Sunday July 9th 2023

There wasn’t a lot of rain today, but it seemed to be timed to get in my way. I have a clear view of the sky in three of four directions from inside my RV home. When I was ready for my first walk of the day each of the three visible directions was bright and almost sunny. As soon as I got outside I noticed the sky in the other direction was black as night. I only got a couple of hundred feet away from my RV home before the rain started to fall. It was over in a few minutes, but my walk didn’t happen.

During the day there were several similar cloud burst style storms, They appear quickly, drop a lot of water quickly and go away after only a few minutes. I was in the middle of my second walk attempt when one occurred. I was more than a little damp by the time I arrived back at my RV home. I clearly wasn’t in sync with nature today.

Most of the rain was over by the supper hour. It was just in time to allow the RV park’s fishing tournament to go on as planned. From 5:30 to 8:30 they were holding the tournament for the kids in the park. About twenty kids lined up along the banks of the big retention pond with their lines in the water. I watched for about half an hour and didn’t see any indication of success. I’ve seen other people fishing in the pond in the past, so I assume there must be something in the pond to catch.

My major accomplishment of the day was restocking the refrigerator and cabinets with food. The Walmart was not as full as I feared. The aisles were not overly packed and the wait at the checkouts was tolerable. I replenished my fluids, meat and breads among other things. The main catalyst for shopping today was that I ran out of OJ, milk and bottled water. It is easy to work around not having fresh bread or unfrozen meat, but tap water gets old fast as an alternative.

Saturday July 8th 2023

I took my morning walk while my breakfast coffee brewed. The goal was to get the first walk in before the temperature started to climb. For the most part I was successful. The temperature was in the low eighties, but the humidity was still very high. The ducks and geese were both awake and active along my walking route.

After breakfast most of my morning was spent on various chores around my RV home. I got the dishes washed and stored before moving on to collecting the laundry. It is all bagged and ready to be washed, but I’ll probably wait until the quiet of a weekday afternoon. The laundry facilities at this park can get very busy.

I was surprised to see another neighbor depart this morning. The motorhome two sites up from me looked like it would be here for the duration of my stay and then some. The row I am in is now almost empty of RVs. The row behind me is still well occupied. The row in front of me seems to be used primarily for short term stays. The occupancy turns over every few days. Overall this park has fewer residents than it did last summer when I was here. Going forward I can’t comment. I departed this park about this time last year.

The weather cooperated today. There were no afternoon thunderstorms in this area. The storms were further south along the Florida peninsular. I was able to get in a second walk around the park.

Friday July 7th 2023

After spending four days traveling up to North Carolina and back at the beginning of the week, my daily routine is out of wack. In my head, the trip was over the weekend, so this should be the start of the week not the end. How dare the fourth be on a Tuesday. Getting settled back into a pattern of preparing meals, taking my walks around the park and generally getting on with life is the challenge at hand. I didn’t succeed yesterday, but today was pretty much back to normal.

I got my first walk of the day in early before the heat of the day really settled in. The ducks were back in their normal place in the front retention pond and the geese had moved back to the more sheltered pond at the back of the park. The park was its normal sleepy self for a weekday morning. My second walk of the day was cut short by a thunderstorm. It looked bright and dry when I departed my RV home, but the sky was dark to the west. I cut my loop much shorter than normal, but it still started to rain before I got back home. A few seconds after I shut the door to my RV home the rain opened up at full blast.

That was the second time today that the rain got in the middle of my plans. While the sky was still bright and only moderately threatening I headed east about fifteen miles to the Betz-Tiger Point Preserve. This is a nice county park on the tributary creeks to the Nassau river. My intent was to walk one of the trails, but mother nature had other ideas. Thunder and dark clouds were rapidly approaching forcing me to retreat to the car. The return trip to my RV home was in a very heavy downpour. There was limited visibility, lots of air to ground lightening strikes and surprising areas of standing water. It was not a fun drive home.

Thursday July 6th 2023

After putting almost 1200 miles on my new car over the last few days, it is time to resume my daily blog. On Sunday I drove a little over five hundred miles from Jacksonville Florida into North Carolina to attend a family gathering over the holiday. The drive north took around seven and a half hours. Traffic was fairly light most of the way. I didn’t have any slow downs or delays along the way. It was an easy drive mostly on Interstate 95.

