Friday November 4th 2016

It was a beautiful warm humid day in the low 80s until evening. A cold front is approaching from the north complete with thunderstorms. It is only forecast to be in the low 70s tomorrow.

My obsession for the day was getting my satellite TV to work. I’m parked in a field with a line of trees between the camp sites to provide some shade. Unfortunately the trees are also interfering with my roof top satellite dish finding its target. So today, I moved the RV back 3 feet to what looked like an opening in the tree cover and sent the dish up again in search mode. When that didn’t work, I took another walk around the campground to check the orientation of other satellite dishes. I also downloaded an app for my phone to assist in finding the satellite.

Site A8 between trees. The satellite needs to point a little to the right of the camera angle.

I moved the RV back another few feet for another try. I still didn’t have any success with getting TV, but I also had a failure with my automatic leveling jacks. I should be able to push one button on the dashboard and get the four jacks to automatically deploy and stabilize the rig on a level plan. This time one jack didn’t deploy and I couldn’t get the rig to level automatically with the jacks down. I spent an hour or so trying various things to fix the issue without success.

This is by no means a catastrophic failure, I just need to level manually until I get it fixed. I’ve dug out the manual and will be searching the internet for ideas. What it did do was distract my attention from finding the satellite. I will try again to get the satellite aligned tomorrow. Until then I will have to live with the limited over the air TV reception. I get CBS and Fox along with a bunch of sub-channels.

I also went for a drive to check out the area to the west of the campground and Interstate 95. This is an area that I haven’t been in during my previous tours of the area. Other than a few new home developments, I didn’t find anything remarkable. I never even got out of the car. I just drove in a big circle for about an hour and a half.

The campground has filled up tonight. Some of the new arrivals are clearly snowbirds returning to Florida for the winter. Other new residents seem to be here for the weekend. This park is next door to the local Flea Market and an event field that has the St. Augustine Pirate Gathering going on this weekend. These may be the attraction for some of the new arrivals. I’ll probably check out the fleas tomorrow.

Thursday November 3rd 2016

I moved to another campground about 6 miles south on Interstate 95. It sounds simple, but it was a little more complicated than you’d think.

The first complication was the weather. The day started out cloudy and dry. About the time I needed to finish up the outside tasks it started to rain. The last 45 minutes of my travel preparations were done in a heavy rain. By the time I dumped the tanks and stowed the sewer hose, water hose and electric cord I was socked. The rain continued and I still had to hook up the car.

The site I was parked in was on the end of a row with one way roads that required a short turning radius to get out of the site heading for the exit. Keeping in mind that once I hook the car to the motorhome, I can’t backup, I decided to move the motorhome out onto the campground road before hooking up. It was the right decision as I did need to backup. Walking back the 200 feet or so to get the car coincided with an up tick in the rate of rain. Once I completed the hookup process, I took a minute to dry off before driving away.

The second complication was that I left the campground right at the 11AM checkout time and the new campground had warned me that I wouldn’t be able to get in until after 2PM. I was told that the office isn’t staffed from 10:30 to 2 and the gate is locked. It turned out there wasn’t a gate, but the point was made. I shouldn’t arrive before 2PM.

To kill time I drove to one of the outlet malls and parked in the parking lot. The lot is divided by many plantings and concrete curbs. The result was that I was parked in a very awkward way. To keep from getting boxed in I was taking up way to many spots. Around noon the influx of shoppers was making my location less and less attractive. I chose to move on. I went south on the Interstate beyond the exit for my new campground to a rest area. There is plenty of space for RVs in Florida rest areas. The good news is about this time it stopped raining.

After having lunch and watching some TV, it was 2PM and time to travel back to St Johns RV Park. I needed to go south to the next exit and reverse direction on the Interstate. All total to relocate 6 miles, I traveled more than 20 miles over 3 hours. I was setup on my new site by 3PM.

