Saturday January 7th 2023

It may have been colder last night, but the high temperature for the day was a couple of degrees warmer. The inside temperature was around fifty this morning and the outside high was in the low seventies.

Today was a planning day. I really don’t know what I’m doing after the middle of April. Last year I had all kinds of ideas that never turned into plans. This year those ideas remain, but still haven’t been converted into plans. The eleven month planning window for next winter in Florida is also opening up. I need to commit to a coast for next winter. Will I be in Florida or out west somewhere? Probably Florida.

Walking around the resort today I couldn’t help but remark on all the new technology that is becoming very common in parks like this. First, ordinary bicycles are rapidly being replaced by electric bikes. In this park they silently creep up behind you at speeds into the 20MPH range. Many of the riders don’t even seem to stop at intersections. While I’m a little envious of the bikes, I fear that the lack of smart usage will lead to onerous regulations about the time I decide to get one. Even more concerning is why do parents buy elementary school age kids little electric bikes. They need the exercise and many don’t have the common sense needed to safely ride them in a busy park.

The other technology I’m a little envious of is the Starlink satellites for internet access. The small rectangular satellite antennas are appearing on the ground in front of RVs and on the roof of others. Today I started counting them. I lost the count in the teens. I am not sure of the cost vs value of the service compared to cellular data. In areas of heavy tree cover the satellite won’t work and if you aren’t near a cell tower you will also have difficulties. If an internet connection is essential, you probably need to have both. For now, I’ll stay with cellular data. Maybe I’ll add another carrier.

Friday January 6th 2023

The humidity and the temperature are back below normal levels. The temperature only climbed into the low to mid sixties. In the sun it was very comfortable, but in the shade and wind it was a little chilly.

While I was out of the park today I stopped at the Ocala Wetland Recharge Park once again. It is only about fifteen minutes from my campsite and is a very nice place to walk and visit with the birds. There was a lot of maintenance going on around the holding ponds this afternoon. The staff was busy picking up some of the downed trees that probably came down during the hurricanes earlier in the year. The birds didn’t seem to care, but maybe the turtles did. I didn’t see any turtles today.

Back at the RV resort late in the day I continued my daily exercise with another walk around the park. It isn’t as full as I expected. The high occupancy over the holidays has ended and the volume of snowbird arrivals has slacked off. There also doesn’t seem to be many weekend visitors other than the camping group that occupies part of one road that was empty previously. Park occupancy continues to be a mystery to me.

Thursday January 5th 2023

Yesterday’s rain ended before bedtime last night. This morning it was cloudy with a little wind. The temperature climbed from the sixties to the low seventies before it started to drop. Tonight is forecast to have a low in the upper forties warming back into the sixties tomorrow.

Today was a day filled with random chores. It really didn’t generate any blog worthy content. Between chores I walked around the RV park twice. I was surprised to see that an area of the park that wasn’t getting filled over the last few weeks was getting filled today. It turns out that the area is reserved for an area camping club. They started to arrive today.

Wednesday January 4th 2023

This morning was cloudy and dull. It looked like it would rain at any minute, but the approaching storm front was sill over the Gulf of Mexico and the Florida panhandle. As the day progressed a few brief moments of rain passed through the area. The temperature still managed to climb into the low eighties. A tornado watch and a severe thunderstorm warning were issued for the county late in the day. Around 4PM the western sky turned very dark as the storm front approached. The actual period of wind and heavy rain was very short, but lite rain and showers continued into the evening.

During the early afternoon I ventured out to the Ocala Wetland Recharge Park again. There were more cars than usual in the parking lot, but I saw very few people out in the park. Today was a Great Egret viewing day. There were at least four on the sides of the ponds as I walked the trails. These birds were not accustom to people. I couldn’t get very close without them taking to the air to gain distance from an identified threat.

There was quite a bit of wind today. The smaller water birds were staying in the grass and reeds for shelter. Often you could hear them, but not see them. The wind also kept the green surface slime clear in some areas of the ponds. For some reason the birds and turtles don’t seem to like the clear areas.

The rain prevented me from taking my evening walk around the park. Based on the view from my site, it looks like the occupancy today stayed at about the same level as yesterday. There didn’t seem to be many departing RVs or arrivals today.

