The weather was beautiful day today. There were very few clouds in the bright blue sky. The wind was next to nonexistent and the temperature climbed to the low to mid seventies. It was the type of day the Chamber of Commerce wishes every day modeled.
Today was a productive and busy day but it wasn’t much of a blog worthy one. I caught up on a lot of odd chores, did some maintenance task and completed a few elands. The most noteworthy of the lot was completing the installation of my new TV. After watching it for a few hours last night, I determined it was safe to complete the installation. I put the last four screws in the bracket this afternoon. Having a working TV back in the living room area of my RV home is taking some getting used to. I have walked right by the TV into the bedroom to check the picture that goes with the dialog I’m listening to on the TV. Never mind that all I had to do was turn my head and look at the living room TV.
My walks around the campground today didn’t discover anything particular new or noteworthy. There were only two turtles taking the sun on the log today. On other day’s I’ve seen as many as six on one long and several more on other logs. Perhaps it just wasn’t warm enough. The good news is some of the wildflower blossoms have returned. The cold weather over the weekend caused many of the blossoms to die off. There was also a beautiful sunset tonight.
The weather forecast for today was a 70% chance of rain all day. They got it wrong. In this area it was sunny most of the day with only an hour or two of full cloud cover near sunset. The rain seemed to stay off to the east near the coast all day. The temperature reached the mid seventies.
Wildflower blossom of the day.
The first agenda item of the day was to find the bolts I needed to install my new TV. Two stops later, I found some bolts I could make work. The size I needed were not available at Home Depot or Lowes. I needed two washers per bolt to make the 5mm longer bolts work.
When I got home, drilling the new holes in the steel bracket proved to be more complicated. I didn’t have a good way to mark the location of the new hole on the black paint. More significantly I didn’t have a good punch to start the hole. My drill bit wanted to wander across the hard surface. A makeshift punch and working up from a small bit to a medium size bit before drilling the actual size hole solved the problem.
The TV is now mounted in the living room. I still need to put the screws back in the bottom of the mounting bracket, but I wanted to wait until I was sure it was working correctly. For the first time in a long time I have a working TV in my living room. My habit of retreating to the bedroom to watch TV is now over. I can watch TV from the sofa, from the kitchen or the table once again. It is going to take getting used to. So far I’m satisfied with my purchase.
New TV up and running.
While I was out bolt shopping I stopped at Walmart for groceries. The store was busy for an early Sunday afternoon. There were public shoppers like me, Walmart employee shoppers filling online orders and for some reason a ton of stock people reloading the shelves. It was a congested mess. It took extra time to fill my cart with everything I needed. On the positive side, this Walmart had most of the “Assisted” checkouts open.
The weather returned to the good side of the spectrum this morning. It was a sunny day with a high temperature in the low to mid seventies. This is consistent with the normal high for this time of year. After last week’s highs in the eighties it felt cool today.
I had the displeasure of being in a shopping center on a Saturday. Normally I’d avoid shopping at a big center on a Saturday, but late last night I got an Email from Best Buy. They found a TV to satisfy my order. Earlier in the week, I ordered a new TV for the living room of my RV home. It was in stock when I ordered it, but out of stock ten minutes later. They couldn’t meet the February 1st delivery date. I was given the option of canceling the order or waiting for the product to become available. The wording wasn’t hopeful and it was a product they were trying to liquidate. I decided to wait until the beginning of the week before canceling the order. It turned out to be the right decision.
The TV I’m replacing broke over a year ago. Getting it fixed was more expensive than a new TV. The issue with replacing it was the way it is mounted in my RV. The mounting hole pattern in my RV home is not common for a 43 inch TV. I also didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a premium TV that will get bounced around and subject to hot and cold operating temperatures. During each traditional TV sales period, I scourer the specifications of all the TVs on sale for a suitable TV. This week during the pre Super Bowl TV sales I found a Pioneer 43 inch 4K TV that met my needs. It is an older unit that was on sale for $100 off.
After the ordeal of navigating the traffic through new housing developments with many “roundabouts”, I managed to get from Clermont to Winter Garden. Road management at the end of the last century was removing all the rotaries in favor of lights and four way intersections. Now they are adding them into perfectly good roads with the intent of slowing down traffic. They may do that, but I don’t think they eliminate accidents. I went through five or six in a two mile stretch of road. The shopping center was filled to overflowing with cars. It took a lot of searching to find a place near the Best Buy.
Tomorrow I need to go to Home Depot or Lowes to get the proper size bolts to mount the TV. I also have to drill two new holes in the metal mounting bracket to make the new TV fit. These modifications are minor compared with the contraptions I was envisioning to make some other TVs mountable. Once it is all complete I’ll have a working TV in the living room for the first time in over a year.