My RV at night on site A8 at ST Johns RV Park

This is not the best site in the world. It isn’t even the best in this campground. There is an emergency boat service operation setup in the field across from my site. They are working on small boats damaged by the hurricane. During the time I’ve been here three or four boats have been dropped off. At quitting time 5 or 6 workers returned with trucks and a couple of boats. There was a real parking lot in front of my RV.

Wednesday November 2nd 2016

Today started with an early morning rainstorm. I got up long enough to make sure it wasn’t raining in any of the open windows then went back to sleep. By the time I finished my morning shower the sun had returned to dominate the sky. It was a partly cloudy day with a temperature that peeked a little above 80 degrees.

Since my time at this campground ends tomorrow, I spent some time today making reservations. Tomorrow I will move about 5 miles to the St Johns RV Park for a week. I also made a reservation in the Tampa area for the month of January. I’ll be staying at the Tampa South RV Resort from the end of December until the end of January.

With the exception of 5 days at the end of next week, I have reservations at various places in Florida until the end of January. I will be crisscrossing the state a few times over the next couple of months. From here in the St. Augustine area I’ll head for the Fort Meyers area on southern Gulf coast for two weeks. That will be followed by 12 days back on the Atlantic coast in the Port Canaveral area. I cross back to the center of the state for a few days stay at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Campground, followed by two weeks at Lake Manatee State Park just east of Bradenton Florida back on the Gulf coast. I remain in that area for the month of January before I head west toward Arizona.

The other major task for the day was laundry. I got caught up on that little duty in between finding the places to make the reservations and watching TV. Actually, the TV is on for background. Today in particular, I’d be hard pressed to tell you what was on the TV. My focus was on other things.

This afternoon I took a drive along the coast north of St. Augustine toward the Jacksonville area. Route A1A in this area is only a sand dune or line of houses on the dune from the Atlantic. As expected, this area had more evidence of hurricane Matthew’s impact. The piles of debris along the road were higher and they contained more building and household debris. More significantly may buildings had spray painted “X” in a box symbols on the front. I believe this means the structure is not suitable for occupancy. From the street side they don’t look to bad, but a couple that I could see the ocean side didn’t look that good. It looked like most could be repaired and some construction was already underway.

Looking south along the Atlantic Ocean north of St Augustine FL. Beach is flat with the sand pushed into the dune or off the beach.

Surf in the Atlantic north of St. Augustine

I ended up going to just south of Jacksonville Beach. It was to far north. I got stuck in Jacksonville commuter traffic getting home. I’m trying to decide if I want to go back to the Jacksonville Beach area over the weekend for the Sea and Sky Airshow. The Blue Angels are the featured performers. Without a static aircraft display, I’m not sure there will be enough to keep me interested.

Back at my RV home this evening I started the travel preparation process. I put the bicycle rack back on the SUV and loaded the bike. The gas grill and the outside chairs have been stored in the basement. After I finish this blog post I’ll pack up the computer for travel. In the morning I will try to work slow

Tuesday November 1st 2016

Today started out much better than yesterday. The sun was shining as in broke over the eastern horizon. It got windier and cloudier as the day progressed. The temperature topped out in the low 80s. It didn’t set a record high like it did on Monday.

I drove east today across the St Johns river to Green Cove Springs. I picked up my mail from my mail service St. Brendan’s Island and declared Green Cove Springs as my domicile at the Court House. I’ll be registering my vehicles and getting my Florida Drivers License at the building next to the court house in the next few days.

Just like the roads in St. Augustine the roads had piles of debris stacked on the sides. I saw a number of trees greater than two feet in diameter that were down. Some were snapped off halfway up the trunk and others were just pulled out of the ground. The massive root balls show just how shallow the root system goes down. I didn’t see any actual property damage. It is either subtle or has already been cleaned up and repaired.

Marina on the St. Johns River

Long docks to reach deep water

There was a good wind out of the northeast today. The St Johns river was choppy. I stopped at a boat launch and harbor just north of Green Cove Springs to check out the river and watch some of the boat action. Other than crab fisherman coming in with a load of empty pots, I did see much action.

