The temperature didn’t seem as cool this morning. It may be that I’m just getting used to it, but I didn’t have the urge to remain under the covers. The high temperature for the day was around sixty five.
Traffic was a nightmare today. I made the mistake of getting close to the shopping areas and thought I’d never get through the area. Eventually I got back into the area of my RV resort. I stopped at the Ocala Wetlands Recharge park for another walk around the reclamation ponds. It was a refreshing walk. The birds were a little less numerous today. I only saw two or three heron. I think one bird was following me from one area of the park to another.
The campground feels a little more occupied than when I arrived last week. It is hard to be certain since RVs are scattered all over the five hundred sites. There are still far more empty sites than full. Walking around yesterday, I discovered that some of the sites are not finished. The power transformers haven’t been installed although all of the power boxes at the sites with the breaker panels have been installed and connected. Also, workers are still busy completing the landscaping in another area of the resort.
We are in a “Florida” cold spell right now. The inside temperature was in the low fifties this morning, which means the outside temperature was in the forties. It got into the low sixties by mid afternoon. The forecast low tonight is in the thirties. Later in the week the forecast low in this area is projected to be in the twenties.
Today was pretty much a repeat of Saturday. I stayed inside watching TV and chasing obscure information on the Internet most of the day. In general I tend to stay in on weekend days unless I have a specific destination. During the run up to Christmas, traffic and general congestion on the weekend is worse. The good news about staying at home is the time it provides to cook a more elaborate meal. Today I cooked a small pork roast in the convection oven and had a proper “old fashion” Sunday dinner.
It doesn’t look like much, but it was good to eat.
For some reason that I don’t understand, today was a big arrival day here at the RV resort. When I took a walk around the park this afternoon there were a lot more occupied sites. I even have an immediate neighbor tonight. Up until now, there has been an empty site on both sides. I knew they were coming because the park staff blew the grass clippings off the pad and opened the power box the first thing this morning. The park staff checks every site before the next guest arrives. I’m told they open the power box because they have had problems with wasps and lizards inside.
Today started a little warmer than Friday, but overall it was still cool. The inside temperature at 7:30 was 54 degrees Fahrenheit. Luckily there was some sun early in the day that quickly raised the inside temperature to a comfortable level. As the day went by clouds blocked the sun. The outside temperature never climbed out of the low sixties. This evening there is a light rain falling.
This RV Resort is in horse country.
It was a very slow Saturday. I did a few chores around my RV home and generally relaxed most of the day. The TV tuner got a good exercise as it change the channel from one sporting event to another with a Christmas movie or two thrown in for good measure. I also got some exercise with a couple of walks around the RV resort. It is a little more lively today than it was during the week.
The meteorological switch was toggled last night. The temperature was in the forties this morning. It peaked in the low sixties this afternoon. On the positive side, the humidity was way down and the sun was out all day along with a bright blue sky.
Bright blue sky over the Ocala Wetlands Recharge Park
While I was out today I stopped in to visit the birds at the Ocala Wetlands Recharge Park. There were a few more people today along with a few hundred Ibis foraging around the grassy areas. The egrets and herons were a little harder to spot, but they were there too. It is a very nice park to walk through.
Later in the afternoon walking around the RV park, I came to the conclusion that there are fewer RVs here tonight than last night. Several departed this morning and the weekenders that I thought would arrived didn’t. The Christmas decorations are slowly increasing. Tonight there is a plastic pig dressed for the holidays on one of the sites.
At 6:30 this morning I woke to the sound of rain on the roof of my RV home. It was more than a little shower. The sound of the individual drops blended together into a constant roar. Rain continued off and on for the rest of the morning. The cold front that has been bringing severe weather to the rest of the nation had arrived in Florida.
The forecast called for the storms to arrive in this area around ten, but was obviously early. A tornado watch was issued for the entire center part of the Florida peninsular until 4:30 in the afternoon. There was nothing particularly bad in this area, but to the south there were tornado warnings and possibly an actual tornado in the St. Petersburg area. The storms were all south of here by early afternoon. The sky started to brighten around 3:30 and everything started to dry out.
This storm system seems to be issuing in a major change in the weather. Ever since hurricane Nicole passed through the area in early November the weather has been warmer than normal. It also hasn’t rained much since the hurricane. The forecast for the next week calls for temperature at or below normal with an elevated chance of rain on several days. All of this seems like the beginning of winter here in Florida. From previous years I know what to expect for winter in Florida. For the next month and a half it will be cool with rain days associated with the tail end of winter storms that move across the country. By February most of the storms moving across the country don’t seem to reach this far south and the temperature will start to climb again.