Yesterday I returned to Jacksonville. The return trip took a few minutes over eight hours. Traffic along most of the route was heavy. The big trucks that had been absent from the road on Sunday were a constant obstacle on Wednesday. The speed of travel was still quick, but it took more concentration. It wasn’t a pleasant drive. I arrived back at my RV home shortly before 4PM ready for a good rest.

I used most of the fancy new features in my new vehicle. I was able to listen to podcasts via my smart phone with Android Auto in the car. The Sirius XM radio got a good exercise as well. For driving, all of the new safety features like blind spot monitoring and lane change alert got a good test. Some of the features are going to take some driver training.

This morning I walked around the RV park and found a few changes over the three days I was gone. First a couple of my neighbors were gone. There is a whole area of open sites between my site and the front of the park now. I suspect there will be new occupants as time goes by. Perhaps because of the open sites, or more likely because of random roaming, the Canadian Geese have moved from the retention pond at the back of the park to the bigger pond at the front of the park. Walking now becomes an exercise of avoiding their cylindrical green calling cards on the grass, campsite pads and roads.

I only managed to get one walk in today. The afternoon thunderstorms kept me inside. Even when it wasn’t raining late this afternoon, there was plenty of lightening in the area, so I played it safe and stayed inside. The storms did managed to drop the temperatures a bit though.

I got a very early start to the day. I departed my RV home shortly after 6AM for North Carolina. I’ll be visiting family over the Independence Day Holiday. The blog is going to take a break until later in the week.

Saturday July 1st 2023

It was another nice weather day. The wind was out of the east bringing in a little bit of cooling. Inland the temperature was reported in the high nineties, but here the coastal breeze kept the temperature around ninety.

Taking advantage of my restored mobility brought about by my new car, I spent some time on the banks of the Nassau River today. One area was in the bright sun of the tidal marsh and the other was in a tree lined corridor. Both were getting plenty of use for general boating, kayaking and paddle boarding. People didn’t hang around the open marsh area boat launch. They headed inland for areas with more cover from the sun. At the more sheltered boat launch there were plenty of people hanging around the immediate area. Possibly this is because they were new to the activity having just rented equipment from one of the several boat rental concessions.

Traffic was very heavy on the intestate highway today. The major construction activity two exits south can’t support the holiday weekend traffic without slowing down. It is more than five miles south, but the traffic was moving at slightly better than pedestrian speed most of the day. North bound traffic was moving at a normal rate for a heavy traffic day. Even US 17 that parallels interstate 95 and serves as an alternate route was backed up southbound this afternoon.

The ducks are missing from the RV resorts retention pond again today. This time I’m going to “blame” the kids that are fishing along the bank. I’m going to go by a theory that the ducks wanted peace and quiet, but it probably just means there is somewhere else in the area that has more food and shelter. Hopefully, they will be back. I like seeing them swimming in the pond and relaxing on the bank.

Friday June 30th 2023

Last night there was a thin haze covering the moon. This morning it made the blue sky gray. The TV weather talkers reported that the smoke from the Canadian wildfires had reached northern Florida. Thankfully, the air quality issues hadn’t arrived since the smoke was remaining at high altitude. Even with the sun partially obscured the temperature was still in the low nineties.

Most of my day was spent getting used to my new vehicle. I loaded it up with about half the stuff I took out of the old one. There is probably more that needs to be loaded back in, but I’m going to try and eliminate some of the trash. Once it was loaded I took a drive. The first thing I need to remember is to put the key fob back in my pocket after I open the door. I won’t need it again until I get out of the car. Pushing a button while stepping on the brake to start the car is easy enough to remember, but for some reason pushing the button at the end of the trip to stop the car doesn’t seem natural. All of the blind spot indicators, lane departure warnings and other “advanced” safety devices are going to take some getting used to. Today was interesting and I don’t even have all of the systems turned on. Time to go back to reading the owners manual.