Rafter of Turkeys in the field behind the campground.

Later in the day back at the campground I got my wildlife fix for the day. Out in the back field, beyond the RC aircraft runway, a rafter of turkeys was feeding. They were all pretty good size birds. I bet if they knew about Thanksgiving they’d be a little lest conspicuous.

Monday October 31st 2016

This life style has its moments of total disorientation. When you first wake up in the morning the interior surroundings are familiar, but beyond that it takes a few moments. Now that it is cool enough over night to have the windows open, I often hear road noise or people talking when I wake up in the morning. Trying to figure out where the sounds are coming from takes time.

The first thing I remember is where I’m staying. Following this is an understanding of where the roads are in relation to the campground. Finally comes the concept of where in the campground I am in relationship to other campers and the roads. At this campground figuring out where I am in relationship to other campers and the road is taking a little longer. The last time I was here I was at the other side of the campground facing the other way.

I suppose I could just look out the window, but that takes more energy than I want to expend at that moment. This morning it wouldn’t have helped. The day started out with heavy fog that didn’t lift until around nine thirty. The fog set my mood for the day. I didn’t get dressed or open the shades until it had lifted. It also played havoc with the television reception. The signal from the Jacksonville transmitters wasn’t strong enough on several stations until close to noon when the air had dried out a little. I ended up listening to the Boston Sports radio stations on the internet. They were doing a bang up job bashing the Patriots performance yesterday.

Most of the things I was going to get to today ended up meeting Mr. Procrastinator. He’s a real good friend of mine. He seems to be around whenever I want to goof off or do nothing for the day. The only real consequence of his visit today was that I don’t have anything interesting to write about tonight.

This little critter on the tree trunk watch my every move for a good five minutes. I’m not food, so I must have been a threat.

I took several walks around the campground and watched the sites fill up for the night. There are about 4 rows totaling about 25 sites that turn over regularly. The other 50 or so sites are longer term residents. The arrivals start around two and continue until around six.

Sunday October 30th 2016

Today started with an early morning rain shower. It wasn’t a heavy rain. It just lasted long enough to get my attention. Had it not been almost time to get out of bed, I probably wouldn’t have woke up. By the time I actually did get up, the sun was breaking through to stay for the rest of the day. It was a little cooler and less humid than yesterday.

The activities for the day were pretty much driven by the NFL. I started watching the Bengals Redskins game from London during breakfast. It had enough action to make in interesting including an overtime period that ended in a tie. The New England Patriots were playing at 1PM, but the local stations carried the Oakland vs Tampa Bay game. To get my Patriots fix, I needed to take a drive in my car listening to the Sirius/XM radio coverage of the game.

The satellite radio carried the Bills radio network coverage today. It is interesting to here the Buffalo bias in the call. It seemed like every Patriot successful play was lucky and every Bills success was because a brilliant out maneuvering of the Patriot defenders. Bills failed plays were because of bad calls or dirty play be the Patriots. I’m sure a Buffalo fan would hear bias in the Patriots call, but I don’t think it is as extreme as this sounded. Even coverage by national announcers that is supposed to be unbiased, will often have some bias. I can live with it as long as I get to here what’s happening on the field.

While I was driving around, I stopped at several stores to browse for things that I’m going to need to buy soon. Some call this shopping. I look and look then suddenly commit and buy. I’m never sure when that event happens. Sometimes it is driven by need and other times impulse. Today was just a browsing kind of day during half time and a little bit of the third quarter.

After the Patriots game I returned to the campsite to watch more TV. I took a break from football to watch the NASCAR race from Martinsville VA then it was back to football. Now I’m watching the Worlds Series Game 5 from Chicago as I’m writing this blog entry.

Large section of the middle of the campground was empty by 11AM this morning. By 6PM about half of the empty spaces were filled.