Tuesday January 3rd 2023

Today’s weather was pretty much a clone of Monday’s. The sky was mostly blue with a few puffy clouds thrown in for good measure. The temperature climbed to eighty by early afternoon. The peak may have been a couple of degrees warmer around 4:30 in the afternoon.

I think the net turnover of RVs in the resort today was in the negative. There seem to be a few more empty sites tonight. Among the empties are the site beside mine and two across the street. Three motorhomes traveling together arrived to occupy those sites yesterday afternoon. They all seemed to be a little on the novice side of the RV adventure. Early this afternoon the park staff arrived to ask them when they were leaving. Apparently they didn’t know there was a checkout time or more likely were going to wait until they were told to leave. If so, the stunt backfired. I heard the staff asking for a credit card number to charge the late checkout fee against. They were gone by about 1PM.

For my exercise today, I took a hike in the Silver Springs Forest Conservation Area. The walk was enjoyable, but uneventful and unremarkable. I heard birds in the trees and some ground level noises, but I didn’t see any wildlife. One bird sound was clearly a woodpecker, but despite gazing up into the trees for a couple of minutes I never found the bird. The published material about the conservation area describe otters and alligators among the wildlife, but I didn’t find any significant water areas on my hike. It is a big area and I only explored about three quarters of a mile into the forest. I may explore more of the area before I leave Ocala on Monday.

On my way home from the Silver Springs Forest Conservation area I stopped at Walmart for groceries. The store seemed busy and out of stock on many items. Now that the holiday weekend is really over, everyone may have hit the grocery store to restock. Since I didn’t find a few items I wanted, I will probably have to make another grocery run soon. At least I bought coffee before I ran out.

Monday January 2nd 2023

There was still fog in the area this morning, but it was a sunny start to the day here. The sky was blue with a few scattered puffy clouds all day. The high temperature flirted with eighty degree mark.

Today felt a little more like the New Years Day holiday. The Rose Parade was on the TV this morning and a few football bowl games were on in the afternoon. The parade and one of the games were on the TV, but I can’t say I really watched either of them. Mostly they served as background noise.

The other indicator that the holiday weekend was over came from all of the departures from the RV resort. From the time I got up until shortly after the 11AM checkout time there was a steady parade of RVs leaving the resort. Not as many RVs arrived later in the day, so the park is a little less occupied this evening. I suspect it will fill up with arriving snowbirds as the week goes by. For mow the recreation facilities including the pool and pickle ball courts are not as busy.

My chief activity for the day was backing up all of the pictures I’ve taken this year from my computer. I off load the pictures from my camera to my computer every night. I keep them sorted by date. My regular backup practice makes a copy every couple of weeks to couple of months depending on how diligent I am. At the end of every year I make two copies of all of the years pictures and blog text onto USB memory sticks. The sticks get stored in different places, one of which is in my “go” bag. I rarely have the internet bandwidth to upload all of the pictures to cloud storage. For special pictures or ones I want to share, I take the additional time to upload them to Google Photos and/or Amazon Photos.

This year I took more than 9,000 pictures. A high percentage of the pictures are of birds, wildflowers and elements of nature. I take pictures for three reasons. First is to add interest to my blog entries. Second is to remind me of things I’m experiencing and third just because I think something will make an interesting possibly artsy image. I try to take time setting up the pictures for reason one and three, but the pictures to remind me about the situation may be more snapshot quality. They may not be well framed or necessarily in focus.

After I finished all of my backups, I deleted from my computer’s hard drive the first five years of pictures. My one terabyte disk was getting very full. The five years of pictures took up more than 350 gigabytes of space. The computer is more than nine years old so I’m suspect on its continued function.

Sunday January 1st 2023

It was another foggy start to the day. Unlike yesterday which had an element of rain, today the fog lifted by midday into a mostly cloudy afternoon and evening. Some filtered sunlight got through the cloud layer to warm the air into the mid seventies.

A Sunday New Years is a strange kind of holiday. Most of the things we normally associate with New Years day are put off until Monday. The parades and football bowl games are all moved to Monday. The normal Sunday sporting events dominate the TV along with a few strange marathons of repeats on the cable channels. I watched one of the NFL football games.