I spent most of my indoor time during the storms chasing various threads of information on the internet and reading. With my noise canceling earbuds in my ears and music, a podcast or video playing, I can almost ignore the sound of rain on the roof. After the storm before dark I got my exercise for the day by walking around the RV park a couple of times. I haven’t measured it, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn a single loop may be near a mile. The park has gained a few more residents as the weekend approaches. It will be interesting to see how many more people arrive for the weekend.
Today was the last warm weather day in the forecast. The steady breeze out of the east didn’t prevent the bright sunny sky from raising the temperature to the upper half of the seventies. A cold front with potential severe weather is heading this way across the Gulf of Mexico. It is expected here tomorrow morning. Weekend high temperatures are only forecast to be in the low sixties.
I woke up this morning to the sound of lawn mowers. They need a big crew to get all of the grass in this park mowed. They started around 8AM and were still at it at 5PM. Not only do they mow, but they trim and edge around every post and concrete pad. I mentioned in August that I didn’t think the commercial mowing crew hand a good handle on the idiosyncrasies of mowing an RV park, and I still hold that opinion. For example, they get a little too close to all the hoses and cords that tie every RV to the services for my tastes and running their noisy trimmers and blowers right outside my window before I’m out of bed is another issue.
For exercise today I drove over to the Ocala Wetlands Reclamation Park that I discovered on my last visit. I expected to find more water in the collection ponds this time, but I found just the opposite. One the ponds was practically drained dry today. The level is artificially controlled so it probably doesn’t reflect local rainfall totals. It seems like the water level in this area isn’t as high as the Orlando area. The retention pond at the RV park that contained some water in August is dry now.
There were plenty of birds at the Wetlands Reclamation Park. There were several Egrets and Herons today. In August they were missing, but there were more ducks than I saw today. Overall I had a good time walking the trails and will be back for more visits while I’m here.
The weather was seasonally appropriate in this area today. The temperature peaked in the low seventies under a mostly sunny sky. Off to the south, in the area I spent the last seven weeks, it was not as nice. Rain and wind off the Atlantic dominated the weather in the Orlando area. So, at least for today, my move north worked out weather wise. Toward the end of the week it might be a different story.
Today was a multifaceted day for activities. First up was configuring my car for daily driving. Basically that means stowing the equipment that allows it to be towed and taking my bicycle and rack off the back. It is a lot of little things, but they only take fifteen minutes or so to complete.
The heavy cloud cover and inclement weather remained well to the southeast.
Once the car was ready for use, I set out for Walmart. I needed to restock my refrigerator. It was busy, but not as bad as it could have been. I certainly won’t be going near shopping areas near the weekend or most of next week. Probably a week from today I’ll make my last stop for food before Christmas. The shelves were fairly well stock and the lines weren’t bad today. I came home with everything I need for now and could survive through the holiday if I don’t get back to the store next week.
Back at the RV resort this afternoon I refreshed my memory of the place from last August. At that time it had only been open a few weeks and the majority of the sites were empty. I doubt if there were more than fifty occupied sites most of the time. Now it has been open for a few months and the majority of the sites are still empty. Even so there are probably three or four times more RVs here today. The campground has around five hundred sites.
One site at the park had a few blow up decorations.
I walked around a good portion of the park this evening. Most sites have some form of holiday decorations on display. They aren’t anything as elaborate as the ones I saw at Disney’s Fort Wilderness, but they celebrate the season to some degree. For example, I only have a couple of strings of led lights in my front window. Maybe things will change as the holiday gets closer.
It was another cool and cloudy start to the day. Unlike yesterday the weather cleared up by mid morning and remained sunny the rest of the day. The temperature peaked in the low seventies.
This little hitch hiker jumped aboard while I was visiting Walt Disney World. He is now my Co pilot for this leg of my Rambling Road Trip.
I spent the morning finishing the packing for my travel day. Shortly before the 1PM checkout time I set out on my drive to Ocala. This two week period is my replacement reservation for the hurricane Ian flooded Myakka River State Park. I’m staying at the Champions Run Luxury RV Resort in Ocala Florida. This is a new park so it had plenty of available space for an almost last minute reservation. I stayed here for two weeks at the end of August.