The campground, which was full last night, emptied out significantly this morning. It turns out that most of the sites were taken by a camping group. I am learning that Florida camping groups do most of their yearly camp outs in the fall and spring. During the summer it is to hot and in the winter the snowbirds take all the places. October thru early November weekends are prime time for these groups. Another, even bigger group, is here next weekend. That is why I couldn’t get a site after Thursday.

Saturday October 29th 2016

The humidity has returned along with seasonal normal temperatures in the 80s. The good thing is that it goes down into the 60s over night. Today started out hazy, maybe even foggy, but cleared off quickly about the time I dragged myself out of bed.

I went for a drive to check out the area and the storm damage. The area around the campground is probably 10 miles inland from the coast. If you look closely you can find evidence of damage. Most often this is in the form of a pile of debris waiting to be taken away. Occasionally you can spot a big old tree down in open area like a front yard. In general this area isn’t in bad shape.

As you get closer to the coast more damage starts to appear. In addition to even bigger piles of debris, billboards and signs show damage. The billboards that are higher than the tree tops were subject to very high winds. Some are half gone others are completely gone. The ones protected by the trees didn’t get visibly damaged.

Other types of signs show damage as well. Lots of street signs are twisted. They no longer face the correct direction for drivers to follow. The signs for stores and restaurants also took some damage. One McDonald’s sign had holes punched through the middle of the red plastic and the golden arches above sign weren’t complete arches anymore.

Downed fence, debris piles and lots of sand off the beach.

In St. Augustine Beach there was sand where it didn’t belong. In some areas the sides of the streets have banks of sand. It almost looks like snow piled up after a  snow storm. I know they don’t have plows so it probably got there by traveling cars over time. The parking lot for the fishing pier still had areas with 3 to 6 inches of sand over the paving. It’s not enough to get stuck but it made for interesting driving and parking.

Out on the beach you could see where the sand came from. The further toward the water you walked the less visible sand you encounter. Pebbles and broken seashells are the predominant surface. The tide was out when I was there, but even at high tide it looks like some of the rough surface will still be visible.

Lots of surf at low tide

At the edge of the beach a great deal of damage can be seen. Signs and sign posts are completely broken off. Fences are broken down or have totally missing rails. Piles of debris are here as well. A great deal of clean up has happened, but the debris has yet to be carted away. I passed several huge dump trucks full of storm debris on the way to whatever magic disposal site they are using.

I didn’t look much south of the St Augustine Beach pier. This area has residential property closer to the beach so more damage probably occurred. I’m not really looking to see a disaster area. I’m more interested in seeing evidence of the storms force than property damage.

Friday October 28th 2016

I got packed up and underway by 11am this morning. The weather was not fully cooperating. It was a sunny day but the wind was strong from the northeast. High profile vehicles, like motorhomes, react to every gust.

My travel route for the day was I-4 east to I-95 north to St. Augustine. It was only 150 miles, but I-4 was recently named the worst interstate in the country. The criteria was number of traffic deaths per mile. I’m sure the statistic was heavily influenced by the fact that from south of Orlando to I-95 it is one big construction zone. The 70 mile stretch of highway mostly travels through congested business and retail areas. These were the areas under construction while the more rural areas didn’t seem to have much construction.

The average speed through the construction zones was around 30mph. Most of the time it was three lanes of stop and go travel. When it was clear travel, the road surface was so rough, the RV was bounced around like a ping pong ball in boiling water. I would give the road the worst rating based on the bumps.

As I got closer to the coast in the Daytona Beach area, the storm damage from hurricane Matthew started to be evident. There were piles of dead trees all along the north bound side of Interstate 95. Across the highway on the south bound side the downed trees were leaning back into the woods. It didn’t look like that side had been addressed yet. Other indicators of the storm were mangled road signs and torn billboards. I would say they made a lot of progress in the three weeks since the storm passed this area.

Site 55 at the Stagecoach RV Park.

I got the last available site at the Stagecoach RV Park when I called yesterday. The park is full tonight. It doesn’t seem to have taken any damage from the storm. It looks the same as it did in August when I was last here.

