the St Augustine Flea market. It is located on the other side of a retention pond at the back of the campground on the side of Interstate 95. This is a more traditional flea market. Unlike the Jacksonville Flea market and Farmers Market I visited in September which sold mostly cheap new junk from china, this flea market sold PUUJ. That’s my acronym for Possibly Useful Used Junk.

One of several collections of strollers for sale at the Flea Market.

I saw lots of old furniture, old electronics like TVs and computers, old DVDs and other collections of used stuff. For some reason there was a run on kids strollers. Several places had dozens to choose from. Another collection that I had enough interest to actually inspect more closely was fishing gear. Rod and Reel combos for fresh water and salt water could be purchased at several booths.

There were lots of people walking through the fleas, but I didn’t see many purchased of PUUJ. People were buying plants. Several places were selling flowers and ground cover style plants. One place even had palm trees for sale. These places were doing a brisk business. It may be a seasonal thing.

I didn’t buy anything at the flea market.