The forecast weather transition arrived today. When I rolled out of bed this morning the temperature was in the sixties and climbing. About 10:30AM a light rain started to fall on the roof of my RV home. About fifteen minutes of steady rain fell before the sky started to lighten up and the rain became intermittent. The climbing temperature turned into a falling temperature. The transition seemed to be anticlimactic, but I was wrong. Shortly after noon the wind started to blow. A few minutes later the rain returned with a vengeance. There was an absolute deluge for the next twenty minutes or so. When combined with the wind, the rain was an absolute deafening roar on the walls and roof of my RV home.
Another picture of the Green Heron from yesterday’s trip to EPCOT.
After the deluge it was a cloudy and gloomy afternoon. The temperature continued to drop. It was in the fifties by the time the sun started to set with a chill from the wind to go with it. The sky also started clear as the sun set. I got one cold looking picture of the sunset.
There was a low ceiling this morning, but it wasn’t low enough to call it fog. By 9AM it had burned off and the sun was in full force. The temperature peaked in the mid eighties. The cold front is due pass through mid day tomorrow.
I spent the afternoon at Disney’s EPCOT. The International Festival of the Arts is in full force. Is park is filled with Art. There are displays and for sale items all over the park. Artists are actively creating chalk art on walkways and the sides of buildings. Kiosks are selling paintings, sculptures and other forms of creative art. The food stands are selling forms of culinary art as well. This is one of my favorite EPCOT festivals.
Here are some of the chalk art.
Most of the art has a Disney flair, but there are some more classical pieces of too. Even the art with Disney content runs the full spectrum from in your face carton characters with bold colors to very subtle homage to Disney elements. One set of paintings had hidden mickeys incorporated in the art. I can just see people gazing at it for hours trying to find them all. It took me several minutes before I even found one.
I didn’t do a lot today other than wander around the park looking at all the art. It wasn’t very crowded during the afternoon. As I was leaving at the dinner hour many people were arriving for the evening. I’m reserving my night time visits to the middle of the month when I’m staying on property at Fort Wilderness. It is so much easier.
Other than walking the pathways and shops, I rode the Living with the Land boat ride, Space Ship earth and toured the aquarium at the Living Seas. While I was in the World Showcase, I also listened to one performance of the Voices of Liberty. All of this was around at late lunch of Fish and Chips in the UK pavilion.
Green Heron hanging out at the China Pavilion pond.
The weather is still on the positive side of the spectrum. The state of Florida is on the warm side of the front that is causing an ice storm across most of the southern US. After a foggy start to the day, the sky cleared and the temperature climbed to the low eighties.
It was a beautiful sunny day.
There was a little excitement in the campground last night. The fire department and an ambulance arrived at a site across the road from my RV home. I believe they departed a few minutes later with one of the occupants of the fifth wheel trailer in the ambulance. I haven’t seen anybody around that site today. Having a medical emergency on the road is one of the frightening aspects of this life style. You try to prepare, but who knows what might happen. I hope everything turns out alright for the travelers in the fifth wheel trailer.
This is not the first time I’ve seen medical emergencies in campgrounds. On average, I probably see at least one every year. During the winter of 2017-2018 while staying in Las Vegas, an ambulance visited the motorhome beside me several times. The women in that RV sadly passed away, but the male member of the pair planned to continue RVing.
Today I walked around the other lake beside the campground. The trail around Dixie Lake is longer than the trail around Hammond Lake and includes a stretch of the park road. Dixie Lake is probably twice the size of Hammond. I find the trail less interesting. It is mostly a wide flat grass path. The vegetation isn’t as interesting but the views of the lake are more plentiful. It was about a two hour walk in the midday sun. I had a hat and water, but it was not the best planned hike.
The high temperature today was in the mid eighties with only a light wind. This great weather is spoiling me. The forecast has everything crashing back to normal on Friday with a storm front passing through the area.
I was up early this morning to attempt to make my next reservation in a Florida State Park for next winter. This was actually my second attempt to book the first two weeks of 2024. I tried yesterday morning knowing that I was overlapping my stay by one night, but I didn’t have any success. This morning was also unsuccessful booking a site at Myakka River State Park. There is just too much competition and the software or server resources cannot handle it. Switching to a fall back solution, I was successful reserving a stay at Hillsborough River State Park. I’ll make another attempt to book Myakka River State Park in two weeks.
Since I was up early I decided to go to Disney’s Animal Kingdom to visit the animals before the heat of the day. I arrived at 9:30AM, half an hour after the opening time for regular guests. People staying on site at Disney World were able to enter the park at 8:30AM. The bottom line is I was too late to beat the crowds for the Kilimanjaro Safari ride. The wait was over an hour when I arrived at the park. Luckily one of the other popular rides had a short thirty minute wait.
I have only ridden the Na’vi River Journey ride in the Pandora section of the park once before. The wait is usually close to an hour. I took advantage of the short wait this morning to ride it again. It was actually quicker than the posted wait time. I was finished with the ride in less than thirty minutes. This is a dark boat ride through the bio luminescence forest. It is an Ok ride, but I wouldn’t wait longer than I did today.