Traffic was very heavy today. I think most of it was associated with it being Friday on an extra long holiday weekend. Even the local roads in southern Georgia had heavy traffic. I had it in mind to stop along the river in St. Mary’s GA, but all of the convenient parking spaces were filled with cars and empty boat trailers. It looked like a lot of recreational fishermen were getting an early start on the weekend. The town had also started preparing for the holiday activities by erecting some temporary structures.

Around the campground today the opposite to what I expected took place. Instead of filling up a little more for the weekend, the park seemed to empty out. Many of the long term residents packed up their RVs and departed for the weekend or longer. They leave their big grills, rugs, potted plants and patio lights. Just the big RV and the people leave. The result is new sight lines open up across the park.

Thursday June 29th 2023

It was another dry day with manageable humidity. The partly cloudy sky allowed the temperature to rise into the mid nineties. Overall it was a nice day.

Over the last few months it has become obvious that my exploration has been constrained by my Honda CR-V. I don’t trust it to get me where I want to go and back without something breaking. The result is I’m continually doing a risk vs. value trade for every potential trip away from the RV park. Getting maintenance performed while traveling is not always easy. First finding a good place to have it serviced is a challenge. I usually end up using national chains or franchises like Firestone or Pep Boys. Second, it is very hard to leave the vehicle for service. I don’t have friends at every stop that could give me a ride and very few of the service locations are within walking distance of the RV park.

At the end of April or beginning of May I planned a stay near a Pep Boys to get the brakes replaced and as it turns out I also got the struts replaced. It was a significant investment that I hoped would raise my confidence level in the vehicle. Within a couple of weeks other sounds, squeaks and groans were back to work on my automotive paranoia. Added to all of these issues most of the rubber gaskets around the windows were breaking down and more significant to Florida in the summer, the air conditioning was also problematic.

The bottom line is I was ready for a new car. The Honda CR-V was almost twelve years old with 132K miles. In the past I always traded for a new car after five years, so I was well over due for something new. The issue is that the number of vehicles capable of being four down towed behind a Motorhome has gone down over the last few years. I did the research and settled on a Chevy Equinox.

Over the last week and a half since I arrived in the Jacksonville area I have stopped at several Chevy dealers. Most had an Equinox or two in stock, but they weren’t really what I wanted. Today I stopped in at yet another dealer. This one had four models to choose from and I found a suitable choice. Four and a half hours later, most of which was spent after the sale setting up the My Chevy app and a bunch of other questionable value stuff, I drove away in a brand new 2023 Red Equinox.

Wednesday June 28th 2023

It was a little less humid than yesterday, but the actual temperature was a degree or two warmer. The result was a slightly more comfortable day. The weather trend is increasing temperatures every day this week.

Both of my walks today were back to full length. I worked at the beginning of the week to update my hydration to make sure I was OK out in some of the heat. It seems to have worked. As a reward for my return to walking, the ducks were back. They disappeared on Monday coincident with the landscape crew mowing the grass. Today they were back in their usual places along the banks of the front retention pond. They take advantage of the trees to stay out of the sun and the water to keep cool as well.

Interstate 95 had stopped traffic when I ventured out on some errands this afternoon. I spotted the traffic issue soon enough and took local roads instead. The traffic was bad on the local roads as well. It might have been easier to suffer the stopped traffic on the highway. There is major construction two exits south at the intersection of Interstate 95 and 295. If anything happens in the construction zone everything gets backed up.

Tuesday June 27th 2023

Today was forecast to be warmer and wetter than Monday. It achieved the warmer with a 97 degrees high temperature and feels like of 108. Most of the area didn’t get any thunderstorm relief. The original forecast had most of the afternoon wet. This area got one brief thunderstorm at sunset. It dropped the temperature by almost 20 degrees for a little while. Sill, overall it as hot.

The Florida Air National Guard decided to wake me up around sunrise this morning. A couple of fighter jets took off from the airport for a morning of maneuvers. It seems the smaller the jet the louder the jet. In this case I suspect they were in full afterburners. A while later they passed overhead again in a different direction, just a bit higher. They really like to make noise.

I got my two daily walks in despite the heat. They were a little shorter than normal though. The ducks and geese are still missing. I thought it was yesterday’s lawn mowing that drove them away, but maybe it is the heat. There are cooler places than the park’s retention ponds.