Wednesday March 8th 2023

The beautiful sunny weather pattern broke a little today. The day started out cloudy and dull. There were a few brief periods of sun, but overall it wasn’t a fantastic day. Even with the cloud cover the temperature climbed into the mid eighties. Right when I set out on my final walk of the day, the sky opened up for a few minutes. It was enough that I got really wet in the 300 feet I had to navigate in the rain to get back to my RV home. It was over by the time I closed the vents.

The dull weather was perfect for getting a few chores done. The big one was the laundry. I checked the machine availability. Both of the two sets of machines at the nearest restroom were available. By the time I returned to my RV home, gathered the dirty clothes and laundry supplies then returned, one of the two sets was already in use. As I started to load the machine another dude arrived to use the machines. There was clearly a run on doing the laundry today, but I had my place in the queue. The actual time in the machines was only about ninety minutes. Once you add in the prep time, the walking to and from the facility time and putting everything away, it was well over a two hour chore. I did manage to eat a meal during the fifty minute dryer run.

This is my last day at Collier-Seminole State Park. Tomorrow I have a 140 mile drive north to the Bradenton FL area. My target departure time is between 11:30 and noon. Checkout time is 1PM, so I have some leeway. It will be mostly Interstate highway driving. Hopefully I can find a place to fill up the gas tank before I reach the highway.

Tueaday March 7th 2023

There were a few more clouds and a little less wind than yesterday, but the temperature still made it into the upper eighties. Along with the clouds came a little more humidity. It still isn’t uncomfortable during the day out of the direct sun. The good news is that the overnight temperature still gets down into good sleeping temperatures in the sixties.

My neighbors decided to leave early this morning. Shortly after 7AM I heard the chatter of RVers preparing to depart. Directions like “a little more” and “your clear” filtered in my open bedroom window. I didn’t really know where the voices were coming from and didn’t really care. It was only a brief sleep interruption and I was back to some kind of dreamland. When actually got up an hour or so later the occupants on both sides of me were gone.

I had errands to run in Naples today, but I stopped at the Marsh trial in the Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge to visit the birds on my way. There weren’t as many birds near the trail today, but there were still plenty begging me to take their picture. In particular there were fewer Anhingas and no visible Rosetta Spoonbills. On the positive side the Ospry was perched at the top of a tall tree watching everything.

It was very busy in the shopping area I visit in the outskirts of Naples. The area at the intersection of the main access route to Marco Island and the Tamiami trail is a major attraction. I suspect it gets a lot of Marco Island shoppers judging by all of the high end cars in the lot. There also seems to be as many northern license plates on the cars as there are Florida tags.

I stopped at Walmart to top off my grocery supplies. I am attempting to get my supplies on the same schedule so I run out of things in a predictable order. Over the last few weeks I have managed to get out of sequence. It isn’t fun to run out of veggies while you still have meat or run out of milk before you need to buy anything else. I only bought a few things, but the time and money spent would not prove it. My ten mile trip to town including a relatively brief stop at the Marsh trail was over three hours.

Monday March 6th 2023

It was another dry, sunny and warm day. It hasn’t rained in the area since right after I arrived in South Florida over two weeks ago. A burn ban was put in place yesterday. The park staff put up signs prohibiting open fires. There is no rain in forecast. The temperature peaked in the upper eighties.

Today turned out to be a very lazy day. I intended to do a load of laundry, but found all three sets of machines in use when I checked after breakfast. One of the restroom buildings have two sets of washers and dryers and the other restroom building has a third set. I intended to check again later in the day, but it was near four in the afternoon before I got back to the task. It didn’t matter the machines were still in use. They may have been available in between my checks. I’ll have to try again before I leave here on Thursday. If my memory serves me faithfully, there isn’t a laundry at my next stop.

Walking around the campground today, it occurred to me that this park has a lot of Canadian visitors. There are many Ontario and Quebec license plates. The units range from tents to big fifth wheel trailers and motorhomes. I have seen a lot of Canadians this winter, but the percentage here is higher than other places. The tent campers are particularly interesting. It is at least a three day drive from Canada and I doubt they used the tents before they were well south. Either way they deserve some warm weather compared to the temperatures north of the boarder.

The kayakers and boaters must have paddled their energy out over the weekend. The river access was very quiet today. Both times I walked to the water there weren’t any boats in the water. There were a few people fishing from shore. The species of fish in the boat basin likes to jump out of the water. Watching the fish jump encourages anglers to try their luck. Some of the jumping fish are a foot long. I haven’t seen anyone catch anything since I’ve been here.