Other wait times this morning were long. I walked the various wildlife trails and toured most of the areas of the park. The male gorillas were very active, but the family units including the babies were all hiding in the shade. On the other trail the tiger was in the shade by a tree well away from the viewing windows. It really wasn’t the best day for animal sightings. The trails around the tree of life were also closed so Disney could do some maintenance on the cement tree.
When the wait time for the safari ride got below sixty minutes I got in line. It was moving right along. I thought it would be much less than the posted wait, but then the dreaded message came over the loudspeaker. There were animals on the trail delaying the safari. The animals have the right of way over the ride trucks. All they can do is wait. So, the line stopped moving. It probably stopped for close to half an hour. Once it began to move again, the Lightening Lane for people that paid extra for a shorter line, got priority over the general line. Overall by the time I got off the ride it had been almost two hours from the time I entered the queue. The good thing is there were plenty of animals to see.
The warm weather trend continued today. The day began around sixty degrees and peaked in the low eighties this afternoon. The seasonal normal is in the low seventies. The warm weather is supposed to be the result of a southwest wind, but there didn’t seem to be much wind at all today. It is very nice weather.
Today’s task was getting some service performed on my car. It was in need of an oil change and a new battery. On the cold days over the last month it has resisted starting and after getting towed here behind my motorhome it refused to crank over. The draw on the battery during towing was enough to kill it. I have a portable auxiliary battery jumper that I had to use when I arrived here on Thursday. The battery is a little over 5 years old. The last time I replaced it was in Las Vegas in January 2018. This afternoon I went to the local Valvoline Instant Oil change for both services. I now have fresh oil and a new battery.
There was a lot more turn over in the campground today. Some had been here for a few days and a few only arrived yesterday. The line at the dumping station was several RVs long near the 1PM checkout time. When I returned to the park late this afternoon most of the empty sites were already full. While I was out for my pre-sunset walk more arrived. I’m sure the park will be full once again tonight.
Friday was cold, yesterday was warming up and today was a little on the warm side. The bright sun warmed the air to eighty degrees and maybe a little beyond. It was a beautiful day and would have been better if I was dressed for the warmth. Heavy long pants were not the proper attire for the weather, but I came to the conclusion too late to make the change.
A sunny Sunday on the lake for some.
The campground went through its end of weekend metamorphosis today. The weekenders form the local area were replaced by travelers. A lot of today’s arrivals were from Canada. It looks like the Canadian snowbirds are back at normal levels. During the 2020-2021 winter they were basically nonexistent. With the land boarder closed because of the pandemic that winter, I think I only saw two Canadian license plates all winter. Last winter the boarder opened in November of 2021. I recall seeing a lot of Canadian plates a few days after the opening, but throughout the winter the total number seemed to be way down. This winter the level seems to be back to pre-pandemic levels and maybe more.
My exercise level today was reduced from yesterday’s. Somewhere along the way yesterday I must have twisted my leg or something. While walking today, my knee wasn’t as happy as it should be. It wasn’t bad, just annoying. My walks were restricted to the campground. I walked over to the fishing piers on the two lakes a couple of times today. There were plenty of people trying their luck at fishing and renting kayaks to explore the lake.
The sun brought the turtles out to warm up on the dead longs along the lake shore. In past visits I’ve seen an alligator on some of the logs, but today it wasn’t around. I’ll keep watching for the alligator during my stay here.
It was a dull day when I got up this morning and it got darker as the day progressed. The increasing cloud cover implied the approach of rain, but it never arrived. The forecast calls for conditions to improve tomorrow without any rainfall. Today’s high temperature was in the upper sixties.
The cloud cover was thick and wide today.
The campground is in full on weekend mode. Many of the big rigs from northern states that were here when I arrived on Thursday have been replaced by tents and smaller RVs from local areas. The number of kids in the park has also increased. Over near the lakes and recreation equipment rental area lots of people were engaged in fishing and boating. Bicycle riders were turning around at the campground after riding in the three miles from the park entrance. The campground is at the end of the road popular with bicyclists. In general the area was hopping.
My form of recreation today was a hike around Hammond Lake. The trails are wide multi-use pathways. In addition to walking, they support horseback riding, bicycles and even a segway tour. Today I only met one set of hikers and saw a bunch of horse manure. All of the bird life I saw was small. There were signs of bigger animals in one area along the trail. I think the tracks were from wild hogs, but might have been deer. They were closer together and deeper than I would expect for deer tracks. Nearby there was also disturbed ground that might have been caused by hogs.
Tracks in the sandy soil. These are probably wild hog tracks.
My hike almost included trip around Dixie Lake as well. My choice of trails at one fork lead to the cabins on the far side of Dixie Lake. At the cabins I chose to turn left and return to my campsite rather than continuing around Dixie Lake. I’ll make that hike on another day. It would have tripled or more the length of my hike had I continued on around Dixie Lake.
There were many wild orange trees with small orange fruit along the trail.
Rob's Rambling Road Trip 