Thursday October 27th 2016

I had two objectives today. The first was to slow down after yesterday’s heavy tourist focus. I’ve been in a fairly heavy tourist mode for the last couple of weeks. It goes with the territory. Orlando is after all a tourist mecca.

The second objective is to prepare for a travel day tomorrow. My two weeks here at Tropical Palms is ending. I’ll be moving north to the St. Augustine area for a week or two. So far I’ve only been able to secure a reservation for 6 nights, but I have a couple of other places to check.

When I’ve been in one place for more than a week, the travel preparation is a little more complicated. For shorter stays I generally put stuff away as soon as I finish using it and some things just don’t come out of their storage area. Over a two week or longer stay things seem to come out and stay out until it’s time to move on. Since I’m only moving about a hundred and fifty miles, I don’t have to rush in the morning. I will have time to finish packing things before the 11AM checkout.

Five or six foot alligator in the pond at the campground.

On my daily walk around the campground I finally saw an alligator in the pond. All of the warning signs on the fences raised my suspicions that I might see one. On my last walk about the campground, the gator crossed the pond to get a good look at me. It was almost like it was expecting me to feed it. I hope others haven’t been feeding the alligators.

Spooky looking head of the turtle under the surface of the water.

I also saw the big turtle again. I’m more impressed by the turtle than the alligator. Although this is the first alligator I’ve seen this fall, they are more common than the turtle. Both creatures look very much like the ancient dinosaurs they evolved from.

I made one more grocery run this afternoon to restock the refrigerator and cupboard for the next few days. While I don’t believe there are any issues, I am traveling into an area that hurricane Matthew impacted heavily.

Wednesday October 26th

This afternoon I made my last visit to Disney for this stay in the Orlando area. I’ll be back for 5 nights in December staying on Disney property at the Fort Wilderness campground. Visiting the resorts and parks at Christmas time is a fun experience.

Cinderella Castle

Today’s visit was to the Magic Kingdom. I secured my three Fastpasses earlier in the week for Splash Mountain, Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin and the Haunted Mansion. The plan was to arrive late and stay late for the Fireworks. The first part worked out but I didn’t hang around for the fireworks. The park was crowded and the standby times at the various attractions were mostly 40 minutes and up. I couldn’t find a good way to spend the 2 plus hours I needed to wait for the fireworks.

Lamp post decoration

The park is decorated for Halloween. On alternating nights the park has a special Halloween themed separate admission event. Most of the street lamps on main street have some form of Halloween decoration and the flower beds are in Halloween colors. In the theme areas the Halloween decorations are not as obvious, but plantings are still very fall themed.

I’m the guy hiding under the hat in the back row of the log on the Splash Mountain plunge.

I chose Splash Mountain and Buzz Lightyear as Fastpasses because I didn’t get to ride them last winter. It was to cold to get wet on Splash Mountain and Buzz was closed for repairs. The last time I road Splash Mountain was fifteen or twenty years ago. The queue areas has been expanded and enhanced since then. I remembered the theme for the ride chasing Br’er Rabbit through the briar patch, but anticipating the 50 foot drop I really didn’t pay attention. I don’t like roller coasters, but this is a log flume ride. At least, that’s what I kept reminding myself. I didn’t hate the ride and will probably ride it again.

In addition to the Fastpass rides I rode the steam train around the perimeter of the park and I rode the Journey of the Little Mermaid. The Mermaid ride is a cute underwater simulation of the events in the Little Mermaid move. A couple of things I noticed. The song is as haunting as the It’s a Small World song and for some reason this ride is not getting as much attention as other rides. It only had a 5 minute standby time. I enjoyed it.

Little Mermaid ride.

Ariel greeting visitors to her ride.

I also had supper at the Columbia Harbor House restaurant. The menu has been updated since last winter. I had the fried shrimp and a lemonade. The fish and chips I’ve had in the past are no longer on the menu.

I was back at my RV home a little after 8PM.