Sunday March 5th 2023

The wind was down and the temperature was up today. The clear sky and bright sun allowed the temperature to climb above the midpoint of the eighties. Some areas in Florida are flirting with record highs again. This area is probably not one of them, but it is going to be warmer.

My day started out with a little more luck than the last few mornings. I was successful booking a reservation for next winter in a Florida State Park. It is for February 5 to 19, so I have three weeks from the middle of January to fill. I plan to try the Army Corp of Engineers Parks when they become available for booking in July. If that fails I’ll work on finding a commercial campground reservation.

The campground didn’t seem to empty out very quickly this morning. I was beginning to believe the end of weekend exodus wasn’t going to happen, but I was wrong. Starting a few minutes before the 1PM checkout time there was a rush for the exit. I would guess that close to a third of the sites emptied out. By evening the sites were filled with new arrivals.

For today’s exercise I drove east of the Tamiami trail to the Marsh trail in the Ten Thousand Island National Wildlife Refuge. It is a convenient place with lots of birds to keep my attention. Most days I also see lots of people and an alligator or two. Today I didn’t see any alligators, but there were still plenty of people.

Saturday March 4th 2023

The wind was almost as strong as yesterday, but it was out of a more southerly direction. It still resulted in a very nice day with a high temperature in the mid eighties. The trend over the last few weeks has been warmer than normal. The normal temperature in this area for this time of year is in the upper seventies.

It wasn’t a very active day. I spent most of my time doing chores around my RV home and a little bit of reading. I took two walks around the campground and out to the water access area. Since it is the weekend, there were a lot of people launching boats. I particularly enjoyed watching one couple from Minnesota launch a big double kayak. The arrived with the boat on the roof of their SUV. I thought it was strange how carefully the driver selected his parking location. He adjusted forward and back and left to right several times before he was happy. It seems they had an automatic kayak loader/unloader for the roof mount. With the push of a button the kayak slowly moved over the side of the SUV and down to the ground. The man and woman then had only a few feet to move the boat to get the water. Then he moved the SUV to a corner of the parking lot with the rack still in the down position. He needed the corner to protect the rack from other cars. All of this took time. I think I watched the activity for close to half an hour just for them to get the boat into the water.

One of the things I’ve been working on is the process I use to get photos ready for this blog. I always shrink them down in resolution so I can upload them on slow internet connections. Some of my pictures also get cropped to eliminate distractions and focus the viewers attention. The last thing I do is add the watermark. I’ve been trying to improve the automation of some of the tasks. In the process I broke some of the automation I already had, so tonight’s pictures are more manually processed than usual. Tomorrow I’ll try to fix my workflow again.

Friday March 3rd 2023

There were a few more clouds in the sky today, but the sun still won the battle for dominance. The temperature climbed into the mid eighties just like the past few days. The big difference today was the wind. A very strong wind out of the east blew until shortly before sunset. It was a hat catching day. I had to hold onto my hat a few times to keep it on my head and I participated in a catch that hat contest that another guy started against the wind. He recovered his hat after a fifty foot or more chase.

I slept in this morning. The battle for a state park reservation for next winter will resume tomorrow. There weren’t any good options available this morning. I had a leisurely paced breakfast this morning while watching many of my neighbors pack up to leave. The weekenders arrived in the afternoon to fill the empty sites.

In the early afternoon I ventured out along the Tamiami trail to the east. I was looking for another hiking opportunity that is identified on the map. Unfortunately it is currently closed. I ended up back at the Marsh Trail in the Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge. The birds didn’t disappoint me. Probably because of the wind they were in different locations, but there were plenty of them. Today I didn’t see any Rosetta Spoonbills, but there were a pair of Brown Pelicans to observe. The trail was very busy. I had to wait for a parking space in the relatively small lot.

Thursday March 2nd 2023

The smoke clouds from the prescribed burns that were overhead as Wednesday ended were gone this morning. The strong wind out of the south was probably the reason. There was a deep blue sky with only a few clouds late in the day. The temperature climbed into the mid eighties just like the last few days. We are in a great weather pattern, but today may be the last day. A cloudy day is forecast for tomorrow as a front passes west to east north of here.