I was surprised to see many RVs depart the RV resort this morning. People I assumed were here for an extended stay were among those leaving. The families with kids are still here. Tomorrow is the last day of the winter school break in many of the Florida school systems. I expect a lot more RVs to leave tomorrow. At the same time many RVs continue to arrive. Many arrive in groups. The three sites beside me are all occupied by a group that traveled south from the mid west together. Tonight the park is slightly less occupied than last night, but I suspect that more snowbirds will be arriving every day this week.

Traffic on the local roads in the area was light today, but passing under Interstate 75 it was apparent that wasn’t the case with the interstate. The traffic was slowed to a stop and go rate on the bridge when I drove to the Ocala Wetland Recharge park. Traffic was moving again when I returned under the bridge an hour or so later.

The Wetland Recharge Park was a popular place today. There were more cars in the parking area than I’ve seen on previous visits. I passed a number of other walkers while I was wandering along the trails. There wasn’t a lot of wildlife visible, but a couple of birds were very accommodating of my need to take their picture. A couple of turtles covered in the green slime that lines the surface the ponds were also photogenic.

Saturday December 31st 2022

Happy New Year

New Years Eve began with thick fog covering the area. It was replaced by occasional light rain for the majority of the day. I remained inside most of the day. Near sunset the rain had let up enough that I could walk around the resort a few times. There are even more occupied sites tonight. The activity level and atmosphere is entirely different from earlier in the month.

Happy New Year

Friday December 30th 2022

The day started sunny, but transitioned to partly cloudy and then full cloudy as the sun was setting. The temperature reached the upper half of the seventies. Rain is in the forecast for tomorrow.

This was a reset day. After worrying about getting my fuel leak fixed most of the week, today became a return to normal day. I hadn’t connected all of the utilities to the motorhome so they wouldn’t be in the way of the repair effort. This morning I connected the water and the sewer up and got into full living mode. The inside got rearranged a little also.

The other impact of the holiday week and my preoccupation with getting the leak fixed is I don’t know what day it is. Thursday, Friday and Saturday were all thoughts that passed through my mind during the day. Most of the time I thought it was Saturday, New Years Eve. I just checked the top of this post and I did correctly label today as Friday the 30th.

Today was the first day I got out of the park since Monday. I made another visit to the Ocala Wetlands Recharge park. The weekend freezes killed off more of the vegetation for the winter, but there was plenty of greenery left. The water level in some of the holding pools is a little higher, but the birds seem to be in hiding. There weren’t as many posing for my camera.

RVs continued to stream into the resort. I think about half of the arrivals are for extended stays and the rest are for the holiday weekend. There are many families with kids on bicycles, scooters and other powered contraptions. The activity level is so much higher than a week ago. It really is a different kind of place this weekend.

Thursday December 29th 2022

There was more humidity in the air today. The day started with a lot of fog in the area. This immediate area seemed to be clear of fog. Over the course of the day there were more clouds in the sky than the last couple of days, but temperature got to the mid seventies. It was a few degrees warmer than Wednesday.

My day began with figuring out plan B for getting my fuel leak fixed. The mechanic that was supposed to show up at 2PM Wednesday hadn’t been heard from since a text message at 2:30PM. I would have expected something last night or the first thing this morning. Yesterday, one of the voice mails I left on Monday or Tuesday returned by call. This morning he got my business. I canceled the previous guy with a text message of my own and scheduled the new guy for 3PM.

The new guy arrived before 3PM and immediately found the leak in the fuel line where it connects to the manifold. It looks like some rodent may have taken a bite out of it. He took off with the fuel line in hand on a search of the local auto parts stores. Unfortunately he didn’t have any success. The part would have to be ordered from Ford with a long lead time. The best solution was to patch the existing line. A bunch of high tech adhesives and epoxy goop later the fuel line was patched successfully. I’ll keep watch on the patch and pursue the Ford part order if necessary.

I’m really lucky I didn’t have more problems. I had smelled gas before Monday, but hadn’t seen anything identifiable under the motorhome. The location of the leak caused fuel to spray on the outside of the hot manifold which vaporized the fuel. All it would need is a spark to have an uncontrolled fire. The fact that Monday morning was so cold resulted in less gas getting vaporized. The liquid drained onto the ground in a big puddle. In a way this is a good result from a very cold morning.

This RV resort continues to fill up. They open the section of the park with the recently completed electrical service. There seem to be two types of occupants. Families are here for the school vacation week and New Years Eve weekend. Snowbirds are also arriving in droves. Most of them will be here for a few months.