My first stop along the way was at the gas station I scoped out yesterday. Access to the station was good and the price of gas was even cheaper than yesterday. The price of regular gas has gone down to $2.98 per gallon. It was $3.03 yesterday and more than twenty cents more expensive two weeks ago. The tank was very low. I put in over 58.5 gallons and it still wasn’t quiet full.
Surrounded by Trucks on Interstate 75.
There are several ways to travel the seventy to eighty miles from Clermont to Ocala. I picked a route that would avoid all the stop and go through the Villages area. The 55+ collection of housing communities is a very built up and congested area. The route I piked cuts out to interstate 75 south of the Villages. It turned out to be the wrong choice. I got stuck in a traffic backup ten miles or more long. It took well over an hour at stop and go speeds. During most of the crawl I was completely surround by tractor trailers. The traffic light obstacle course through the Villages would have been far better.
Site 341 at Champions Run Luxury RV Resort.
I arrived at Champions Run a little after 3:30PM. I was met by a staff member in a golf cart at the entrance and escorted to my site. While I was setting up another staff member brought my check in packet to my site. I don’t think I’ve come across a similar check in process on my Rambling Road trip.
The weather didn’t live up to the precedent set by the last week. Except for a brief period around noon it was a very cloudy day. The temperature was slow to get out of the sixties and didn’t climb above the low seventies all day.
My chief task for the day was scouting my escape route for tomorrow’s travel day north. What I was really looking for was the best gas station to fill the motorhome’s tank. All of the nearby stations have poor access. I found a couple of stations up the road a few miles that will work OK and an alternative further north that is on the expensive side, but will work well as a last resort. Gas prices are actually down more than ten cents a gallon from two weeks ago when I arrived at Lake Louisa State Park. It usually doesn’t happen that way. The change is usually to my disadvantage.
There was a lot of traffic on the roads. Initially I didn’t understand why there was so much traffic on a Sunday morning. Passing slowly through an area of several shopping centers it became clear. I was getting stuck in the Christmas shopping rush. It is hard to believe the holiday is only two weeks away.
The campground really emptied out as the weekend came to a conclusion. It was so empty in the early afternoon I didn’t think it would fill up again tonight, but it did. Once again the weekend tent campers from the local area gave way to the RVs from the northern states. I will join the departing guests tomorrow before the 1PM checkout. I have a trip of about 75 miles to the Ocala area to reach my next destination.
The fog and cloud cover hung in a little longer this morning. It wasn’t until noon that the sun started to dominate the sky. The afternoon remained partly cloudy with a few long periods with the sunshine blocked from reaching the ground directly. The temperature still managed to get into the upper seventies.
Just like the weather, my day started slow. I lingered over my breakfast coffee catching up on my internet reading longer than usual. My only major accomplishment for the day was getting some laundry done. It took a couple of hours and this is not one of those places that I am comfortable leaving it alone. I hoovered around the laundry machines the whole time my washing was in them. Thank goodness for earbuds and a cell phone with internet access to kill the time.
A couple taking a “sleigh” ride around the Fort Wilderness Campground.
For this blog entry, I am going to complete yesterday’s story on my visit to Wald Disney World. In particular my touring of the Christmas Decorations at the Fort Wilderness campground.
After spending about three hours wandering around Magic Kingdom taking in the ambiance, I took the boat to Fort Wilderness. It was still daylight when I arrived so my first order of business was getting some food. I chose to have a hamburger and fries from the take out place at the Settlement. After mobile ordering from the My Disney Experience App I had to wait about half an hour. This is not a quick service location, just a take out place for the campers. While I waited I wandered around the Settlement area and one of the camping loops during the last of daylight.
After an OK hamburger and fries it was dark and my touring began. I walked through most of the first nine camping loops. It is over two weeks until Christmas and the nightly rate at Fort Wilderness is possibly the highest overnight rate for a campground in the country, so most of the people staying there this weekend will be gone before Christmas. Still, about half the sites were decorated. Closer to the holiday it will probably be close to all of the sites. The majority of the decorations are inflatables, but many sites had a few strings of lights thrown in for good measure. Projection lights have been popular in past years, but I didn’t see many this time around. I don’t think I’ve toured these lights since 2018 because of the pandemic and my winter location.
Looking at the lights was fun. I had a lot of difficulty taking pictures. The lighting was very inconsistent and I didn’t want to use a flash to annoy people inside the RVs. I attempted to take about 150 pictures in the campground and probably deleted about fifty because they were just too blurry. Included in this blog entry are about thirty to provide a sense of what I was observing.
Rob's Rambling Road Trip 