I ended up working on my computer most of the day. It started with another failed attempt to book a reservation for next winter and progressed into a maintenance session. A complete backup of all my data was overdue. I maintain regular backups of my pictures, blog text and other things I create on USB memory sticks, external drives and cloud storage for some items. My internet access isn’t reliable enough to depend on cloud storage alone. Today I created two complete backups on external drives. With a measure of confidence that I wouldn’t lose anything important, I started to delete stuff in an attempt to improve performance. It was a combination of a trip down memory lane and some real computer sleuthing. Overall, once I get in the mood, I really enjoy this time of activity. It isn’t quick. After I get through with this blog entry, I’ll continue sorting through files, moving things around and deleting the junk.

In between sessions at my keyboard I took a couple of walks around the state park and cooked a little more complicated meal than usual using my slow cooker. It was a real stay at home kind of day.

Wednesday March 1st 2023

Today’s weather repeated the last couple of days. It was in the mid eighties with lots of sunshine. Most of the day there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Late in the day an artificial cloud filled in from the north and west. The smoke from a prescribed burn to the north started to approach this area. It managed to accentuate the sunset to a colorful extreme.

I had another frustrating morning trying to book next winters Florida State Park stays. Because February is a twenty eight day month, I had four days of newly available sites to pick from this morning. The last three days of January 2024 and the first day of February were available. Still I didn’t have any luck. These conditions are probably the worst throughput challenge the software needs to handle. The web interface was behaving differently than I’ve seen it before. This morning it reported the web site wasn’t available. It looked a lot like some networking geek was manually preventing the system from overloading like I’ve experienced in the past. Once I did make connections all of the available sites I was looking for were in the process of being booked. I think I’m still missing the optimal way to use the system, but the software interfaces is still a piece of crap. Not getting a site in a fair contest is one thing. This is just a pain in the …

The great adventure of the day was another short drive into the outskirts of Naples. I needed to pick up a package at an Amazon locker. In this area many of the Ross stores have lockers. It was a simple task easily completed and I was back at the campground. I learned not to return in the middle of the afternoon. I got stuck at the ranger station behind three RVs checking in. Before I got through the gate two other RVs were behind me. Even though all of the arriving RVs are already registered and paid, it still takes a while for each RV to get

Tuesday February 28th 2023

Today’s weather was pretty much a clone of Monday and that isn’t a bad thing. It was a beautiful weather day. Once again the temperature peaked in the mid eighties.

My day began with frustration. I was up early to attempt to book a Florida State Park stay for next winter. For the second two week interval in a row I stuck out booking a stay at one of the popular parks. Between the new software and perhaps an increased demand, I am having difficulties earlier in the winter than I’ve ever experienced before. Usually I experience difficulties for March or February but this year it is with January. I am going to have to get creative which may mean moving into the cooler weather areas of the state.

The only other major activity for the day was a grocery run. I was out of milk, non frozen meat and a few other things. Based on what I came home with, I wasn’t all that desperate for groceries. I had fewer bags than usual and I spent a bit less. Even so, I seemed to have everything I needed. It looks like I’m eating differently causing me to use things at different rates. I’ll be within five to ten miles of a grocery store for the next three plus weeks so it will be easy to get anything I need.

My walks around the campground today didn’t result in any nice wildlife pictures, but I made a point to get a sunset picture or two. There were a lot of other people with a similar goal.

Monday February 27th 2023

It was a little bit cooler today, but it was still above normal. Along with the continuous breeze it was a very comfortable day. The temperature peaked in the lower half of the eighties.

I split the day between catching up on chores and a little touring. The morning was for chores and the afternoon for touring. I drove along the Tamiami trail to the main Big Cypress National Preserve Visitors center. Unlike the Oasis visitors center near the Midway campground I was at last week, this visitors center doesn’t have alligators. Instead it has a boardwalk along the mangrove lined marsh where you can often see manatees swimming. There weren’t any today. The best I saw today were a few purple blossoms.

On the way back I stopped at the Marsh trail of the Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife refuge again. Yesterday I walked the whole three mile round trip out the trail and back. Today I only walked a short way to the observation tower. The majority of the wildlife are in that part of the trail. Today the Rosetta Spoonbills were hanging out in front of the observation tower.

The campground had more turnover today than it did yesterday. There was a steady line of departures starting before eight this morning. The campground hosts were very busy checking the sites as each became empty. By night fall the campground was full again.